Wildflowers instead of pesticides

September 9, 2018 12:51 PM

The Netherlands has been restoring bee habitat and seeing more bees.

Residents can also request to have a 16-inch strip of pavement immediately against their home at the ground level removed in order to plant shrubs, flowers or climbing vines, Timmermans said. A city ecologist can even offer consultation on what plants would most likely thrive in their neighborhood.

From the street, fist-sized holes can be seen drilled into the exterior walls of some buildings. Timmermans said they serve as nesting space for swifts, bats and other birds.

And road margins through agricultural land are being sown with wildflowers.

See also, a short essay on surviving herbal leys (grazed, hay-mowed mixed-species grasslands) in Transylvania.

posted by clew (17 comments total)

Thanks bees.

Thees.
posted by The Whelk at 1:02 PM on September 9, 2018 [27 favorites]

If you have any amount of yard space, you can do this, too - I live in a DC rowhouse, and we've let our tiny yard go mostly feral/wild, plus a few cultivated feeders (e.g. sunflowers and buddleia). Our gentrifying neighborhood is increasingly manicured and soaked in broad spectrum insecticide via Mosquito Squad, but our yard is regularly visited by a variety of flies, bees, birds, and other wild foragers. Even a handful of refuges in a block can make a difference.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:06 PM on September 9, 2018 [10 favorites]

I've had mixed results in encouraging bees in my backyard. I planted a large swath of ground in wildflower seeds, only to have the local squirrels devour the seeds. Dammit, Nature! I'm trying to help! Stop being so, so... wild!
posted by SPrintF at 1:27 PM on September 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

I live in Amsterdam and many houses around me have swift-friendly roof tiles. Here's what they look like. We did have enormous numbers of swifts here ("The Screamers" we called them) though they are gone now for the season.
posted by vacapinta at 1:48 PM on September 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

The best thing we've planted for bees turns out to be plain old ivy (which is native in these parts, so no complaining about invasive species). The bees love it and it blossoms relatively late in the year, so it's there for the bees when other flowers have given up for the year, and it's a very hardy perennial, green all year and teeming with spiders and other garden pals. If you can grow ivy, you should.
posted by pracowity at 1:57 PM on September 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

If you or someone you live with is allergic to wildflowers, another good bee friendly option is perennial/biennial herbs that flower in the spring/summer. They’re less likely to make you/another person super allergic, but they’re attractive to bees. I’ve had the best luck with African blue basil, oregano and hyssop- but if you let your parsley plants go to seed they’ll also attract our buzzing friends.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:58 PM on September 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

Also: thyme has a good track record w/ bees and the monster shiso plants (perilla) when they flower it’s bee city as well.

If you’re not interested in culinary herbs thyme has a few varieties as ground cover- called creeping thyme- and a few varieties of that have the most beautiful delicate purple flowers in spring/summer, great ground cover- great for bees.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:24 PM on September 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you have any amount of yard space, you can do this, too - I live in a DC rowhouse, and we've let our tiny yard go mostly feral/wild, plus a few cultivated feeders (e.g. sunflowers and buddleia). Our gentrifying neighborhood is increasingly manicured and soaked in broad spectrum insecticide via Mosquito Squad, but our yard is regularly visited by a variety of flies, bees, birds, and other wild foragers. Even a handful of refuges in a block can make a differences.

Agree so much with this -- it has been thrilling to see earlier pollinators, later pollinators, pollinators I didn't realize were pollinators, bees I didn't know existed, and bumblebees and even honeybees making our yard their home. We leave a lot of plant debris for overwinterers and no pesticides. And leave hollow stems! Some pollinators overwinter in the hollow stems of things...

I don't know..it might just be me lying to myself in the face of global warming and mass extinction and Trump despair, but I see the flowers covered with bees and the bats flying overhead at night, and I feel just a speck of tiny bit better about the universe, I feel like maybe I made a home for a bee or something, and I really need this.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:53 PM on September 9, 2018 [16 favorites]

I really can't stress how important bees are, and the history of beekeeping is particularly interesting. One thing I always found interesting was how beekeeping and monastic life are often found together-both the overall themes of industry, production, and community, as well as some of the research that has come out of the monastic community. This article touches a bit on it.

If you are interested in beekeeping, check with your state's ag bureau, many will help set you up with advice or even free equipment. I'm hoping to get my first two hives up next year!
posted by mike_honcho at 3:19 PM on September 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

I am no gardener. Our front garden is mostly oregano and gaillardias, as they're the only thing that can out-compete the convolvulus. The back garden is goldenrod, thistles, milkweed, dubious poppies (the son of a former owner was a bit of a bad lad) and wild carrot. In the summer, our garden is alive with bees, from tiny sweat bees, through honey bees, several types of solitaries up to huge belligerent carpenter bees who'll try to headbutt you out of their space. Our neighbours may think we're messy, but I've also seen them taking selfies against our riotous peonies (which no-one else in the street can seem to grow — all we do is cut ours back and they come back bigger every year) so we don't care. We 💚 bees.

At least we're not like the forestry industry in the old country …
posted by scruss at 3:20 PM on September 9, 2018 [8 favorites]

huge belligerent carpenter bees who'll try to headbutt you out of their space.

Usually the guarding behaviour is done by males, who have no stingers. if they're in your way, you can move them by throwing something bee-sized (like an acorn) past them in the air. Often they will chase it and leave you alone.
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:19 PM on September 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

Mod note: A few deleted; please don't completely derail the discussion to talk about something else.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:22 AM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Usually the guarding behaviour is done by males, who have no stingers. if they're in your way, you can move them by throwing something bee-sized (like an acorn) past them in the air. Often they will chase it and leave you alone.

If you're careful, you can cup them in your hand which is a great party trick to do around people who are afraid of bees.
posted by atrazine at 2:15 AM on September 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

We just signed a lease on a house with a small front yard that I'm excited to plant some pollinator-friendly plants in, once I figure out....exactly what that means locally (I'm in Eastern Ontario). At least there's yard waste pickup for the next few weeks so I can probably pull up / cut down some of the vines.
posted by quaking fajita at 6:02 AM on September 10, 2018

Some of the earliest flowering weeds in our area are yellow (dandelions and others that I don't know the name of). Bees seek out these yellow flowers as some of their first sources of food when they emerge from hibernation.

I have found in my garden and in friends' gardens that bees love borage, and lettuce that has gone to seed.
posted by vignettist at 9:35 PM on September 10, 2018

My mom has a 2x3 foot plot of catnip that flowers all summer and is loaded with bees and hover flys all summer.
posted by Mitheral at 10:47 PM on September 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

My mom has a 2x3 foot plot of catnip

We tried catnip. The cats (ours and others) mangled it. I guess we could have fenced it, but then we would have had sad cats (or cats just hopping in and mangling it from the inside).
posted by pracowity at 11:23 PM on September 10, 2018