(piano music)
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- It seems like whenever we turn on the news
or read a newspaper, there is a story
about bees and pollinators.
There is much concern about their continued good health.
I have heard the University of Minnesota is doing
lots of research and outreach on this very topic.
Come along with Prairie Yard & Garden
as we learn about the new bee and pollinator center
at the landscape arboretum.
(upbeat jazz music)
I have several good friends who are master gardeners.
Each year they travel to the twin cities
for educational seminars.
This year they were telling me about the beautiful
new building at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
Well, I just had to find out what the buzz was all about.
So today we are visiting with Ping Honzay
at the brand new Bee and Pollinator Center.
Welcome Ping.
- Welcome Mary, it's so great to have you here.
- Tell me, how did the bee center come about?
- Yeah, it's been years in the making.
But we are so excited to have it here.
So you've probably heard about the amazing bee lab
at the main St. Paul campus and the university
and the work of Dr. Marla Spivak.
So they've been doing amazing pioneering research work there
for years but this facility is really an education
outreach center to share some of the research
and work that their doing there.
You may have seen the name on the side of the building.
It's the Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center.
So Alice Tashjian was a local teacher actually
in Minnesota and she met Dr. Spivak,
through taking some classes and learning more
about pollinators and she was really excited
about the topic so her and her son and his wife Gabe
lead gifts for this building and the arboretum
has had this land and it's very exciting.
The plan is to transform it into a campus
that's all about food and how we grow it
and what better building to kind of have
this first building open as part of that new food campus.
- [Mary] Is this an environmentally friendly building
or has it received some awards,
I guess I'd heard that the design is unique.
- [Ping] It is and it's received a couple,
or an award from the American Institute of Architects.
It's geothermally heated.
It uses natural lighting quite a bit so when you go inside,
you'll be able to see it's really
really catches all that beautiful, you know,
natural lighting and we do have solar panels on top
of the roof so everything is designed with the
state-ability and natural beauty in mind.
- [Mary] What are all the different parts of the building?
'Cause it looks like its pretty good sized.
- [Ping] Yeah so we have the learning lab
which sort of a classroom and a meeting space
so it can be used for lots of different, you know,
anything from hosting 90 3rd graders
for a little session (laughs)
to you know, a meeting of master gardeners
or local business group so we have a lot
of technology capabilities in that room
for distance learning and for projecting and showing
different videos and things in there for whoever's meeting.
And then first thing you see when you walk in the building
is we have sort of our welcome area
and our observation apiary.
So I love when people walk in and you hear the kids
and the first thing they say is,
"oh look at all the bees."
(laughing)
so yeah, that's just a great thing
to greet people on their way in.
And then we have our exhibit hall.
So that's got different exhibits on honey bees
and different wild, native bees
that also live in the area and butterflies
and sort of the plant pollination story.
And then we also have our honey house.
So that can be used as a teaching space.
But it's also for honey extraction.
We can harvest honey in there.
- [Mary] And then for the landscaping,
how was that planned out?
- [Ping] Yeah so it's all designed with pollinators in mind.
I love this time of year 'cause you can see
it's really buzzing.
Yeah so it's a lot of native perennials
but we do also have some landscape ornamentals
and then some native cultivars.
So we have some each bed kind of has a certain theme
in mind so for example we have sort of
butterfly area back here but we also up here,
have a demonstration with, it's sort of
mirror images in the bed so that's native plants
along with some of their cultivars beside them.
- [Mary] Okay.
- [Ping] So people can see what some of the differences are
and we can keep an eye on, there's some talk about
well which of these is better for pollinators
or are they as good and we can keep an eye
and see how they're each doing for pollinators.
So each bed has a theme like that, you know
whether it's showing different colors and forms
of flowers that people can use that are
pollinator friendly or just showing sort of a cascade
of blooms throughout the season
so that there's food everyday.
- [Mary] Well I see that you've incorporated some annuals
into that too so it doesn't have to be just natives
or just perennials.
It looks like you've used the full gamut.
- [Ping] Yes, yeah, you're exactly right
and I think, I think its important to show people
'cause people garden for different reasons.
But that, whatever reason you garden
that you can do something to help pollinators
and the annuals that we have currently in these beds
actually, the state master gardeners did,
a flowers for pollinators trial last year.
So these are some of the winners you see showcased here.
