Mike Connor: Bees and Trees

well hi everybody it's time to get started my name is Mike Connor and we're going to talk today about bees and trees and this is a low-key group so if you have any questions feel free at any time to ask questions and I'll try to come up with an answer for you now Who am I for those who don't know I am an arborist that means I'm a tree specialist tree doctor we do lots of things with trees we diagnose tree disease I like to tell people that I'm a tree physician not a tree mortician and we we like to treat trees I love trees I've worked on trees all my life so we try to keep trees as a focal point of what we do here we're actually treating a tree at a construction site where someone had parked bulldozers and heavy equipment over the tree and the tree was dying so we were able to go in and we use an air Spade and blow the soil loose around the around the ruts and rejuvenate the tree in the tree I'm happy to say recovered I'm also a nursery grower we grow lots of trees for bees and I'm a beekeeper I've been a beekeeper since I was 12 years old that's a lot of years so what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about bees and trees and it's really important for you to know and what most people don't know is that in Michigan and the Midwest specifically honeybee population depends upon trees and I didn't realize how uninformed I was about the relationship between bees and trees even though I was an arborist and a beekeeper and a nursery meant until my wife and I were up at a farmers market in a town I won't mention and there was a guy selling honey and I got talking to the guy and found out that he was a president of a beekeeping Club and he had free samples of honey which is a good way to buy it and I took a sample and I said hey this is really good basswood honey and he said to me I didn't know bass woods made honey and I became aware that here a guy was getting his honeytrap from trees and he didn't even know it so I am kind of on a quest trying to inform beekeepers and arborist the necessity of maintaining trees and planning the proper trees for bee build-up and honey production so trees provide the earliest and most abundant pollen and nectar resources and that's very very true and on top of that the largest potential nectar yield or honey trap per acre is from trees and I know you won't believe that you know we look at this is yellow sweet clover great honey crap right everybody likes yellow sweet clover to native species there's white sweet clover and people will plant that 4b forage again it's a fantastic honey plant but it will only produce its highest potential an acre of sweet clover can produce 200 pounds of honey and that sounds great that's fantastic I can get 200 pounds of honey off of an acre of sweet clover compare that to this tree this is a linden tree a basswood tree which has a potential of 1,200 pounds of honey per acre that's its potential doesn't mean you'll get 1,200 pounds it means that that's what the potential is put that into terms that we all understand to just two mature trees having an 80 foot span have the same potential as an acre of sweet clover now which can you plant in your backyard can you plant an acre oh sweet clover or can you plant two trees that is what I'm trying to get across to people and if you have your choice of planting a basket tree or planting a Norway maple plant a basket tree you know it's good for the pollinators not just bees but it's good for all the other pollinators so that's an important if you come back with nothing else from listening to me talk and ramble on trees can produce as much nectar as as well flowers yes sir yeah that's what in Lindon terminology is interchangeable we have we have Linden's that are european Linden's we have silver Linden's we have american linden they're all bass woods and some of that terminology gets confused but that that's good question you know in the u.s. we have a BB tree which is Evo dia and in Europe a BB tree is the little leaf linden so it's all terminology this is a bass would flower in bloom and I happen to take this photo while it was raining and I don't think this photo but there were bees working the bass would while it was raining and what happens is the bass would flower hangs down and is protected by leaves so even in a rain the the nectar that's in the flower does not get diluted by the rain whereas other flowers that hang up it rains and the nectar is diluted and it takes a while several days if at all for that nectar to get back to concentrations where the bees will gather but bass woods don't they hang down and the bees find them very very appealing now here's a point second point you need to walk away with this is a photo I took of my bees March 23rd look at all the pollen that's coming in and March 23rd that's a full month that's a month in a day before the first dandelions bloomed at my place before the first wildflower was in bloom by a month bees are bringing in pollen and by process of elimination yellow pollen when it looked was coming off of willows and this gray green pollen was coming off of red maples and real profuse suppliers of pollen a full month before wild flowers are putting anything out and in fact when dandelions were in bloom red maples were still blooming that's not the same named red maple that