Honeybees: notes from a talk by a beekeeper

Crocus 'Gipsy Girl' with a honey bee, February 2019

The speaker at the recent South Pennines Hardy Plant Society was a beekeeper, Simon Croson, and I picked up some useful info on Honeybees that I thought I’d share.

The Queen and Worker bees are female, and the Drones are male. Queen bees can live up to 5 years, though most live 2-3 years.

In the UK, there are 275 native bees, with a large amount of these being solitary bees. Of these 275, only 1 (ONE!) is a native bee. There are over 1000 species of native bee the world over, yet only 10 (TEN) species of honey bee.

So you can see immediately why problems with honeybees can have such a big impact, with so few species in existence. Overall, other native bees will pollinate more food than honey bees, yet one in every 3 foods we eat comes from honey bees. So if there was a large collapse in honey bee colonies, this could still have a big impact on food availability for humans.

Things have stabilised with the problems with the varroa mite, that hit the news a number of years ago. Partly from use of chemicals against the mite. However, Simon doesn't use any chemicals and he says there is some evidence that bees are adapting to them, suggesting new generations are building resilience.

But we shouldn't be complacent. There is still a lots of problems with access to food, especially with the climate changing, but plants haven't caught up, and they aren't necessarily flowering when the bees need them. Overall, there is still a decline in the health and population of bees that is worrying.

Honey bees don’t hibernate. They go into a semi-dormant state in the cold months, but if the temperatures rise enough, they will leave the hive and seek out plants for nectar. In Feb 2019, in the UK, we had a week of nearly 25 degrees (usually we are lucky to get to 5 degrees), and honey bees left their hives looking for food.

 Honey bee on a Helenium, August 2019

With our changing climate, with warmer wetter winters, this makes planting for winter and early spring food for bees even more important. A post I wrote back in February, Plants for pollinators in late Winter, will give you some ideas on plants you might add to your garden to help honey and solitary bees at this time of year.

With honey colour from Simon’s bees: a medium light brown-orange colour is a generalist, made up of nectar from lots of different plants. A quite pale, almost clear, colour honey, is from the nectar from an Alfalfa (Lucerne) crop near some of his hives. A dark brown-orange is made up of nectar from Buckwheat. So different plants will impact differently on the colour the honey ends up.

A couple of small points that I found interesting: pollen is a source of protein for bees, and bees take water into the hive to help regulate it's temperature. A good plant for late Autumn is common Ivy. This is a plant that a lot of people try to remove from their gardens, but try and leave a patch and let it flower, and you'll see bees supping on it's nectar.

It was an interesting talk and it was useful to know that though there is still a lot to worry about, by planting for bees, we really can make a difference, for the bees, and for ourselves.

A cut flower garden - a few notes from a talk by florist Jonathan Moseley

This post isn’t a ‘how to make’ a cut flower garden, rather it’s tips that Jonathan shared at a South Pennine Hardy Plant Society talk, 6th March 2019, based on his over 20 years experience.

My first attempt of some cut flowers from my garden using this small flower display stand.
The dark purple flowers areHelleborus x hybridus Harvington dusky,
and the white with orange trumpets are Narcissus 'Cragford'.
The foliage, which you cannot hardly see(!), is Oregano.

Tips I picked up from Jonathan's talk

When picking flowers, bring along a bucket and put each flower you pick in water immediately. This helps retain their freshness and longevity. The general rule is, cut Narcissi (daffodils) ‘on the flat’, meaning a straight cut, and everything else, at a 45 degree angle.

Some people make the mistake of not picking in their cut flower garden because they loose sight of the reason they planted it, and think cutting it will spoil it. No – keep cutting and the plants will keep producing more flowers! Sweet peas are an excellent example of this: if you don’t cut them, it will stop producing and go to seed very quickly.

Use foliage first as a framework. 80% foliage, the rest flowers.