They do it - I see
- [Ping] Specifically with annuals.
- Okay, how did you get involved with the bee center.
- It's an interesting question.
I'm not from Minnesota originally
but my husband is and we were looking,
he came to visit the arboretum and he saw this job
and it was just, it's a very specific job
to be able to do, be in pollinator education
and it was just like, this is a dream job.
I've, you know, I majored in Zoology
with a minor in Botany but I really got
into bees specifically after I got out of school.
We started keeping honey bees and then I just kind of
got into this whole world of bees
and I've also my masters is in Natural Resources
with a focus in environmental education
and so I was really into bees and education
and just being able to mix the two of those together
at an institution like this was really a dream.
- [Mary] To me it looks like you were the perfect match
for the perfect position so that's great.
Do you have classes, you mentioned, for the master gardeners
and then also for students too right?
- [Ping] Yes so we have a mix of youth education
and adult education for sure.
- [Mary] How do people find out about the classes.
- [Ping] Yeah so if you go on our website
so its arboretum.umn.edu and then under events and programs
we have all of our adult classes listed and then
all of our field trips so during the school year
it's primarily field trips for school aged kids
but we also do summer day camps and different classes.
- So when the students come and you have classes with them,
what do you try to teach them?
- Yeah so every all of our school programs
are standards spaced so they're all designed
to be lined with Minnesota state standards.
Mostly science standards but also I think
there's opportunities for interdisciplinary education
with language arts or social studies.
But beyond that, I think its a big thing
that people can learn while their here is just
how intertwined our lives are with pollinators and plants
and how much we depend on them
and how important they are to us and I think a wonderful
takeaway is that everyone can do something to help
help pollinators and help plants and what I really hope
that people take away is just an excitement to learn
and appreciation for the natural worlds even if
they don't have to go out and say bees are my new
favorite topic and I wanna learn everything about bees
but just an appreciation that
wow there are these beautiful things
flying around in the world and I'm excited
to spend some more time outside maybe
and spend some more time learning about
plants or nature or wherever their interest take them.
- Why are bees and pollinators so important to us?
- Yes so you've probably heard the statistic people
say this a lot but you're that one out of every
three bites of food you take you can say things
to a pollinator for.
Pollinators really help for nothing else here,
they help feed us and we depend on them
for our survival.
So they of they help feed us and they pollinate
the plants in the landscape that we enjoy
for beauty but also those are help supporting
the whole the environment and landscape as a whole
and other species in the landscape.
But beyond that, there just these amazing creatures
and I think just appreciating them for what they are
as well and just the beauty and interest that they bring us
is also a really, I think a really important thing but
they feed us right?
So and who doesn't like food?
- [Mary] Right.
- [Ping] Yeah.
- [Mary] You know most of us just think about
when in pollinators we think about honey bees.
But what other kind of pollinators are there?
- [Ping] Yeah so there are
over 400 species of bees in Minnesota
and so there all these different types of bees
that are under our noses, yeah including
honey bees of course but also bumble bees
and bees that live in the ground
and bees that live in stems
so there all these types of bees.
There also butterflies of course, hummingbirds,
and then beyond that there's flies and wasps
and beetles and all these other animals in your garden
that are doing this important work.
- [Mary] So do you actually have
hives here at the bee center?
- [Ping] We do.
- [Mary] Okay and who takes care of them?
- [Ping] We work with the University of Minnesota Bee Squad.
They're this amazing group so they're part of the bee lab
at the University of Minnesota.
And they do, they have many or they have
several different programs around
just exploring bees and kinda spreading the word
and outreach and education but one of
probably they're best known program
is their hive to bottle program.
So they work at sites all over the twin cities area
and they, people, they might be at somebody's home
or at a business but the home or business,
they'll own the hives and the bees
but the bee squad will come and manage them for you
so you can make sure that your bees are being managed
with best practices and they'll come work with you
to do that and then they'll also actually
harvest the honey and then bring that to you.
So it's a wonderful program for people who
want to have honey bee hives on their property
but maybe, then you can have these experts come in
and help you take care of them.
- [Mary] You know you might not have the time
or you don't know how to take care of 'em
and here's somebody that really does.
Are these college students or are these employees
of the university or who are these people on the bee squad?
Yeah so they're employees of the university
and then I believe we do work with some college students
as well but they're employees.
