We oldsters are particular aware of the diminution of bees and butterflies (not to mention lightening bugs) which were ubiquitous during our early decades.
So an article in the New York Times “Program Looks to Give Bees a Leg (or Six) Up” concerning efforts in the West to preserve bees stirred our interest in how this can be done locally. The article is excerpted and linked below.
To learn what can be done locally, we reached to Louise Brewer, Master Gardener, at the Master Gardener Help Desk, of the Penn State Cooperative Extension. lancaster.extension.psu.edu
According to Ms Brewer, “a good link for bees and pollinators” is http://www.xerces.org/pollinators-mid-atlantic-region/.
She also directed us to a good article from Penn State extension on gardening for butterflies. http://extension.psu.edu/natural-resources/wildlife/landscaping-for-wildlife/pa-wildlife-8 .
Hopefully such efforts by a number of suburbanites will help restore the beauty of butterflies, the wonderment of lightening bugs, and the buzzing of bees… not to mention the improvement to our ecology and likely to our health.
NEW YORK TIMES: …Here in California’s Central Valley, researchers are trying to find assortments of bee-friendly plants that local farmers and ranchers can easily grow, whether in unusable corners and borders of their land or on acreage set aside with government support…
The causes of the decline, known as colony collapse disorder, are still being studied. But they appear to be a combination of factors that include parasites, infection and insecticides. Underlying all of these problems is the loss of uncultivated fields with their broad assortment of pollen-rich plants that sustain bees. That land has been developed commercially or converted to farming corn, soybeans and other crops…
The new program will encourage farmers and ranchers to grow alfalfa, clover and other crops favored by bees and which serve a second purpose of being forage for livestock. Other proposed changes in practices include fencing property for managing grazing pastures in rotation so that they can replenish, leaving living plants for the bees…
