Episode 2743

- [Narrator] What's a bioswale? It's a landscape element designed to concentrate or remove debris out of surface runoff water and they are a key component to this complete street project in Nashville. Julie Berbiglia examines the plant pallet for these effective rain gardens. Then we'll learn about the culture of bees with the polleneers Williams Honey Farm. Join us. First a city that is putting environmental ideals into action.

- Well gardeners you never know where you're going to find inspirations for your own gardens and today I'm finding inspiration out here on the 28th/31st avenue connector in Nashville. Now believe it or not this bridge is like a giant rain garden and we're going to find out about some of the plants that you can grow at home and some of the ways that you can take care of your own rain garden. Mekayle Houghton is with the Cumberland River Compact and I know that these kind of projects are near and dear to your heart because when they put in this bridge to connect two sides of town they really thought about rain water and all the runoff.

- They did, they did and this is such a wonderful example of how we can build our city so that we have a great booming city and a healthy environment too. What would happen on a normal street is the water would rush into that storm drain and then drain to the nearest stream unfiltered and the way that this street has been designed is the water hits this curb cut, flows through the rocks, and then into the garden bed. So these are bioswales, they're long rain gardens and they divert rainwater from the storm drain. So some of the advantages are that this trash is what we find in streams all the time when we do stream clean ups with volunteers. So the first thing is, all the solids, trash and some sediment here, this is not bad, but all this sediment washes into the streams and pollutes the streams so this is kind of a filter of the first flush of stormwater and then after the solids are filtered out the rain goes into these garden beds and you can see how moist these garden beds are.

- [Julie] So Mekayle what I really like that they've done here is these mass plantings of really attractive plants that really have a lot of seasonal interest. So what is it that we're really looking at right here?

- [Mekayle] Siberian Iris, and the density helps minimize the weeds, and so weeding is always a problem in any garden and these proliferate, they come back thicker and better, and that's one of the characteristics of rain gardens and bioswales is that over time as they fill in they percolate the water more quickly.

- Yeah it's really nice because we had the beautiful flowers this summer I remember seeing now we have these great seed heads as you drive by you see them. And then that flows right into these wonderful grasses.

- Shenandoah switch grass, and switch grass is always a great addition to any rain garden, any perennial garden and in a home setting, you don't really need to irrigate a garden with switch grass, they usually do really well and they keep this upright character through the winter, the seeds hang on through the winter and they provide a lot of nice structure to a garden.

- [Julie] A garden wouldn't be a garden I think without trees.

- [Mekayle] Yeah.

- [Julie] Trees are so great for soaking up water aren't they?

- [Mekayle] They are. They're incredible for soaking up water and these are disease resistant elm trees. You know after the elm blight went through, people worked hard to find a disease resistant elm. They're really beautiful street trees with their upright habit. Yeah and these have grown so quickly over the years since this was planted. But the trees, you know when you stand under a tree and it's dry during a rain, all of that helps with storm water. The rain drops collect on the leaves, and then slowly drip down or evaporate back into the air. And all of that helps reduce kind of the pollution that's flowing off our hard surfaces into the streets.

- [Julie] So another good choice for rain gardens is native shrubbery.

- [Mekayle] Yes the shrubbery is great because it gives structure to the garden. And this is one of my favorite, this is inkberry, and it's got these beautiful leaves that I just love, and it's drought tolerant, it produces beautiful purple berries, for wildlife to eat, so this is a great and very popular choice for rain gardens and bioswales. You'll see this in a lot of commercial rain gardens around town.

- Now what are some of the other bushes that they've used here?

- [Mekayle] Virginia sweetspire is this shrub right back there, and that's another one that's great, it spreads, it creates a really dense look. Beautiful fall colors. And then the ground cover that they're using is Saint John's-wort. And that stays low, covers the ground, with pretty much any garden, the first two years you'll want to water your rain garden. But the rain patterns in Tennessee are changing and there are more intense periods of rain and more intense periods of dryness. So when we're building a rain garden and as a watershed organization we're very sensitive to water usage so we're trying to plant super hardy plants that can take the rain periods and the dry periods and so even in a rain garden you want drought tolerant plants, so those are always the plants that we're recommending. And they're always native, perennials.

- [Julie] Well these are really great examples for all of us to look at and I really appreciate your time here today looking at the way that the city is certainly investing in our streams in a way that we may not even notice

- [Mekayle] Yep.