- [Mary] Okay and they come and they help take care
of your hives here then too.
- [Ping] Yes, yeah.
- [Mary] What happens to the honey that's produced here?
- [Ping] Yeah so we are going into our first harvest year.
And we'll be harvesting it here and we'll be using some
in our programming but also
expect some will be for sale
(laughing) - okay, alright.
What do you do with the bees over the winter?
- [Ping] They stay right where you'll where you see them
behind the building.
- [Mary] Really?
- [Ping] Yes.
- [Mary] Do you do any special care or covering
so that they don't get too cold or
what do you do?
- Yeah so we'll give them
I call, this is not the technical term
but I call them like winter jackets.
- [Mary] Okay (laughs)
- [Ping] So it's just like corrugated plastic
or wax cardboard but its black.
So you'll see that they're painted white right now
and that helps reflect the solar heat in the summer
but then in winter you wanna attract,
you know you wanna keep all of that thermal heat
so that black color helps keep that in.
We'll put moisture boards on top of them
so that helps wick the moisture out of the hive
into the air just like moisture wicking shirt
you might wear and that's a big thing
because bees do a good job controlling their temperature
or honey bees but once they're wet,
it makes it a lot harder, right.
So that will wake the temperature out
and then you might say that there are some
different entrances so like if the snow is falling
and they might need a little bit of a higher
entrance in their hive but they do a really good job
on their own.
You know, in the wild nobody is giving them a moisture board
or so what they'll do is they'll cluster inside the hive
and shiver to stay warm and it can be mid 90s
in the middle of that cluster of bees
and they'll eat honey of course.
So that's a big thing about leaving the honey
enough honey on for the winter is you wanna make sure
that they have enough food.
- Ping, how much honey or how much food do you have to
leave in the hive over the winter for the bees?
How do you know?
- So in Minnesota, we have harsher winters (laughs)
than some and I'll be honest, I just moved to Minnesota
so I'm still learning as we go but the
the recommendation is 70 to 100
pounds of honey for the winter, yeah for a Minnesota winter.
- Wow, do the bee squad members ever open the hives
and check throughout the winter
to make sure there's enough food in there yet?
- In the winter you don't wanna open them too much.
As you can imagine, it lets (laughs)
it lets some cold air in but you can
feed them some during the winter as well.
Actually so we can give them a little bit of food
just open them quickly,
just do some really quick maintenance
especially if its a nicer weather day.
And actually so the bees, I mentioned that they'll stay
in the hive in the winter and cluster
but on a nicer, sunnier, slightly warmer day
you might actually see them come out
for what they call cleansing flakes.
'Cause they won't poop in the hive.
- [Mary] Speaking of winter,
is the bee and pollinator center used year around?
- [Ping] Yes definitely.
- [Mary] Is the general public invited to come
and see the center or just if you come to have classes?
- [Ping] No of course, everyone is invited.
We love, we love our visitors.
So the bee center is open Monday through Friday,
9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then on the weekends
its open noon to 4 p.m.
- [Mary] Okay.
Ping you had mentioned that the landscaping was done
with very good pollinator friendly plants.
Would you be willing to show us
some of those so that if a homeowner wants to plant
some too, they might have an idea for which are
some of the best ones to do.
- [Ping] Of course.
(jazz music)
- I have a question, how do you make a mini bog?
- Creating a mini bog is, is really pretty simple.
The first thing that you gotta do is, is choose
nice sunny location.
You wanna find a container that's about a foot deep.
And without holes so that there isn't any drainage 'cause
they like to be wet most on bog plants of course
like to be wet at the feet, you wanna
choose a substrate that's a combination of peat
and sphagnum moss and sand.
Put it in a nice sunny location.
Fill it with distilled or rain water.
Rain water might be the most handy.
A lot of the plants that live in bogs,
some of them are carnivorous plants.
There's a lot of other plants to choose from
like orchids and that and that's pretty much it.
Fill it up and just enjoy it.
- [Male Voice] Ask the arboretum experts
has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
in Chanhassen dedicated to enriching lives
through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.
- So this is one of my favorites.
Its Meadow Blazing Star or Liatris ligulistylis.
So this is just a butterfly magnet, but you're not just
butterflies but you're all sorts of bees come visit.
Oh we can, yup, here's one right now.