was in bloom the first of this this nectar flow but genetically they just kept blooming for five or six weeks we're seeing that with Katella pants now by the way and here's a photo I took of inside that hive and you can see all the pollen it's inside and most of it is from red maples and from Willow red maple in bloom at that time amazing the amount of blossoms around a red maple if if our bees were strong enough and the weather would cooperate you could harvest a super of honey or two during the red maple flow but because it's so early in the spring we only get a day here a day there of where the bees can really bring it in but during that time they will really bring it in you can see it that's the gray green yes now this is willow and this happens to be willow Salix go Priya and that's a plant that likes to grow out in the swamps and the wastelands and the wetlands and most people don't even know it's there and what I've noticed when I show that pollen to people they'll say well it came off dandelions well this is a honeybee working dandelions nice and yellow in fact I I gave a talk down in Indiana two years ago and I made the claim that dandelion pollen is not yellow and a guy showed me a photo of dandelion pollen in it it is indeed yellow so I went out took a photo it is yellow but it is also extremely dry so the bee has to add nectar to it to make it stick to its leg and it turns orange if it's yellow pollen in the Beehive it is not dandelion dandelion pollen is so dry they have to mix it with a liquid to get it back to the hive changes color so I got educated from that willow we have more than 400 willow species they interbreed freely there's no such thing as a true weeping willow anymore it's all hybridized out I mean it's bred with everything else we have trees we call weeping willows but they're not the true Babylon weeping willow that we started with and all these willow species like to interbreed so a taxon amiss goes nuts when it comes to willow so we have we have over 400 species and probably thousands of hybrids but the potential with a willow tree is to bring in 1,500 pounds of pollen per acre in the month of April yeah you know that depends on the variety but that's a good question because it's it's a pretty simple mathematical procedure measure the square feet underneath the tree and then how many trees does it take to fill an acre 42,000 square feet that's why that's the math that I did on the bass wood which was 80 square feet or 80 feet across comes out to about 4,800 square feet per tree and because they do five times the amount of nectar you know the math just works out that two trees are the equivalent of an acre of sweet clover yes sir I have a willow tree yes actually it was what we trained it into a tree yeah it's about quarter the size of this room yeah and if you stand in my backyard and our bees come from neighbor down block my backyard homes yes picking it up and first part of March first part of March thank you thank you so the bees are OSHA cago okay okay see you have a microclimate which gains you probably 10 days he's down a little further south which gains them a few more days so end of March 1st of April that's about right yep good good now willows tremendous and willows totally overlooked species we we don't even pay any attention to willows out in the landscape you know especially in the swamps because we don't go into the swamps and this is a you know it's weeping willow they're pretty they're a good landscape plant I have a nice weeping willow in my yard and I'll show a photo of it later they're a messy tree I understand what you put them off in the back and they're a beautiful tree this is a willow and they can get quite large or it's a willow hybrid nobody knows another one this is growing on my property down in the swamp and the nice thing when they're bringing in pollen and nectar like that is there's so much coming in on the end of my hive tool I what I'm trying to show is that I have fresh nectar the last week of March fresh nectar coming into the hive now that's important to note and again a photo of be walking in with pollen I don't know if you know how bees do that when a bee brings in nectar it hands it off to another bee and then that bee takes it up and puts it in the comb but with pollen bees don't waste any time that bee that brings in the pollen doesn't hand it off walks right up puts it where it belongs heads out for another load they don't waste any time pollen is such a valuable resource and there was so much that it was actually shaking out of the comb and here when I lift it up a comb you can see it just fell out oh yeah and I just like to show a photo of a queen in late March they're pretty and the amount of brood that we had in late March you know that's impressive I was happy with that you know because our goal is we want to build our bees up and our goal is to have honey so the faster we can build our bees up the stronger we have our bees the better the honey trough we can get yes sir I live down between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo yeah West Michigan yeah okay all right yeah oh is it take a little creature trigger point where's our significant amount of pop well I guess you'd have to define significant but a well Oh even as a young tree even at 3 or 4 feet we'll be into preusse