Category Archives: Wildlife Gardening

Bringing in the Honey at Lavender Hills Farm

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For Tom Morrisey and Tina-May Luker, home is Lavender Hills Farm, a 25-acre property near Orillia in central Ontario, Canada.

Here, beautiful gardens….

….. and a custom-designed, bee-friendly, 2-acre tallgrass prairie meadow (seed-drilled ten years ago by their neighbors and friends Paul Jenkins and Miriam Goldberger of Wildflower Farm) supplement the natural softwood and hardwood forests and swamp that surround their farm.

Tom – who’s been a beekeeper for 40 years – tends 20 colonies at the farm, in addition to 110 colonies he manages in outyards in the region, for a total of 130 colonies.  He calls himself a “sideline beekeeper”, but, of course, at one time he was a novice. He started out four decades ago working as part of the interpretive staff at a provincial park where the focus was agriculture and apple orchards. There was also a beehive under glass at the park – an observation hive – but no one on staff knew anything about bees. So Tom took a 5-day course at the University of Guelph (Ontario’s agricultural college) in order to explain to visitors the fine points about apple pollination.  Later, he moved to the Orillia area and started working in adult education at a local college.

As he recalls now, he looked around at all the farms in the area and thought, “I don’t know anything about farming, but I know about beekeeping!” So he bought a couple of colonies and began keeping bees as a hobby. After working for a while in Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, he went travelling internationally. When he returned to Canada, he met Tina-May Luker and told her he wanted a job where he could ride his bicycle to work. He knocked on the door of commercial beekeeper John Van Alten of Dutchman’s Gold Honey (and later president of the Ontario Beekeepers Association) and offered his services. Two days later, he was hired to help manage between 800-1200 hives.

When he and Tina-May moved back to the Orillia area seventeen years ago, they bought their farm and Tom began beekeeping in earnest, with 50 colonies the first year and another 50 a year later. His farm beeyard is adjacent to the tall-grass meadow and surrounded by electric fencing to deter black bears.

The remainder are situated in a half-dozen outyards within an hour’s drive, with between 10-30 hives at each location. The outyards include a commercial cranberry bog, below,……

…..and a wildflower farm.  His honey house at the farm is a converted double garage several hundred feet from the beeyard and close to the driveway so the honey supers can easily be unloaded from his pickup truck after a trip to the outyards.

That brings us to one of Tom’s favorite beekeeping gadgets, and one he devised himself.  “In my pickup I put a piece of plywood with a little bit of a rim around it, sort of like a picture frame, and put some loops of wire into that, and that allowed me to use straps to tie down all my frame. It’s terrific, and only cost fifty bucks for lumber.”

Tom has another favorite piece of equipment, his “Mr. Long Arm”. That’s an extendable painter’s pole at the end of which he has fashioned something like a butterfly net made of fence brace wire threaded through the seamed end of a heavy-duty plastic shopping bag. “When it’s extended its full length of twelve feet,” he says, “I can often retrieve swarms that have settled well above me in the branches near my beeyards. The bees can’t grip the smooth plastic so I just shake them out into a brood box on the ground. No more ladders for me!”

As for those swarms, he says: “You can use that whole impulse to swarm to make more colonies of bees, if you want them. If you don’t want them, then you’ve got to be very diligent to manage your colonies so they don’t get crowded.”

Tom started raising queens a few years ago and finds it an engrossing learning experience.  “It’s not something a beginner usually tackles, but at some point you get enough confidence to try it, and it’s very interesting.  The whole idea is to try to select bees that have the characteristics that I like working with and to give me a supply of queens early in the season when they’re very handy to have.”

In spring, his bees find willows and red maple in the plentiful swamps around one of the outyards, where thawing occurs earlier than other places. At the farm, local basswood trees (Tilia americana), below, provide a good flow and produce excellent honey about three out of five years.

Abundant staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) feeds the bees and the red fruit clusters provide the fuel for Tom’s smoker.

There’s clover and alfalfa in neighboring farm fields and birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare), below, growing wild along the country roads.

Tina-May’s borders and vegetable garden provide lots of nectar and pollen from plants like Oriental poppy  (Papaver orientale), butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)……

….. motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), below…..

……thyme (Thymus sp.)….

….. and asparagus that’s gone to flower with its bright orange pollen.

In the designed meadow, masses of coreopsis give way to purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), blazing-star (Liatris pycnostachya and L. ligulistylis). The final act, lasting from August well into October, stars the goldenrods, and Tom and Tina-May grow four species including stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida, syn. Oligoneuron rigidum), below,

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…. rough-leaved goldenrod (Solidago rugosa)….

…..and the very late-flowering showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), below.

Says Tom: “Goldenrod is a good honey, very dark and somewhat strong tasting.  The bees produce a bright yellow wax when they’re collecting goldenrod.”  But this late flowering of the goldenrods and native asters also helps the health of the hive, as Tom explains.  “There’s an expression that it’s really good to have ‘fat bees’ going into winter, meaning bees that are really well-fed. And being stimulated by a good flow of nectar and pollen allows them to make the physiological changes they need for winter. Bees in the summer, they’re flying around, they last six weeks, then they die. But in the winter, they have to sit in a hive, they don’t go out for six months, so their whole body, essentially, has to work in a different fashion.”

