Article content continued

Q: What about governments?

A: There are pollinator friendly areas in the landscape, many of our provincial parks are very strong for pollinators, but they’re kinda little pockets around. So connecting up that on a landscape scale and… making sure pollinators can get around areas of suitable habitat.

Commercial and even hobbyist beekeepers can move their colonies to somewhere there are flowers. But for the wild bees… some only fly 100 or 50 metres from their nesting site, so they’re restricted if they’re aren’t any suitable flowers around.

Whereas, a honeybee colony may have a flight range of 15 kilometres (but) more realistically three to five kilometres. That’s a big area they have of potential foraging sites.

So, thinking about embedding suitable habitats for pollinators across the landscape, in marginal areas of farmland, on the sides of roads, under power lines, along pipelines, along railways tracks… and thinking how they can be managed, how appropriate perennial plants can be encouraged there that are producing nectar and pollen.? How we can think about these kind of management strategies? It may not be a complete change in what we do but it might be just a change of focus of how we mange some of this marginal land, and thinking about if we have enough of that.

Q: So what can people plant because not all varieties are great for pollinators?

A: Making sure they’re appropriate flowers. Thinking about native plants, primarily. Plants that are rich in nectar and pollen. So many of these derived hybrids that look really nice maybe have very big pompom type flowers, often these complicated bred flowers may have little or no nectar or may be multiple flowers so the bees can’t get into them and actually get any rewards from them.

Some bee-friendly plants you could grow in your backyard or in some spare space at the cottage or farm include:

Salvia (commonly known as age)

Bee balm (monarda/bergamot)

Penstemon (beardtongues)

Coneflowers (Rudbeckia/echinacea or anything in the aster family)

Thyme

Wild lupine

Poppies

Dahlias

Goldenrod

Heather

Crocus

— this interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length