- [Julie] And they're really all great ideas for us to take a look at. So during the various different seasons, keep in mind that the landscape along your roadside and certainly along this beautiful bridge are great places to come out and get some inspiration for your yards.

- Bagworms are a common pest you see on lots of evergreen trees and this is an example of what can happen to a tree after they get severely infested with them. So the bagworm overwinters in the bag that was put there by last year's females. They usually hatch out in May or in early June and crawl out of their bags, eating the plants until around August or so. These young bagworm caterpillars feed on the needles and the leaves of the trees. A large infestation can lead to almost a complete defoliation of the tree. While any tree can be infested with bagworms, since the wind can blow them from plant to plant, the most common are your evergreens like arborvitaes, hemlocks, junipers, pines, spruce, bald cypress, or also locust, sweetgum, and sycamore trees can get them as well. What are some treatments you could do to prevent this?

- Sure, so there are a lot of treatments that can be done to help this, both professionally and at the homeowner level as well. Some of the more popular ones that homeowners choose are the Sevin brand products that you can screw on to the end of your water hose. You're gonna want a liquid treatment for this rather than a powder or a granular or even a systemic for that matter. Systemics won't help to treat bagworms so make sure you get something that is a contact product. More times than not the easier thing to do is get an attachment that you can screw onto the end of your water hose and then just drench the entire plant.

- So and as far as some smaller trees that you've got, I know a lot of people will go in and just you know, kind of pluck them off, here's one that we got.

- You can. If you don't have that many trees or if your trees aren't that big, manual removal is probably the most effective way to control bagworms. However for most people that's probably not going to be an effective measure so you're gonna wanna do that chemical spray treatment.

- Right, cool. Well thanks so much.

- [Joshua] No problem, thanks a lot.

- [Sheri] I'm out here in Williamson county with Jay Williams from Williams Honey Farm and he's gonna show us, tell us, and teach us as much as we can absorb in one day about bees. Jay, what are we standing in front of right here?

- So what you're standing in front of is called a nucleus beehive. A nuc for short. So this is what we use and what we breed to start new beekeepers off in their beekeeping careers. So every single one of these boxes here has one queen in it. And the queen controls the entire hive. She's in charge at all times. And everybody knows she's there. Every queen has their own personality. Some are hard workers, some are relaxed, some are easy going. This again is a nucleus beehive. It has probably about, I'd say just under 10 thousand bees in it. Maybe 10 to 15 thousand. They're just hanging out, they're growing, the queen is laying a whole lot of eggs. And we're gonna see if we can find her. So once we start with the first frame which is on the outside, right here is pollen that's all just come in. And you can guesstimate if you want what kind of pollen it is. You know, is it red maple, is it from tulip poplar, is it from anything, right now basically the honey flow is on. And when we say that it means that there is nectar heavily coming in from locusts that just started blooming a few days ago. But by keeping bees and by watching these hives you get to know what's blooming in your environment pretty closely. And you get a really good idea for the temperature changes and the environmental changes. So this is just the outside of the hive. This is nectar that hasn't quite been cured yet. This is actually nectar that has been cured.

- [Sheri] So what do you mean, cured?

- [Jay] So what I mean by that is that you can't eat honey until it's about 19% moisture content. So the bees will take their wings and they'll dehydrate this nectar down and turn it into honey. It's a little too watery when it first comes in from the flowers. So they'll store it in here, and then they will dehydrate it over time. And then once it's perfectly 19% or less, they'll cap it with a little wax capping. And you can actually just take your finger and stick right in there, and it tastes more than, or better than anything you'll ever taste in the grocery store, that's for sure. So we'll just line that right up there. And we'll come in here. So what's really cool is we do a whole lot of extractions they're called which means we remove a beehive from someone's house or tree or whatever and in nature and as well as in managed beehives on the outsides of the hives is where you're going to find all the honey. And on the inside of the hive is where you're going to find the babies or the brood it's called. The reason being, what's expendable? The honey. They can make way more honey. The future of the hive is the babies, basically. So the babies are always going to be in the center. So if you look at this frame right now, do you see anything that's sort of popping out at you that looks different than the rest?

- [Sheri] Right here.

- [Jay] Boom, there you go. So she is the future of this hive.

- [Sheri] Is she always bigger and more elongated in the back then?

- [Jay] Yeah, so these are all worker bees right here. So worker bees are females, about 80% of the hive, and they're all fed royal jelly. Royal jelly is like the super food in a sense. Well one of the eggs, the one that they decided this is gonna be the queen, was fed extra royal jelly and that made her basically develop into a bigger bee.

