by Dewey M. Caron, Communications and Content Specialist for the Oregon Master Beekeeper Program
Saving Monarch butterflies
The western monarch population, the individuals we see each year in Oregon, has declined more than 95% since the 1980s. This butterfly population doesn’t fly to Mexico each fall but instead only a couple of hundred thousand head for coastal California forests down from 10 million + in the 1980s. It, and the more familiar eastern population, have been under a number of environmental stressors. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed that the species be listed on the federal endangered Species List.
To help reduce the decline, a federal wildlife nonprofit has granted nearly $300,000 to Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation of Portland. It gifts kits that contain native milkweed and pollinator friendly wildflower seeds to Oregon farmers and communities in the Willamette valley and Klamath-Siskiyou region. $460,000, will go to the San Francisco-based nonprofit Pollinator Partnership to support planning and conservation on about 600 acres of private farm, ranch, timber and “working lands” in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
The money is part of $5.2 million in grants nationwide from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit created by Congress in 1984 to direct federal and private dollars to urgent conservation work. “If we allow the iconic western monarch butterfly to go extinct, we will not only lose this beautiful species, but a critical pollinator forever,” Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement announcing the grant. He helped secure the federal funding as chair of the Senate interior and environmental appropriations subcommittee.
For more information about the monarch listing proposal, and how to help conserve monarch butterflies, please visit: https://www.fws.gov/monarch.
Plant it and they will come
The news last year from an abbreviated national survey was that annual US beekeeper loss was 55.1%. (Oregon was an exception as my PNW survey found statewide overwintering losses was the lowest in my 15 years of surveying). This loss level has many probable causes (the surveys do not answer the question of why the loss). Our bees face many threats, internally from diseases and varroa mites spreading bee viruses to external habitat loss and pesticide exposure.
A study from University of Tennessee demonstrates gardeners can provide an incredible service to bees just by planting more flowers. The study compared with replicate plots the relative effects of local floral resources and surrounding urban land-use on the abundance of bees on flowering plants in common gardens. Each common garden plot type had a fixed plant community representing one of three plant families (Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae) or a mix of all three. The results showed even small patches of garden can help boost pollinators – even when the surrounding landscape has few resources for them. The one constant in the study – the more flowers and the more types of flowers, the more pollinators.
Eldridge, Devon, Amani Khalil, John K. Moulton & Laura Russo. 2024. Do local and landscape context affect the attractiveness of flower gardens to bees? PLos One https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309000
Pollinators add quality
We are well aware that roughly two-thirds of the major global food production depends upon pollination, the vast bulk by honey bees. Researchers from the University of Göttingen (Germany) believe there is a need to emphasize not only how many pollinators are active, but also on how different species interact spatially and temporally.
Food quality includes nutritional, sensory and commercial value of crops. “A better nutrient composition benefits the health of consumers.” For examples, the article points out that bees improve the nutritional value of rapeseed by increasing the polyunsaturated fatty acid content and total oil content, and they boost the oil content and fruit weight of avocado. Crops that depend wholly or partly on animal pollinators (for example many fruits, nuts and pulses) contain more than 90 per cent of the vitamin C in our diet as well as nutritionally important carotenoids and antioxidants.
Pollinators influence the quality of crops through pollinator movement patterns, the transfer of pollen and plant varieties visited. To improve quality, it is necessary to take into account the species-specific behavior of pollinators and the distribution patterns of crop varieties in the field. “Cultivated areas and the surrounding landscape should be organized in such a way that pollinators can move around as effectively as possible.”
Teja Tscharntke, Carolina Ocampo-Ariza, Wiebke Kämper.224. Pollinator, pollen, and cultivar identity drive crop quality. Trends in Plant Sci. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2024.10.004