A great cut flower are Astrantias. After they finish flowering, cut them hard, to the ground, and you will get a 2^nd flush of flowers in about 6 weeks. I checked about the cutting hard part and he said yes, try it!

If you want to have Hellebores are cut flowers, score the stem down 2 sides with a sharp knife and they will last longer.

A wonderful winter cut flower is Lonicera fragrantissima which flowers in winter and spring. I can add Lonicera x purpusii 'Winter Beauty' to this. For both, the fragrance is wonderful.

He uses Ivy a lot in his floral arrangements and loves it. He says, despite the bad press ivy gets, it's not definitive as to whether ivy can actually kill trees. I did some research into this after the talk. I found that the general view appears to be that its presence on a tree trunk is not damaging, and where it grows into the crown this is usually only because the trees are already in decline, or are diseased and slowly dying. See https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=192 for more info on ivy and when you do need to control it.

Another good evergreen foliage plant is Choisya ternata 'Sundance', where the tops of each stem are flushed yellow and slowly fade to green.

When tying up your bunch of flowers/foliage, tie it where you were holding it.

 

Spray the arrangement morning and evening with a mister, such as in the photo below.

 

He highly recommends the RHS Cardiff flower show as a great Spring event for getting ideas for your garden.

* * * * *
Jonathan said more than this and also did several demonstrations on creating cut flower posies and displays, but I wasn't able to capture everything! He was a great speaker and a font of knowledge. If you get the chance to hear him talk, I highly recommend it.

A discovery of seedlings

Checking out my plants today, I made a discovery of seedlings.

Pulsatilla vulgaris

Why is this so exciting? Because all I did was chuck (I mean it, chuck) a few of the fluffy seeds last summer into a container with some bulbs going over, chucked a speck of soil over them, then forgot about them. So when I was looking at the flowering bulbs today I thought, wait a minute, what's that fluffy seedling down there? And there it was, not one, but TWO young Pulsatilla vulgaris seedlings.

The irony is that I've previously tried to grow P. vulgaris from seed, prepared pots and compost and all, and had no luck. And when I barely make an effort, I get rewarded. Go figure.

Next up is Allium seedlings, that I deliberately grew from seed. I got them from the Hardy Plant
Society annual Seed Distribution Scheme and blogged about this back in January. Of the six varieties I sowed, five have come up.

Allium schoenoprasum ex 'Forescate'

Allium sikkimense

Allium vineale 'Hair'

Allium cyathophorum var. farreri

Allium cyathophorum

The only party pooper is Allium wallichii CLD 1500, which I've still got my fingers crossed for.

Still, I also consider five out of six pretty good luck, since between the cold weather and moving house and garden, I've given these no attention either.

So the moral of this story? Sometimes seeds will grow without you doing very much at all. Sometimes, they just want to grow.

In the meantime, yipeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Feeling seedy

I'm feeling rather seedy. No, not that type of seedy. The growing seeds type of seedy. This week the seeds I ordered from the annual Hardy Plant Society (HPS) Seed Distribution Scheme, arrived. As a member, for only £5 (to cover the costs of postage and admin), I can order 20 packets of seeds. You can see the different types of seeds I ordered above.

I looked each variety up so I had the correct growing information and collated all of this into a document, along with a picture (where I could find them) so it will be easier for me to identify. Yes, I'm that nerdy. 

From finding out this information, I discovered that I needed to sow all the Allium seeds immediately. So I also made up labels for them.

It was then seed sowing time. They need light to germinate, so I didn't cover the seeds with anything. I felt like I should have done so, as you do that with most seeds. But HPS said you don't, so I have followed their advice.

And because they need cold to help them germinate, I've put them on a display shelf in the garden. The ground staples (the silver prongs) are there to stop the pigeons from getting in there an digging up the seed. Yes, they do that, and I've found this is effective in stopping them. Once the plants get to a certain size, I can remove the staples.

The rest of my seeds are to be sown in Spring. 

Seeds!