- [Sheri] What is on this one, is that pollen?

- [Jay] That's pollen, exactly, yep. So that's pollen that's just come in. So one of the beekeeper tricks that we use that if someone, you know a new beekeeper can't find the queen and they're looking all over, and they don't know where to find her, right here you just look for where the bees are that have pollen on their sacs, pollen sacs, and then you know that the queen is close by because they're feeding that pollen to the babies. So she'll lay about 1500 eggs a day for her entire life which is pretty impressive. She'll go out and she'll mate for about three or four days and then she'll come back to a hive and then she'll never leave again. That'll be it. Bees are important for so many different reasons.

- [Sheri] Is it true one out of every three things we eat we would not have without a bee?

- One out of every three bites we take is thanks to a honeybee. They are involved, you know what I'm gonna have you hold something. They are involved in so much more than everybody realizes. You know there's a certain crop, there's many crops, but one crop, almonds in particular--

- Almonds from California?

- From California, yep. Here you go, just grab right like I was. There you go, perfect. So almonds are, you can't have almonds without bees. They are so dependent on pollination from honeybees. And it's also the reason that we're in such trouble because of almonds. Because if you can imagine, every year around you know, let's say the end of December or so. Three quarters of all the beehives in the United States are trucked to the almond pollination which is in central California.

- [Sheri] Really?

- [Jay] So think about if you get--

- [Sheri] That's a lot of bees.

- [Jay] It's a lot of bees. It's big business. People don't want to turn down. They're chasing the money right away. But think about the problem that that can cause. So let's say, you know, let's say we get 100 people from all over the country and we put them all in the same room while they all got different colds and flus and they're, you know, sick or whatever. What happens? All we do is exchange all those colds and flus and then go, whew, right back out into the rest of the country. So if you want to talk about the best way to spread disease, that's it. The best way to raise bees and to bring the pollinators back is to actually have multiple varieties of blooming plants and flowers and trees and all that stuff because variety is the spice of life. You can't have one thing and expect the bees to stay healthy. And unfortunately when you bring them to almonds that's all you're giving them. The other thing is that the bees are coming from all over the country which means bees from Tennessee are like, hey, where's the tulip poplar I'm looking for it, it's missing you know? I'm waiting for the basswood to bloom in June, what's going on? And same thing with the bees in Florida and New York and all that stuff. It messes up the bees. So stressed bees equals sick bees. And bees have a very strong stinger and a very weak immune system. So we have less forage so there's pressure on the bees to have less area for them to feed off of. There's a certain type of chemical that was used in a bigger variety called neonicotinoid and that's in almost everything right now. And it's synthetic so lasts a super long time. And it weakens the bees. So it doesn't kill them, it weakened them. Well when you weaken the bees and you get away with it for a certain amount of time you just get less and less strong bees. And then on top of that, we started importing tons and tons of bees because we were losing them. Well when you import them, you import the pests with them. So there's something called the varroa mite. Which is basically like a tick on top of a bee. And the varroa mite sucks at the bee larvae and weakens it. Well again, you weaken the bee, you're having problems. And the varroa mite is really hard to get rid of because how do you get rid of an insect that's living on top of another insect? And the answer was, well we just sterilize the whole hive or we just kill everything. Well it just again weakens the bees even more to treat them. So we created these bees that needed coddling along. We needed bees that constantly needed interaction. Some sort of treatment or control. And we sort of shot ourselves in the foot. So that's what happened is we had less forage, there was chemicals, there's less genetic diversity now because there's so few of us breeding bees in the area that it was sort of like a perfect storm and it hasn't really gone away. It's still very much a problem. In Tennessee, in the south, I mean everywhere. And I think until we raise bees or create bees that can fight that varroa mite and are stronger, a better immune system, I think we're gonna be fighting this for a while.

- Sometimes you can't make things better can you that nature has taken care of.

- Yeah you have to sort of let nature do it's thing.

- [Sheri] It's really not a simple hobby, is it?

- [Jay] I mean it is in a sense because it hasn't changed in 100 years. You know this is the same system that literally was created in the 1800s. So more than 100 years. It's just that you have to sort of treat them a little bit differently. You have to be an inventor which is actually what I love about beekeeping. Because it's any man's game, or any gal's game. We are all trying to come up with, alright, what do we need to do now to save the bees because we haven't figured it out yet so let's get creative everybody and let's do it. And it makes for really fun. It's, you know, it's always changing. Just when you think you've figured out the bees they teach you that you don't know anything.