nectar and will continue its entire life yeah what kind were they will yeah there's there's a that's important oh okay some of the hybrid willows which are artificially hybridized I've seen bees don't touch them I I have actually noticed that because we do install a lot of plants at my business that one time we had to plant along a river walk willows and they were a hybrid willow and every year I go by them and I've never seen a honeybee on them ever whereas they're working the native willows very very extensively a wall native will it'll be Salix sa Li X Capri ax CA prea Salix Capri ax or Salix ni GRA those are two real common willows sa Li X Salix there's Salix Capri oh yeah if you buy a plant and it has an X in the middle of the name generally I found bees don't like them as well there are a couple exceptions and we'll talk about that in a minute but our goal is to sell honey right I mean that's what all this is about that's why trees are important because we want to we want our colonies to build up they come through the winter and we want them to get strong and build up and lay brood and be stimulated so that when the honey crop comes they have the population to gather that nectar bring it in and make it into honey so that's what it's all about you know we really really want this you know there we are extracting honey that's what it's all about now I get asked a lot about other plants what if you planted catmen and I'm going to do a talk about that Saturday what if we planted all these garden plants are they important well in reality this is uh my wife's garden in reality this is really really pretty from a practical standpoint I'm going to sound like I'm saying two things here from a practical standpoint all of these flowers might give what a 30th of a teaspoon of honey I mean it's insignificant it just doesn't matter to the hive in quantity but it does keep the bees working between honey flows we have in the Midwest we have a major source of nectar and honey coming in first thing in the spring levels out and then we have another major honey flow right now levels out and then we have one in the fall we have three we have three major honey flows between those honey flows you've got a bunch of bees sitting around going we don't have a lot to work on and that's where these kinds of plants come in and are important because they tend a lot of them are in bloom I'm during those low periods of nectar flow and so this is absolutely good and you will see bees all over things like cap mint by the thousands and so yeah these are all good too but you're not going to get a honey crop awful cap mint and catnip are two different plants yes that's yeah they'll work that also same same concept right they and they smell similar but they are different plans yeah yeah so the ideal situation is to have an area if you've got bees this have an area that has at least three plants whether that be sweet clover red maple basswood or or you know whatever else fall plants that yield surplus honey in considerable quantity yep following that and bloom at different periods so that's the goal is to have three different groups of plants that each produce a surplus of honey one can be trees one can be sweet clover or trees and the third can be goldenrod aster whatever yeah wonderful source of yeah sure no just one new flower and interesting point is that the flowers only produce nectar until they're adequately fertilized especially flowers I'm sorry especially fruit for example if you cut an apple open and count the seeds if there are ten seeds it was properly pollinated if you get eight or nine it wasn't properly pollinated and it's probably smaller or slightly deformed same and that same thing happens with blueberries strawberries cucumbers if every seed that can be pollinated is pollinated in that in that flower then the flower just shuts off it stops producing nectar plants don't waste resources they're not going to just keep putting out nectar without a need for it you know as soon as the job is done they're fertilized they're done producing nectar because that's an expensive expensive resource that they have to expend so that's the concept we have three major honey flows going on in the Midwest and we want maybe a few plants in between to keep the bees going but trees can be one or two of those major honey flows tree is important in the Midwest we'll just run through the list really quick I know we've all had lunch and it's afternoon and we're all tired me too but I do want you to get this you know Elm toller's you know these are all important trees to have and we'll kind of look at them and there's your fruit tree down there we'll kind of look at these one tree that you never even consider is the own elm trees American elm especially which is now gone thanks to Dutch elm disease used to be a major pollen producing plant in Michigan amazing quantities of pollen that would come off of Elm early pollen and for those of us who still know where there are some American elms you can go in early spring and they're just buzzing with bees they're gathering that pollen and bringing it back and that can be as early as mid-march that's really early and here you can see the buds off of an elm yeah this one happens to be Siberian Elm they have these basketball buds ready to open and bees work them very very