“Save the bees!” is a common bumper sticker tagline, and with pesticides, climate change, and honey bee colony die-offs dominating Vermont headlines, it’s hard to argue that pollinators aren’t in trouble. That’s why ̽̽ Extension has teamed up with other organizations to create factsheets showing farmers, orchardists and gardeners how to “Know Your Five” pollinators for popular Vermont crops.
The driving idea behind the “Know Your Five” project is to highlight some of the over 350 wild bee species in Vermont so farmers and gardeners know which help pollinate their crops—and how simple it can be to provide these pollinators’ habitat.
“The goal of these guides is to encourage farmers’ awareness of wild pollination services on farms in Vermont,” says ̽̽ Extension Pollinator Support Specialist Laura Johnson, “because most of our diversified fruit and vegetable farmers are relying on wild pollination services and less on managed, or domesticated, honey bees.”
“Know Your Five” guides are now available for seven Vermont-grown crops: apples, blueberries, brambles, ground cherries/tomatillos, stone fruit, strawberries, and squash. Common pollinators found in the wild include dozens of species of bees: mining bees, mason bees, sweat bees, bumble bees.
A Free Service for Farmers
Much recent media focus has been on honey bee colony collapse, and these bees, kept by apiarists and hired out to farms, help pollinate Vermont’s crops. Honey bees, native to parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa, Johnson says, can be transported in large numbers to wherever they’re needed for any given crop. They’re also excellent pollinators. Beekeepers, hired by farmers to bring their bees in to pollinate, are also farmers, making a living from the land and its resources, she adds.
Yet unlike in many other states, says Johnson, many Vermont farms rely on wild species to handle the pollination of food crops, their work ensuring marketable fruit growth and quality. In fact, most Vermont farms, including some orchards, don’t intentionally use commercial bees at all (though a few may drop by for the buffet), instead depending entirely on wild pollinators to produce their crops, Johnson says. And according to Taylor Ricketts, Director of the Gund Institute for Environment, each year, wild bees and other native pollinators pollinate about $3 billion dollars’ worth of crops across the United States.
The advantages of welcoming wild pollinators into farm fields and orchards extend beyond their impressive price tag—free—Johnson says: wild bees are out pollinating away on the cool, drizzly days that typify spring in Vermont, when apple trees and other crops are in bloom. Many of these wild species are generalists, happy to take advantage of various crops as their flowers emerge, while squash and tomatillos have their own, specialized pollinator bees.
“So there's security in protecting wild bee species, in that you're also protecting and reducing risk in your crop pollination on your farm,” Johnson noted.
Offering Pollinators a Home
The “Know Your Five” guides’ creation by was funded in part by the APIS fund, a grant awarded by the Gund Institute for Environment. Each guide provides a list of the top five bees or other wild insects that pollinate the crop, and explains what farmers can do to welcome these pollinators into their fields and orchards by offering habitat and other insect needs. Any otherwise unused space will do: sumac at the edge of a row of blueberry bushes, native wildflowers left to grow in field margins.
Johnson, who developed the guides with Spencer Hardy of the , offers them to the farmers she meets and distributes them at agricultural meetings and events, and they’re also available online.
Johnson says she hopes “that farmers, orchardists and even home gardeners can use these guides to create a landscape that continues to support our wild bee species,” adding, “Vermont is unique in that we don't need managed bees for crop pollination.”