So we are going to be doing a field trip
about Monarchs and I am so excited for the kids
to just come see all of the Monarchs
that come visit us on this plant here.
- [Mary] This is one that any home owner could plant
I believe, right?
- [Ping] Yes definitely you can see it's just right here
in the corner of our building full sun
and it even doesn't, it's nice because it is got
this kind of tall straight form so it is a taller plant
but it doesn't necessarily take up as much
with ground space as you might be worried about.
- [Mary] Actually if you've got a place where you can
use a plant with some height even as a background
this would be a stunning plant.
- [Ping] Yes definitely.
- [Mary] And it looks like it blooms quite a while too.
- [Ping] And behind us we have Agastache Foenicullum
or more commonly known as Anise Hyssop.
So this is also a bee favorite
and one of my personal favorites especially in teaching
because you can have the kids to sort of
gently rub the leaves and smell their fingers
and its just, they've got this wonderful
licorice smell so the kids like it
and the pollinators like it.
Its just a win win.
- [Mary] Well I can see the bees
are visiting it right now too so yes,
I can see where it is definitely one of
the favorites here in the garden.
(piano music)
- Alright Mary, here is another native perennial,
Rattlesnake Master or Eryngium yuccifolium.
And this one, it's a little, it's a little past
its peak bloom as you can see but when
it was in its peak bloom, it was just a pollinator magnet
in our garden, very much a favorite.
So I love this one, you have great pollinator plant
and its just got that visual interest right?
So its got this really unique form
and you can see even past its peak bloom
it keeps that visual interest in the garden
so its a very nice addition.
- I bet that a lot of our viewers
did not know that this is a good pollinator plant
but I agree, wouldn't that be pretty even
through the winter to add interest to the winter landscape
to have these pods showing.
- Yes yeah totally very, just a very cool plant
and its we've been talking about the way our,
visitors come its just like what it
they're surprised to see it.
It's a very unique looking plant.
So this plant might be a little more unusual
but let's got to one of our more tried and true
sort of common plants and take a look at that.
- Okay.
(piano music)
- So this is another one of my favorites,
this is Butterfly weed or Asclepias tuberso.
So it is a host plant for Monarch caterpillars
and we can actually see a few on here right now
so I'm not just making it up
(laughs)
right, you can see them on here.
So it is a type of milk weed
but it's also a favorite of, you know you can see
a variety of bees on here.
We've got some honey bees.
I saw some green sweat bees earlier
and you can see there's quite a few of them
so again, and its just a beautiful plant.
You know those bright orange flowers
so it's got, it checks all of those boxes I think
it's a great pollinator plant and then again
a great one for us in our garden
so I really love this plant.
- [Mary] And it looks like it can take a lot of sun
and actually dry 'cause this must be a southern exposure?
- [Ping] This is, yeah.
So you're right, yeah.
It's right here in our entryway so,
it does very well for itself (laughs)
- [Mary] Well and I think that the seed pods
add a lot of interest too so not only
is the plant very pretty and the flowers pretty,
but I think that the seed pods would be something
that would stay and give you some interest afterwards too.
- [Ping] Exactly and I totally agree with you.
I think it's got great visual interest
and we actually just saw, I mean,
as far as that sensory interest with kids
or even with adults, it's got these lovely, soft pods
and then the seed are with that beautiful, fluffy
just fun looking seeds so.
- Are there plants that the
Monarchs or the butterflies prefer
as far as in the different stages of their life cycles?
- Yes great question so, we just talked about
how we've got our Monarch caterpillars on here
and of course, they will they feed exclusively
on milk weed but they will feed on a variety
of milk weed so we have swamp milk weed,
butterfly weed, common milk weed in our garden here
and they'll feed on all of those.
We also have some other, we have like a little
butterfly nursery area, we call it.
So it's got some host plants or different caterpillars
like black swallow tail caterpillars will feed on things
in the carrot family so that includes like
our Golden Alexanders had quite a few of them
earlier this year.
But then once the adult butterflies will feed
on the a wider variety of things for the nectar
so we just we saw our Monarch butterflies on the Liatris,
the Meadow Blazing Star over there
and they'll also visit the Zinnias
and the Echinacea and all of
these really great nectar flowers.
- [Mary] So it's kind of nice to plant a variety of plants
to help feed them throughout the season.