well American elm okay I said mid-march that would be the earliest but we'll see it often in late March early April in full bloom and remember every city used to have an elm street every city does have an elm street because this is what they used to look like one of the reasons we don't encourage planning to monoculture anymore all the same species on a street because if you get a disease you've just eliminated all the trees on that street and after these trees were taken down it was a desert nothing but beautiful trees form that canopy over streets in America back in the 50s and then Dutch elm came Dutch elm disease came in and wiped him out and anecdotally I have talked to some older beekeepers who said that the honey crops began to decrease as the elm population decreased whether there's a correlation there directly I don't know but it does make sense because we were getting a lot of early pollen the bees were building up on it and that would mean you'd have healthy large colonies ready to take advantage of one of those honey floats yes I I'm not sure I have some of the new Elms at my nursery that I'm growing and I haven't noticed the bees on those yet I have some that are about ten feet tall and I haven't noticed the bees on them no those are not hybrids that I have there are the resistant strains yeah so that's a good question I'm not sure about that one alder that's another one that people don't even know is out there we have talked tagged alder black holder and again they grow in the swamps they grow with the willows and that you know the older doesn't produce any nectar but it does produce pollen and it produces a lot of pollen here's some alders growing down again by my by my farm on the edge of a swamp literally in the water so you don't see them they have a potential of like 1,500 pounds of pollen per acre and you can actually get an acre of alders growing in a swamp it's a lot of pollen it is not the most nutritious pollen but it's a stimulant for the bees they're out there gathering it I'm sure you've all seen your bees and early spring they're like gathering corn dust or or sawdust and they're looking for something to gather and they'll go to the alders and gather that and it actually stimulates brood production gets them into their stored reserves because then somehow they know spring is here spring is coming and they don't make a bad landscape tree either that's a European alder that it's not a bad looking tree I will plant these in cityscapes terminology I use is that city people you know the city fathers will give you a coffin to plant a tree in and literally it's what it is it's a coffin it's it's this crypt that they have filled with rubble and they want you to plant a tree in it and have the tree live that live that will live and it is nitrogen-fixing so you don't have to worry about fertilizing it it'll survive on little to no water it it's dark green all the time doesn't have any real serious pests besides Athens and it grows fast fits all the criterion that a city wants just don't tell them it's an alder and don't tell them that it's good for the bees you can tell them it's good for pollinators but don't tell them it's good for the bees and then of course the red maple so photo I took April 24th red maple already been in been in bloom now for a month and we still have red maples in bloom that's an impressive plant here's another red maple this is one of the cultivated varieties or a cultivar it's not a hybrid it's a selected variety and then it's grafted on to a root stock and look at the difference in color between those buds and those buds and you'll see these planted like red sunset October glory those are cultivars of red maples marmo and they all produce pollen and nectar that bees use and there's a close-up of the flower amazing the quantity I want to talk about red maples real briefly and not bore you but we have our native reds remember I said they're in bloom for five or six weeks and this one might only be in bloom for a week and then this one's in bloom for a week and this one's in bloom for a week and that's dependent upon microclimates partly he's in Chicago in town so he gets warm earlier red maples open earlier I might be out on a farm top of a hill that one's going to be a little bit later genetically there's a lot of variation you can take seeds from the same maple and plant them and one will bloom a week before the other so there's a lot of genetic variation microclimate variations and then we have over 200 different cultivars of red maple in the nursery industry like I said the red sunset the marmo etc and they all can bloom a little different different times now the most popular red maple sold in America today is a Freeman maple Autumn Blaze they are a hybrid they are a cross between a red maple and a silver maple and they take the best habits of both fast growth of the silver dependability and stability of the red and they've crossed them together they've come up with a Freeman maple so anytime you see this designation Freeman ex-something it doesn't matter what my experience is the bees work them like crazy and they're a good quality maple so if you see those in the garden center don't be afraid to buy them that's one hybrid I'm not afraid to buy I'm sugar maple sugar maples bloom it it's bees work them but they're only