- This one seems a lot skinnier than what I've seen traditionally. Is there a reason for that?

- That's a good observation so I raise nucleus beehives because they build up faster. So this mimics, this mimics a classic big trunk of a tree and this is a little bit smaller. So in a smaller environment you'll raise bees faster. So I can turn them out quicker because our season is so short here in Tennessee. It's like six weeks basically and then you're done for the main nectar flow. So when you put them in a small cavity like this, you know bees need a few things to raise their young. They need heat, they need water, and they need some sort of nectar or pollen source. So if you can provide those which I can right now and put it in a small environment, you actually turn them out quicker. And again this isn't about like how many can we produce as fast as possible it's just that our season is so short that I want to empower as many people as I can.

- [Sheri] Alright let's look at some of these other ones.

- [Jay] The brood, so the babies are about right here, and then from here on up is gonna be all honey.

- [Sheri] Whoa!

- Yeah, so it's a pretty good hive. There's a hive over there that's about 10 supers tall and that's a pretty good size for us. And you know remember it's, you know, second, third week in April, it's pretty darn good for our outlook.

- Now will this extreme 10 degrees over normal heat help or hind--

- It'll actually help them.

- Will it?

- Yep

- Okay, because you said they like three things.

- Exactly, yep.

- Okay.

- So just as a curiosity I'm not going to let go totally, see if you can pick that up. See what you, tell me if you think it's heavy or it's light.

- Oh my goodness. What is this about,

- [Jay] That's all honey.

- [Sheri] 20 pounds?

- [Jay] It's 30 pounds.

- [Sheri] 30 pounds, okay.

- [Jay] It's all honey.

- [Sheri] I was stronger than I thought.

- [Jay] So let's put this right on its side just like that. And let's check it out. Let's see what it, what it looks like right now.

- I have to say, it sure is pretty.

- So if you're feeling lucky, Sheri,

- [Sheri] Uh huh

- You want to take one glove off.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- I'll do it with you if you want just so you have a friend. Take your glove off and just jam your finger right into that wax right there.

- [Sheri] Right here?

- Yep, just jam it right in. Now taste it.

- Mmm. It's sweet.

- That's good, that's a start.

- Sweeter than, sweeter than, but kind of a woodsy, musty undertone, you know?

- Yeah, absolutely. Honey is like wine. It's supposed to give you a front taste, and then a back taste. You know one of the secrets that I believe of our honey is basswood.

- And that's what that is?

- And we have, this is a, this actually isn't basswood, it will be. Because basswood doesn't bloom until about the last two weeks in June, somewhere around there. So what we do is we actually time it so that we have peak population right around the basswood and basswood gives it that great, sweet aftertaste. When you look at honey, you want cloudy honey. You want honey that doesn't look crystal clear and always golden. The honey that you find in the big grocery stores doesn't really come from this area. Matter of fact a lot of times it comes from China and they pasteurize it so they kill all the enzymes so that it won't ever crystallize and then they filter it to get out all the pollen. Number one so you can't trace it where it came from, and two because it's clear and we all would think that honey has to be clear or else it's not any good. You want the exact opposite of that. You want cloudy honey, you want honey that crystallizes because that means it's raw. So if it does crystallize just put a little warm water, it'll liquefy right up. Honey never spoils. There's honey from 2000 years ago, from ancient Egypt you could still eat.

- Wow.

- And the reason is because it's dehydrated. Because it's very acidic. So the pH doesn't support, there's no water and the pH doesn't support any sort of bacteria growing in it. See that right there by the way? Those are swarm cells. So every year right about this time, the bees want to multiply. They want to have as many hives as they can out there. So they put swarm cells down here to raise a new queen to take half the hive and go up to someone's house or someone's yard and try to create a new colony. So if any of the viewers find that all of a sudden a hive has taken up residence in their house, they should definitely call a beekeeper rather than kill that hive. And have us come out and try to remove it to try and save those bees.

- [Sheri] We're in a big patch of strawberries it's going to be a you pick strawberries. And we're at the mason bee project and this is a trial, Jay?

- [Jay] Uh huh, this is a pilot study.

- [Sheri] Tell me about that.

- [Jay] So the pilot study is showing how much better or how much higher the yield on your crops is gonna be with mason bees pollinating it. And so we've put, what we're studying is our ratio. How much bees per acre do we need to put out. And on this property we're at about 2000 mason bees per acre. And if you look at this it's very different from the bee hives we were just visiting. It's very quiet, you know there's nothing really going on there's not huge swarms happening in front of the hive. That's because the mason bees are very quiet. They do their own thing. Most of them are out working right now and they're not in front of this hive. They live about six weeks, and they don't make any sort of honey. They just collect pollen.