- [Ping] Exactly.
- [Mary] Okay, do you ever collect the eggs
or the larvae of the Monarch butteries?
- [Ping] We do, yes, so we have a Monarch field trip
that will, you know it's a great teaching tool.
Always the real thing for kids to be able to see
and adults (laughs) to be able to see how they grow up
and what they do so we'll collect them
from the garden and raise them inside
and then we actually, we'll tag them as well
so we're kind of in that migratory time period right now
where they'll be leaving Minnesota to fly south
for the winter so we can tag them so that scientists
can look for those tagged butterflies later
and see where they're going.
- [Mary] Well I have heard that there's groups like you
that or people that will do that,
that they will collect the, either the larva
or the eggs because then they have a better chance
of survival, is that what you find too?
- [Ping] Yeah when you, there's different things
that can happen so there's, when you raise them inside,
if you, you wanna keep them in non...
There's different ways that you can manage them
to help avoid diseases and then you don't have some
of the same predatory problems inside.
that you'd, yeah. - [Mary] Oh sure,
'cause I'm sure outside, there might be the birds
or other insects that can hurt the,
the little babies, okay.
Ping, you had mentioned that,
that there are some annuals that also are wonderful
for the pollinators and I was thinking you know,
that some people don't have space in their gardens
for perennials or just don't have a way to take care of 'em.
Could you show us some of the annuals
that are great to plant too?
- Yes of course.
(piano music)
So annuals maybe easier for some people to grow
and you can see that we have a variety here
so we've got our Zinnias and we've got a few
different varieties of those.
So you can see they come in all sorts of shapes and colors.
We've got our Marigolds,
and we also have a variety of herbs here.
So we have Lavender, and then we also have some
that will sort of over-winter so we've got our Thyme,
and our Oregano, and a few
like to grow for culinary purposes.
Of course, you know, herbs are great for that
so you could have, if you don't have a big yard
and you can't have a huge perennial bed.
Maybe you could just have a little pot of herbs
out on your balcony or your deck and that would be great
for pollinators as well.
- [Mary] I can see where this would be awesome
for people who maybe can't bend over very much,
don't have much space, like you said,
maybe have an apartment.
But you could still have a pot, maybe outside your window
and so then you could still use the annuals or your herbs
and still feed yourself and your pollinator friends too.
- [Ping] Yes exactly.
- [Mary] Wow that's a good, good point.
This has been really interesting
and it's been great to see this beautiful
bee and pollinator center.
What do you for see as the future
for the development and what's gonna happen
here in the future?
- [Ping] Yeah, great question.
The arboretum has big plans.
So our bee and pollinator center, we have new programs
coming even just in the coming season in this building.
But for this whole campus, at the arboretum,
we have plans to develop it into a campus
that's gonna be all about food and how we grow it.
Yeah - [Mary] Ohh.
Well that fits right into the whole pollinator
studying and the interest and the care.
- [Ping] Yes exactly.
And so we can have programs that tell that whole story
you know, from the beginning from pollination
to the growing, how the fruit and the seeds develop.
And we have this wonderful red barn resource right here
which is over 100 years old.
So we've got that historic element of you know
this is how people used to grow food.
And this is how we grow food now.
This is how you can grow food where you live
and here's what you can do with the food
so we'll be able to tell that whole food story.
It's very exciting.
- [Mary] And encourage the local foods movement too
that we can produce it right here
in the upper midwest and enjoy our own
our own fresh fruits and vegetables,
helped by our pollinator friends.
- [Ping] Exactly.
- [Mary] Thank you so much for letting us come
and see the center and learning about
what all that you do here.
And its just been very very interesting.
- Thank you so much for coming to visit.
It's been a real pleasure to have you here
and I hope that some of your viewers are able to
come out and see it for themselves sometime.
(violin music)
- [Male Voice] Funding for Prairie Yard & Garden
is provided in part by Heartland Motor Company,
providing service for over 30 years
in the heart of truck country.
Heartland Motor Company,
we have your best interest at heart.
Farmers mutual telephone company
and federated telephone cooperative,
proud to be powering Acira.
Mark and Margaret Yako Julene, in honor of shalom Hill Farm,
a non profit rural education retreat center
in a beautiful prairie setting near Wyndham
in south western Minnesota.
Shalomhill.org
(jazz music)
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