in bloom for a couple of days that's a real kicker and there's their sugar maple in bloom look at all those blossoms couple days later they're all gone they are generally wind pollinated while they are wind pollinated but bees will still work them and gather all in a nectar let me get into the cherries lots of different kinds of cherries and pin cherry black cherry choke cherry wild sweet cherry fruit cherries ornamental cherries I have discovered as I Drive around that we have this phenomenon and it's not in any of the tree books and I've looked I'm a tree guy I'm an arborist I'm always in the tree books I am seeing everywhere clusters of these white sweet cherries and just to the uninitiated the people will drive by and think well that must be a black cherry or something oh they're not they are a sweet cherry a domestic sweet cherry that a bird has eaten gone and sat on a tree somewhere sat on a fence post added a little fertilizer and planted it and I am seeing so many of these things around I was telling a neighbor's friend about it he called me the other day and he said you know I've been looking for those and he said I didn't even know they were out there but they produce a sweet cherry about that big and they're good and he said this arborist friend of mine said that he had put picked over a bushel of sweet cherries free free you know and they're out there everywhere you don't see any mention of them in the tree books but Kalamazoo County Allegan County where I tend to do most of my work Kent County I see hundreds of these things fencerows I was head of Menards and they had a whole line of these things that I could just see the birds had sat and plop them down every few feet so I kind of make a note and go back and harvest the cherries they're very good yeah there's another one look at and I did take this one out of Menards this photo I took it at Menards in Kalamazoo edge of their parking lot they didn't know they had a treat there was spraying of spray and trees for the city of Allegan the other day and I'm going this is wonderful because they had blackberries and they had wild sweet cherries like this and I was just having a feast and people were jogging by they didn't even know this food was there so I was real happy and this makes the bees happy so I'm encouraged by these probably someone's going to find out they're out there they're going to call them invasive and we're gonna have to cut them all down but you know this is a an ornamental cherry this is snow fountain cherry bees like it especially the the wild bees solitary bees they really like this and you you'll see hundreds if not thousands of solitary bees on the ornamental cherries here's one that's kind of a deceiver this is June berry and I have never ever seen a honey bee on June berry personally never have and it's listed in the books as being a good source of nectar I've never seen it yes sir you think so I I'll have to test that theory in Connecticut I looked at some of the old pellet pellet has a book on wild flowers honey plants it's out of print now de dents used to publish it and I was looking in there and he his he says that bees will work this north of the United States and maybe what you're saying is right acid soil but you've seen it I told was telling Randy slaughter about that he's a friend of mine he's in the Holland Club and being a smart aleck he sent me this photo there's a bee on a June berry and I give him proper credit and then I said I need to know details I want details don't just send me a bee may be the bee was tired I don't know and the the reality is probably from me to that Juneberry away he started a feel of apiary of 50 colonies of bees well of course there's a bee on it you know if he to put a few to put a stump out there there too would have been a bee on it but that's interesting what you say about acid soil a lot to check that out Red Bud you know bees work them profusely and red buds are beautiful they're good ornamental they'll grow in Sun or shade they have some issues as far as a habitat in the trade we call them dead buds because they're hard to get going they're hard to transplant the first year they're transplanted they often die back to the ground but years ago they stopped growing commercially they stopped growing red buds in Michigan because they grow so much faster out west where they grow so much faster in Tennessee so they use the Tennessee stock they grow it up into a tree shipping into Michigan and we wonder why it dies so I take red buds I go to native red buds that are growing and I do winter cuttings and about 50% of them survive and then I line them out and that's where I get my red buds I do the same with dogwoods you know from a domestic source it's called provenance you can't take a red maple from Maine and have it live in Michigan you can't take a red maple from Florida I'm sorry you can't take it from Maine and have it live in Florida you can't take it from Florida and have it live in Maine but it's still the same genus species you know they just have this local provenance going they have adapted to their area and I think red buds and dogwoods are the same way get one that's locally grown propagate from it and you're going to have a lot better chance of success but it's a lot harder takes more time to do that at a friend in he's an Oregon