By Patti Genest When mid-April comes to Maine, the urge to be surrounded by growing seedlings can no longer be ignored. With snow still on the ground, visions of sitting on a summer garden bench, surrounded by gigantic sunflower leaves whispering in the wind, is motivation enough for me to start planting. With four months
By Heather McCargo A hedgerow planted with native species of trees, shrubs and groundcovers enhances a farm with year-round habitat for pollinating insects, birds and the many other creatures and processes critical for our regional ecosystems to function. Our agricultural landscapes once had many hedgerows and edges where native species persisted — all the places
By Holli Cederholm On Thalassa Raasch’s outstretched palm is a rainbow of pollen – yellow, orange, gray, green and even bright blue – reflecting the colors of the early spring blooms that honeybees have collected the grains from. It is a sunny, 60-degree day in April and Raasch, clad in coveralls and a floral-print neckerchief
Orange-belted Bumble Bee (Bombus ternarius) on a dandelion. Photo by Leif Richardson Selene Frohmberg looking for bumble bees from the bow of a canoe. Photo by Eric Frohmberg Eric Frohmberg with his bee collecting kit. Photo courtesy of the Frohmbergs Selene Frohmberg collecting in a remote area. Photo by Eric Frohmberg By Tim King On a
I read with interest the letter in your winter newspaper issue from Joyce White regarding bees’ love of hyssop. We have had a hyssop next to our deck stairs for years, and every August we can hear the constant buzzing of bees as they work the blossoms. In 2018 I thought I would add to
Calendula offers season-long blooms for pollinators, and its flowers are edible and medicinal. Photo by Mary McAvoy By Joyce White There are so many reasons to plant a big bed of calendula, Calendula officinalis. It blooms until frost for cut flowers and medicine, it isn’t fussy about where it’s planted, pollinators like it, it
Hyssop officinalis, from Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé “Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz,” 1885. By Joyce White I am grateful that younger friends and neighbors share some of their observations and experiences of Nature with me. Last spring a neighbor was out of work for a few weeks, healing from surgery. During this unusual period
Photo 1 – A complete, two-queen, side-by-side hive. Each side is a stack of three four-frame medium boxes. Entrances to the hives are on opposite ends, minimizing drift of bees from one box to its neighbor. Photo 2 – Hive components specific to a two-queen, side-by-side, four-frame hive shown from front to back: an inner
Dense floral resources of a pollination reservoir in Maine. Photo by Eric Venturini, The University of Maine Eric Venturini and Audrey Maddox rake a seed bed free of debris before seeding a wildflower mix. Photo by Margaret McCullough, The University of Maine A tiny black bee visits Gaillarida pulchella in a pollination reservoir in Maine.
Large and small ground-nesting bees, Andrena nasonii, from the study region. Photo by Heather Grab By Sue Smith-Heavenrich A recent study shows that common ground-nesting bees grow smaller in heavily farmed landscapes than in natural areas. In a Northeast SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education)-funded study, Heather Connelly and her colleagues at Cornell University collected
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