Sunday 3 May 2020

Sites to Visit - Michigan State University Pollinator Initiative

Hello readers,

Today I'll be browsing the website of Michigan State University.  I heard of it during a webinar about pollinater Landscape and figured browsing it would be a good fit for the blog.

So this is the site I have stored on my browser : https://pollinators.msu.edu/resources/pollinator-planting/pollinator-supportive-trees/

The first page I looked at:

The link will take you to an introduction why planting trees is a good idea for improving your pollinator landscape.  After explaining that it directs you to pollinator friendly trees (fit for the michigan state) and treegrowers aka: 'where can I get some'.

As I live in Belgium the local trees might not all be native, but the gest is the same and frankly, so are a lot of the trees.  Maple, willow, fruit trees, linden, all native here, so the lists are usefull!

Of course I'm not going to order my trees oversees, so that would be something to look for, local tree farmers.  As it happens, I have two only a stonethrow away from me! 

I can't stress out enough, if there is something I would do differently to my beekeeping career, it would be to plant trees, bushes and flowers for the pollinaters before introducing them.  But then again, that could be 'cheating' as the landscape is what it is.
In any case a beekeeper needs to be more aware of his surroundings in relation to the bees he keeps there.

To help you out further the site has a pdf on how to plant and grow trees! I downloaded it and added it to my gigantic library of stuff to read and sort out. I hope I get to it one of these days! (I must admit, after scrolling through it, a little voice in my head went: translate it to dutch and use this to start a project in a school!  If all kids in the class plant one tree in their garden...  how cool would that be?! - But let's stay on topic here)

The next resource on that same webpage still is one of hedgerows.  Next best thing after a tree, so also very interesting!  But a site I will not store as I get redericted to it from this one if I need it.

The last link this page shares is one of how to actually plant trees depening on how they are delivered, with bare roots, in a container or in a burlap sac.  In that site there it also tells you how to prune dead branches out of the tree, so a must read before you get to digging a hole...

So that's the entire page.

The second page I looked at:

As a beekeeper you have to click that button that says 'beekeeper' right?
So where does that button take you?
Well, it starts of by showing you a nice picture of a brood pattern on some comb.  Not the freshest of combes I've seen, but  a good representation of what you're looking for in a beehive.
Underneath the picture is a 'Sign up for the mailing list' option, which of course I clicked on and signed up for !  (Even though they didn't seem to expect anybody from abroad doing that as they asked for my state, and not my country...  without the option to go for abroad I left it blank and it took my application!)

The rest of this page is a table of contents you can use to quench your thirst for knowledge, just follow what picks your interest. Even the webinars (one of which I stumbled on and through that found the site) are listed on there.  The main topics to browse through are:
  • General beekeeping resources
  • Honeybee Health
  • Webinars
  • Handouts and articles
  • Resources on dealing with farm stress
  • Resources for commercial beekeepers
Then at the end of that list you have some e-mail adresses to contact with bee-specific questions.  Apart from one name (Ana) I recognize from the webinar (which I fell asleep in due to the time difference - but I'll look at it again through the links!) all the names are new to me:

  1. Dr. Zachary Huang (bees@msu.edu)
  2. Dr. Meghan Milbrath (mpi@msu.edu)
  3. Ana Heck (heckanar@msu.edu)
The General Beekeeping resources are 'Michigan State oriented'.
But it doesn't kill you if you do have a look at what they say!

The Honeybee Health topic has (at this time) only four links beneath it, one is for Varroa, the last about AFB, then a topic on feeding your bees and one about what to do with ants in a hive.

The Webinars is just that, webinars you can follow and learn from, follow the link to find out more!

Handouts and articles brings a (currently small) list of articles and (currently) focused towards the beginning beekeeper.  There are resources on how to get started, how to light a smoker, how to maximize your wax production in new equipment, etc.

The last two topics with resources are just that.

The third link I followed:

Took me to a pdf I downloaded straight away, the topic was Treatment Free Beekeeping.  An article dating back to 2016 by the hand of Meghan Milbrath, Ph.D. , a dr. I do not know.  The jest of the article is we want to go back to treatment free, all of us do, but we can't do it cold turkey and hope our bees will survive.
While I understand the article's conclusion (which is frankly and honestly the only thing I read) I didn't feel inspired to read the entire thing.  I feel it is more directed at beekeepers who treat and want to stop treating since it's saying if you do it the wrong way; you're going to lose your bees at a faster rate than when you keep treating them.
But in the end, if you do monitor for mites and only treat those who need it, you can select those who need the least treatment to breed queens from and use those queens to requeen those colonies that do require yearly treatments, untill they don't.

As it was getting late, this was the final page I looked at.  I might go back to this site if I remember the info on it and need to look something up, or want to know how others see that specific topic.

In any case, go take a look, form your own opinion, cause we all know: 'all beekeepers have one'...

That's all folks

Bob Out

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