I was telling the story earlier and he's he drew trees in Grand Haven Michigan and he moved to Oregon to grow trees and he said to me one day he said why would you ever grow trees in Michigan you know he can get six seven foot of growth per year in his trees takes me three years to get that much or four I've got some apples that are six or seven years old and they're only now this big you know he would do that in one growing season now why do we grow trees in Michigan Eastern redbud really pretty flower black locust now this this one always gets the ire of a few people in the room because black locust is considered a junk tree farmers were paid to plant it then they were paid to take it out because it can take over it can spread it can put up suckers and take over a field but here are two that I planted in a hardware store and look at that we don't have any suckers we don't have any issues at all because they're mowed around and the suckers are kept under control and they're a beautiful landscape plant better yet look at the flowers on those things and according to the literature they have a potential of fifteen hundred pounds per acre if you had a acre of black locust you could get Chad the bees you can get 1,500 pounds of honey black locust you'll love them where you hate them I love them keep them confined there fantastic tree don't keep them confined and you've got to run away from them because I'll chase you but they're just just a beautiful flower here is an example of what happens if you don't mow I think this is one tree I think that there was an original tree and it's suckered before they put in the this development and you're looking at one tree that's what they can do but you know what you'll end up with an acre of black locust that way they're beautiful though then of course fruit trees great source of nectar and pollen that goes without saying and not only the fruit trees but anything in that fruit family like the flowering crabs bees love them bees are all over them and it's a good nutritious nectar and a good nutritious pollen so it's all around a good a good plan to have and if you vary your species if you have different kinds of apples going and flowering crabs you can extend that season and make it last for several weeks and another thing about crab apples is that they're a multi-purpose tree you know not only are they pretty but they provide food for birds and animals another one to talk about is tulip poplar the leaf is shaped like a tulip and it has kind of a well it has a tulip flower flowers are at the top of the tree and again I was telling somebody that there are new cultivars developed that you don't have to wait on this tree is 25 years old before it produces there are new cultivars that start producing at a young age and they're just now coming on the market and I fully intend to get some here is a tulip tree if you grow them around other trees where they're seeking the Sun they will grow straight and tall and this tree is over 100 feet tall probably what 75 foot to the first branch I have one on my property that I I cut down a year ago two years ago beautiful straight wood had it cut up into lumber and made beehives out of it it was you know beautiful lumber and I made some bookshelves and a desk and that kind of stuff desk yeah desk top beautiful wood and the bees love them here you can see the residue of one of the flowers after the flower is gone they leave behind this pot they will produce nectar before the flower so that there's a nectar in these little nectaries around the flower I should probably go back so that bees are working and coming to that plant gathering nectar right down here and then the flower opens and the bees are there catalpa does the same thing black gum does the same thing there are several trees that will do that bees are already coming before the flower opens pretty interesting I think autumn olive truely invasive it's taken over the world we were encouraged to plant it for wildlife now we're encouraged to take it out but I'll tell you what it produces honey bees love it and whether you love it or hate it it's here it's probably here to stay and the bees like it and when these are in bloom in late May it smells fantastic and they're another one the birds birds really like them but what they didn't tell us was that the birds do like the cherry they take it add a little bit of fertilizer and plant them everywhere and they all germinate but autumn olive really pretty flower smells really nice look at the sumacs this one is smooth sumac they bloom in June generally and great source of nectar I have had my bees make frames of honey off sumac I don't want to say a super but they will go out and when the sumacs are in bloom they work it just furiously and bring it back some people like sumac honey some people don't it can be kind of dark it can be kind of flavorful will put it sumac and bloom this is smooth sumac and you know I think they have an interesting winter look and if you wonder if a sumac makes a good landscape plant right outside this building go down into the atrium go out onto I'm disoriented but if you go out the loading dock someone's planted one as a landscape plant it's like the locusts they keep mulling around it it's mowed around and it's a beautiful landscape plant something to consider and the bees