Looking for Volunteers for Citizen Scientist project

Many of you read the pieces I posted on pollinators this year.at 7:36 I am pumped after an inaugural meeting yesterday of our Pollinator Project. We gathered at Prescott House in Starrs Point, Kings County to discuss the fledging project. Dr. Ann Fraser of Kalamazoo College provided her knowledge on this type of monitoring activity. We have chosen three Nova Scotia Museum sites: Prescott House, Fishermans' Life Museum and Haliburton House to pilot and perfect our data collection. 

If you live near Wolfville, Windsor or Oyster Ponds, Nova Scotia staff would like you to consider joining us as volunteer pollinator observers. The time commitment is only 2 hours twice a month, at most, from April to October.

We provide all training and reading materials. You provide a willingness to learn and to contribute your observations to a North American-wide initiative to record images and data on our native bees using Citizen Scientists.

For more information, please read this guide: http://www.xerces.org/download/pdf/PA_Xerces%20Guide.pdf

Your duties can begin in the remaining weeks of 2015, or for the growing season of 2016. Please contact me here by expressing your interest, or email me: Marian.Munro@novascotia.ca

from beneficialbugs.org

Pollinator Favourites - BFFs

Media reports of pollinator declines are prevalent now, particularly of the honey bees. Most of our food plants depend upon insect pollinators, or the wind. Popular social media sites such as Facebook have scattered memes promoting bee friendly actions on our part.

How can we help? First off there is plenty of reading at www.seeds.ca/pollination Each of us can become a BFF to bees and other pollinators, by reducing the use of pesticides and by planting bee-friendly flowers. There is a pattern for bee nests perfect for school groups or other interested citizens: https://seeds.ca/pollination/making-bee-nests

We can even self-identify as a BFF. That is, a Bee Friendly Farmer. If you are a business operator or even a home owner with gardens, there are colourful graphics for you to use to identify yourself and your property as a BFF. Please self-identify herehttp://www.seeds.ca/pollination/bff-bfg

Here are a few of the seasonal plants we can use in our landscaping to attract and feed pollinators, bees in particular.

Spring flowering: Violets, Blue Flag Iris, Dandelions (yes, bees’ early food), Coltsfoot, Spring Beauty, wild cherries and shadbush.

Summer flowers favoured by bees include: Harebell, Evening-primrose, Black-eyed Susan, goldenrods, fleabanes, coneflowers and Globe Thistle.
Fall flowers include goldenrods, sunflowers, asters, Alfalfa, Yarrow, Cleome, Borage and Wild Mustard.

Other things we can do to assist our personal pollinator population remains healthy is by not removing those dandelions as soon as they flower. Often in areas of massive urban/suburban developments they are the only food source in May.

Gardeners need to ask whether bedding plants or seeds have been sprayed or treated with insecticide. In particular neonicotinoids have been associated with honey-bee colony collapse. While this collective type of insecticide is less harmful to birds and mammals, they are toxic to insects, targeted and non-targeted.

If you are interested in joining a community effort to monitor pollinators beginning this summer, please send me a private message. This would most likely be of interest to those in Hants, Kings and Lunenburg counties of Nova Scotia.

Blue Flag Iris, photo by Martin Thomas

shadbush, photo by Martin Thomas

harebells, photo by Martin Thomas

Canada goldenrod, by Martin Thomas
Yarrow, by Martin Thomas

White Flowers and Pollinators

It is a diverse group of agents involved in the pollination of flowers, and not limited to honey bees. Different animal pollinators prefer different types of flowers. Understanding the relationship between flowers and their pollinators is very useful to manage endangered species, to encourage propagation of horticultural plants and to determine the type of garden that satisfy the pollinators one hopes to attract.

In general, pollinators are attracted to plants that offer an abundant reward such as pollen and/or nectar. Early spring wildflowers in the forests collectively tend to be white. Why might that be?

Spring flowering plants, especially the earlier ones, have a small suite of potential insect visitors. They tend to share characteristics in shape and colour. Often the flowers are broad and bowl-shaped and may be visited by up to 20 different pollinators. Those with specialized shapes, such as Dutchman’s-breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) tend to have specialized pollinators. They also tend to grow in masses or colonies.

One explanation for the numerous white species has to do with visibility against the ground for those growing in forests. There are fewer foraging insect species, sometimes the neon advertising method works! Some “white flowers” also produce other pigments visible only under UV lights. Insects such as bees can see these colours. Colour is only one character that is convergent among April flowers. Most are self-fertile, meaning pollen does not have to be received from a stranger. Shape and nectar-production are also important features.

Odour is another important feature. Flowers with a foul odour such as mountain-ash, attract insects attracted to dung or carrion. In particular, they attract flies. Flowering cherry trees have a sweet perfume, which bees find irresistible. These trees in late April and May literally hum with pollinators.
Many moths are active at night or in low light, so require flowers that are open and providing nectar on cloudy, foggy days or later, into the evening. White flowers with a very strong, sweet scent are easiest for them to locate. Examples of flowers for a moonlight moth garden are honeysuckle, flowering tobacco, and primrose. Generally the moths appear later in the spring, although some of the flowers can be open early.





Claytonia caroliniana. Spring-beauty by Martin Thomas

Dutchman's-breeches, Peter Neily photo


white violet, photo by Ross Hall



Sorbus sp., mountain-ash photo by Martin Thomas