Adding Bees
- Thread starter WTNUT
- Start date
bigboreblr
5 year old buck +
call up some local honey people, they may put a hive by you for free.
Commercial honey harvesters plant fields of clover for their hives.
you make habitat they like, they'll show up. Just like deer.
I plant clover in the middle of nowhere adirondacks, the bees find it.
Commercial honey harvesters plant fields of clover for their hives.
you make habitat they like, they'll show up. Just like deer.
I plant clover in the middle of nowhere adirondacks, the bees find it.
BenAllgood
5 year old buck +
I'm attracting a bunch more. I have 11 acres enrolled in an EQIP pollinator program. A strip of pollinators around the outside of food plots could soften the edge and bring in more bees.
4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
How about Mason bees? Very little time or effort into them.
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Establishing some wildflowers will increase your native, solitary bee numbers.
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
Nice idea, Spud !!!!! Never thought of lilacs to draw bees. Might have to plant a few at camp. The wives will love them too.
After talking to a couple mason bee / solitary bee experts at Penn State and elsewhere, they told me to either build / buy mason bee houses, or drill 5/16" holes into some dry firewood log ends to attract solitary bees. Drilling holes is easy and free. Check out mason bee / solitary bee houses and how to protect them from woodpeckers (eating the larvae) in numerous online videos.
As bigboreblr said above - talk to some local honey bee folks. They may set up hives for you.
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We plant polinator mixes on our 320 acres wildlife habitat farm ..
We participate in the US and state of Mo. Programs . It's a lot of work converting pasture and hay fields to wild flower and native grass but it's worth it . Not only do the pollinators love it but so do quail , deer and turkey .
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yoderjac
5 year old buck +
We are part owners in an LLC that owns a pine farm just under 400 acres. We use the EQIP program for firebreaks and control burns. One of the other LLC members handles most of the paperwork. One year USDA tried to push a different program that uses CSPs or something like that. Our guy looked at what practices we would qualify for and decided the paperwork land documentation was not worth the money USDA pays unlike EQIP.
Our retirement property is tiny by comparison, 16 acres. We would only be planting a fairly small area (an acre or two at most). I'm doubting if the paperwork would be worth it, but I'd like to hear about your experience with whether you think the paperwork would be worth it.
At a minimum, we will probably have the USDA folks come out for a consult. That is free and they've provided some good advise at the pine farm.
Thanks,
Jack
BenAllgood
5 year old buck +
I enrolled 11 acres into an EQIP pollinator program in Kentucky. It was pretty smooth. There wasn't much paperwork to it really. It's been a pretty painless experience. I've said it before, but Kentucky's NRCS and KDFWR personnel are top notch and go above and beyond. This is its second growing season. They went out there when I asked if they could check it and see what they thought I needed to do about the johnsongrass. They went out there, sent me pics, gave recommendations, etc. I look at EQIP as just a way to get back some of my tax dollars and put out great wildlife habitat. If you do some of the work yourself, you'll probably come out money ahead. I'll probably even out because I've had to pretty much hire out all the work being an absentee landowner.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Thanks! Maybe things have changed. Back when we first got hooked up with USDA it was just EQIP. That is pretty straight forward. You know how much they will pay on a per acre, liner foot, or whatever the appropriate measurement is. They told us it was to improve a property for wildlife. It has worked well at the pine farm just as you describe. When we had contractors do the work, we made a little on some practices and lost on others. We pretty much broke even except that we got work done that we wanted to do anyway for free.
USDA described a "New" program to us that was more maintenance focused. That was the one we evidently found was not worth it. You pick out certain practices and they somehow rated you for funding. The practices were more "ongoing" activities like removing invasive species. There were all kind of picture taking and reporting requirements with this program. I can't recall the name.
But, now that I think about it, converting pasture to pollinator habitat is more of an EQIP thing. I think we will look into it.
Thanks,
Jack
Our g&f pollinator plantings - EQUIP never came through after 3 years - require a winter and a summer burn 18 months apart. That killed it for me. No way am I burning up my neighbors houses in a 100 degree drought in Aug just to maintain my pollinator field. Putting it in myself this fall
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
If they require controlled burns to maintain it, that might be an issue. We do a lot of that at the pine farm, but I think there is a law here that requires permission from occupants of buildings within 1000 feet. It would be an easy burn compared to some of the pine burns we do, but I don't want to deal with neighbors that may fear fire.