love it of course we can use the the sumac Bob's and our smokers how many of you do that if you're a better beekeeper very long you probably do makes a real calming smoke for the bees here's another sumac that you may not have considered this is the fragrant sumac and I took this photo I think in Maine at Cabela's and they use it in these parking islands indestructible beautiful red fall color and fragrant when crushed and the bees work it in Oh mid-april mid to late April so that's another sumac sir yet it tends to grow up and then fall over and then kind of kind of spread it's up this is one of the cultivars called grow low and you know you can buy them they grow real low to the ground or you can just use the species which will mount up a little higher than this but it's a good sumac we can put sumac out in the landscape for the bees and the other pollinators and you know the landscapers will appreciate it you know we can encourage this kind of thing that looks good it's very nice-looking and it's just absolutely firered in the fall like a burning bush in color so people like them this is a linden this is a little leaf Lind and this is one of my customers and they have a love-hate relationship with this tree because right there is their swimming pool behind this artwork and if you're familiar with little leaf Linden's I have that tongue and they have you know the seeds that come down and fortunately the man the husband loves this tree she hates it and she would just as soon I cut it down and boy there's no way no way it's a beautiful tree get it close up this is this is that same tree in bloom another linden that we have is a silver linden silver linden was in the news a couple years ago wrongly I might say well I get to that in a moment notice the underside of the leaf good way to tell this one blooms late it's not in bloom yet we're at what the 11th or so of July and it's not in bloom yet maybe in a week it'll be in bloom so if we use bass woods we could have European bass would American bass would silver bass wood or silver linden and we've now extended that blooming season in to a month so that's one of the techniques that I like to use silver linin was in the news because it got accused of killing a bunch of bumblebees allegedly the nectar from silver Linden's is poisonous to bees that's based on a study done back in 1950s in Germany where somebody found a bunch of bumble bees dead underneath a silver linden and it's one of those urban myths I believe I have read everything I found the original German report translated into English and there's been no verification that I can find since that silver Linden nectar is poisonous or harms bees my bees working I've never seen a dead bee under silver linden what I think may happen is that silver linden is used as a sedative you make it into a tea it contains a chemical that calms you down name escapes me right now no no no that now it calms you down for good but I kind of wonder if when they found those bumble bees underneath the tree I wonder if they were sleeping I mean seriously maybe they were just napping it off I don't know but that that study or that report has been repeated and you find it everywhere you find it in the literature may be poisonous to bees is it I see no evidence of it and I just so I just tell people plant silver linden there are a great street tree they they look nice and they don't get Japanese beetles because they have hairs on the underside of their leaves Japanese beetles won't feed on them so I like them all right and now that those are the major trees we have some others we're almost out of time I'll go through these quickly catalpa if you're familiar with catalpa that's another one that produces nectar before it produces hours bigleaf and the flower is absolutely gorgeous look at that it's just like an orchid downside these pods these bean pods they'll form these it's a legume it it fixes its own nitrogen in the soil and because it's a legume it has pea pods peas our legumes beans are legumes and they form these p-pods the seeds and they drop on the ground that's the drawback to one of those Washington Hawthorne if you look carefully this was at the guys house with the linden tree can you see yep there's a be really really worked hard and they drawback is they have these thorns that will kill you they have thorns that will kill you and they grow up the stem interesting they're only on the bottom part of the tree get to the top of the tree and you'll find no thorns only at the bottom and I think that's to keep critters from crawling up in there to do what they're going to do I've pruned a lot of these things and they're nasty they are really nasty there is a formless variety of Washington Hawthorne and I just don't think they're Hardy I've tried to use them they don't have the bloom of a regular Washington Hawthorne poplar some years can be significant in terms of pollen I mean look at it hang in there bees bees will work at the advantage of a poplar is that is that I have seen them in bloom when there's snow on the ground and I have photographs of them with snow on the ground in bloom so if a bee makes it out it's going to be gathering that this is another tree that I'd like to promote this this is a variety that I planted in the city of Otsego and it's makya and this is in this is in