SCKS Honey Producers Meeting

Sunday May 20, 2012

Attended SCKS (South Central Kansas) Honey Producers Meeting near Cheney and learned more about forage for pollinators than we could possible retain in a single meeting.  I need to do some more research.  Here are some of the things we learned at the meeting.

1)  Double bloom (aka double flower) versus single bloom - bees won't forage on double  flowers because the stamens were converted to petals.  Watch out for this if you intend to plant flowers for pollinators.

2)  Pollenless Sunflowers - Sunflowers are very popular in cut flower arrangements and some pollenless varieties of sunflowers have been engineered so that the cut flowers won't stain the surface upon which they sit (from dropped pollen).  If you intend to grow sunflowers for pollinator forage please be careful to avoid pollenless varieties.

3)  Yellow and White Sweet Clovers are biennials - this means the seed germinates in the first year, blooms the second, then the plant dies and sheds its seeds.  New plants will be formed from the seeds it drops given the right conditions.

4)  Consider the quantity of ground that is used for crop production - how much of it is not pollinator friendly and how much of it is harvested prior to pollinator usefulness (such as alfalfa).  Also worthy of noting is the fact that many road departments mow all of the public right-of-way thus destroying other forage opportunities.  I visited with the local road department about our roads, which have a lot of naturally occurring clovers and other forbs.  The county man happily assured me that they would not mow along the roads that front our property.  I guess old habits are hard to break!