- [Sheri] So this is great for people that want to pollinate their gardens but don't want to mess around with the honey.

- [Jay] This is the answer. If you want to double or triple your yield from your garden, you need to put out mason bees there. Like I mentioned before there, 100 honey bees is equivalent to only one of those mason bees. Mason bees are extremely hairy, and so the pollen sticks to them because they're, all bees are positively electrically charged so when it lands on a flower, the flowers are negatively electrically charged and so it just snaps right to that bee.

- [Sheri] So is there a queen bee with these as well?

- [Jay] All the ones that are laying right now are females. They're all queens.

- Oh, okay.

- And each little queen has its own little hole. That one right there is going in its own hole. And if you'll notice if we sat here all day long that bee right there is going to go back to its same hole every single time.

- [Sheri] Wow.

- [Jay] That's why the front of it looks a little different. It's like charred. It's so that they don't all look the same. And you can tell, you know, they're going to come back every once in a while but for the most part they're out pollinating each flower and so it's a really important point to make which is the bee is going from one flower to the next flower to the next flower to the next flower. It's not going from the flower back to the nest to the flower again, and that's very important to point out because it means they're amazing cross pollinators.

- [Sheri] And it's moving that pollen around.

- [Jay] Exactly. So that's why this is so popular out west in the orchards, because you have an apple tree that needs to pollinate with an apple tree five rows down or whatever, this bee will take care of that. This study is to demonstrate to Tennessee farmers specifically that we can greatly improve your yield from your crops with our mason bees.

- And you said the mason bee is not susceptible to the mites?

- No which is really cool, that's why it's a great bee or great alternative pollinator which is it's not susceptible to varroa mites. It's not moved around, so the disease process isn't spread easily. It needs mud, that's about it, and something to eat. So if you're interested in getting into solitary bees is what we'll call them. Bees that generally don't sting, are very quiet, are amazing pollinators, one solitary bee is the equivalent to 100 honey bees, the best way to do it is to get a kit. And a kit kind of looks like this. It looks kind of like just like a bird house. And it's light weight, you can basically put it anywhere. We work with a company called Crown Bees. They're an amazing solitary bee producer. This is an all in one kit for every backyard gardener or pollinator enthusiast. A polleneer. So the kit is really cool because it comes with everything you need. It comes with leaf cutter trays which are a little bit smaller and it comes with mason bee trays. So mason bees is the spring bee. That's the bee that we're using right now behind us to pollinate strawberries. Leaf cutters are awesome for summer vegetables. So if you want to double, triple your production out of your garden in your backyard, get leaf cutter bees out there.

- [Sheri] Even for the local home person?

- [Jay] Absolutely and what's so cool about these is they don't sting. They don't bother your pests, they don't, or your pets, they don't bother your kids. They're really really comfortable in any environment you put them in. Really all they need is a little bit of sun about five feet off the ground and a source of mud. And what's great about this kit is they even give you some mud. So you just mix it with a little bit of water, put it out for them to basically build their nests off of, and that's it.

- And we can get this kit where?

- On our website. Go to williamshoneyfarm.com and we'll ship it right to you in about two days and you can get going.

- Now what about the polleneers in this area?

- Okay so the polleneers is a movement that we started about a year or two ago. And the polleneers is basically a group of people that are empowering others, they're empowered and they're empowering others to make a difference in helping pollinators in any way possible. And that could be whether talking about it, supporting local beekeepers, putting a solitary beehive in their backyard, getting a honeybee hive, purchasing seed bombs. Seed bombs are really cool. They are perennial flower seeds encased in clay and compost. And all you gotta do is walk in your backyard, drop it into the ground, and it self germinates and grows a perennial flower seed or perennial flower for years to come.

- [Sheri] And these flower seeds are for this area, is that correct?

- Exactly so if you notice, it says southeast blend on there. So we've created a blend of flower seeds that are perfect for this region. You know if there's one thing you can do today starting right now, this moment, is stop using chemicals in your backyard. Don't plant green grass. Instead, have a whole bunch of variety of flowers that look really cool, that are fun for the family to plant and take a stand to get rid of that artificial backyard that you're growing right now.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org. Or on youtube at the Volunteer Gardener channel. And like us on Facebook.