late July early August the flower in there bees like it don't know much about it in terms of potential honey yet or potential nectar but what I do know is that when it's in bloom the bees are all over it again when I sell this to a municipality I say we're going to put in a pollinator friendly plant Oh everybody on City Council's just yeah yeah save the pollinators they're thinking butterflies don't mention bees or you won't get the contract I took this photo last week Chinese chestnut a good substitute for the American chestnut and it looks the leaves look very similar this was in bloom I don't know if can you see the honey bee on it right there bees were cloud over Neath this tree or over this tree I was pretty impressed by it July 1st in bloom and they have an edible nut this is a Buckeye I got to kind of hurry up here red chestnut good landscape tree I said buck nut yeah Buckeye thank you it's been a long day Buckeye and red chestnut which is related this is a hybrid variety we talked about hybrids this is one called Fort McNair and the bees love it this is one in my yard and I just I just I use them all the time I use them every chance somebody will let me plant one because the bees love them they're Hardy their disease resistant and they're beautiful horse chestnut you know bees like them tell you a real quick story we were working this is my crew we were working at a McDonald's pruning these crab apples and next door they were taken down a gas station and I just show this anecdotally because I knew these guys who were taking down the trees they're going to expand the gas station and here they are working and on the corner of the proper this huge tulip hopple over 100 feet tall and there it is when they were done here's the tree the scale was working for me she's up against this tree there was no reason to take that tree down none and I talked to the guys and I said I want to talk to the manager of this project it was in the corner it wasn't hurting a thing and I should do have a follow-up photo they put in three blue spruce where this thing was they took down a hundred-foot pollinating pollen producing and nectar producing tree for no reason just because the orders that these guys had were fenced offense take out all the trees so they did they took down this beautiful tree and replaced it and there it is there's the spot right there ah man I can't stand that the other thing I'm seeing is that as the price of corn goes up farmers are having to irrigate and I know it's down right now which gives me even more incentive to grow more corn because they have to grow more to get the same money more and more of these irrigation things are going in this was a guy I work for and he was taking out his fence rows fence rows that consisted of cherry and basswood and elm all the things that bees like taking them out because he's got to put in a pivot irrigation tents those are expensive he put in 12 of them two years ago hasn't used them since which is kind of funny um as a beekeeper what can you do I think that as beekeepers we need to learn what's out there what's in your area what are the bees working it's like that guy up I will tell you where I almost did it's like that beekeeper who didn't know that his bees were getting honey from a basswood tree he had no knowledge I'm trying to educate you trees are necessary and you need to plant appropriate trees and by that I mean if your choice is between again a bass wood or a Norway maple go with a bass wood if it's between a you know a black gum or you know some other kind of tree that everybody has a crimson king maple plant the black gum think outside the box think of trees that will be attractive to pollinators not just honeybees but attractive to pollinators and if you are in any way on a tree board or if you have any influence on a municipality say hey quit planning all one variety and let's start planning different varieties different species let's let's mix it up a little bit here and you can kind of push those pollinator friendly trees I like tree lilacs they're a great one bees work them they'll be in bloom for four weeks yes sir no no they're wind pollinated no I mean they're good for other things but not that so consider multi-use trees the crabapple nice flowers nice fruit good for the Wildlife so think outside I tell my customers don't plant a burning bush playing a blueberry same fall color except you get blueberries off it too and it's better for the bees encourage and maintain habitat and I tell all my customers I say try to develop a ten-percent attitude I have a customer who I said you know I think in this corner of your property we could put in some milk weeds and she said okay so we planted it all milk weeds and I'm converting the trees on that property to pollinator friendly trees as one dies and we have to replace it I'm putting in something that the bees like that's the attitude we have to have as beekeepers you know it's a lot easier to plant a tree than it is to plant half an acre of sweet clover so that's what I want you to take away with you today think of the trees you

Channel: Green Toe Gardens

Views: 127,861

Keywords: bees, trees, pollination, nursery, honeybees, pollinators, basswood, willow

Id: uI-i-aj34Vc

Length: 55min 40sec (3340 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2016