Most years, Tom’s colonies winter very well, with his survival rates matching or bettering the provincial average.  “I make sure the bees are well fed, because that stimulates them to keep brooding up later in the season. So I feed them in the fall. And I make sure the mites are under control.”  Here’s a little video* I made of Tom explaining how he checks for varroa mites. (*If you’re reading this on an android phone and cannot see the video, try switching from “mobile” to “desktop”. Not sure why that glitch occurs.)

Honey extraction begins in late July and extends well into October.

From time to time, Tom enlists the help of family members like brother-in-law Paul Campbell, seen assisting him below.

Here’s a video I made of Tom and Paul at this time in late summer moving the honey frames for extraction.

Over the years, Tom has automated his honey harvest to lighten the load, but it’s still hot, sticky, noisy work, with rock music blaring from speakers above the clatter of the hot knives of the decapping machine….

…..and the whirring of the horizontal extractor.

Here’s a video I made of the honey extraction process at Lavender Hills Farm. Because it’s hard to hear Tom over the machinery and the music, I put in a few subtitles.

Tom and Tina-May, below, are regulars at four farmers’ markets in the area….

….selling honey, mustard, honey butter, herbal soap, candles, and treats like honey straws that children love. “Farmers’ markets are a great place to get to know your customers and build a steady market for your product,” says Tom.  “People want to know that you’re the beekeeper, and they want to hear stories about keeping bees, just like I’m telling stories now.”

It’s a demanding occupation with lots of tiring physical work and he gets stung “dozens of times a day, sometimes”. And the challenges are many now. “When I started,” he recalls, “There were no parasitic mites, viruses weren’t an issue, and agri-chemicals didn’t seem to be as big a factor. You could put a box of bees in the back of the farm, they’d winter all right, and you’d get a box of honey. It’s certainly changed in the past twenty years.”

One of the newest factors is small hive beetle, and though it’s been seen in the Niagara region, it hasn’t yet made it this far north.  However he’s heard talk of beekeepers arranging refrigerated storage for their honey frames

But Tom is still enthralled with the whole thing. “Keeping bees is a very elemental occupation. The bees are subject to all the natural forces around them, from the plants to the weather and all the variations in between. It’s one expression of nature that you can roll up your sleeves and get right into. And that’s very enjoyable, because every year is different.”

If there’s one piece of advice he’d give to a new beekeeper, it’s this: “Get two hives, not just one, because of the chance of you either making a mistake or nature dealing you a blow that might take one of your hives, but you’ll always have another one.”

And that could be the beginning of a very long love affair.

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This story is a much-expanded version of an article that appeared earlier this year in a beekeeping magazine.  It’s a joy to know both Tom Morrisey and Tina-May Luker, below, with me at the Gravenhurst Farmer’s Market on Lake Muskoka this summer.

Honey bees are favourite photography subjects of mine. To see a large album of my honey bees on flowers, have a look at my stock photo portfolio.

Bella and Bianca – Our Monarch Chrysalis Summer

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It was a bittersweet summer in the milkweed patch in my cottage meadow on Lake Muskoka.   There were monarch butterflies and hungry caterpillars. There were two chrysalis vigils. There was joy and sadness, and I learned a lot about this extraordinary and complex biological process called metamorphosis. This is my summer journal.

July 19 – I notice my first tiny monarch caterpillar on butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) leaves in my dusty rock garden behind the cottage. I recalled a monarch flitting about purposefully about three weeks before, on Canada Day weekend.

Another is munching on the flower buds of a different plant of the same species.

The buds of this type of milkweed do seem to be a popular place for monarchs to “oviposit”, or lay eggs (with their ovipositor).  The photo below is from 2012.  A typical monarch will lay 200- 400 eggs in her laying period, which lasts between three to five weeks. And it’s estimated that 99% of those will not survive to maturity.

The upper leaves are also used, which makes sense since they’re tender and likely not as concentrated in latex, the plant’s defence mechanism, which can be toxic to caterpillars in strong enough concentrations (and also toxic to birds that try to eat the caterpillars or the butterflies).  But just as milkweed plants have evolved to resist predation, monarch caterpillars have evolved to outwit the plants, by chewing carefully on parts of the leaf’s vascular system to keep the latex from flowing.  Some milkweeds, like butterfly milkweed here, are also hairy and young caterpillars often “shave” the leaves for a long time before eating them.  Check out this interesting video by a Cornell ecologist who has specialized in milkweed-monarch co-evolution.

JULY 21 – Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) showed up by itself in my meadows a few years ago. I love the fragrance and it’s a good nectar plant for many bees and butterflies, as well as food for monarchs. But I only have two plants and one is filled with caterpillars, while the other is empty.

JULY 22 – Monarch caterpillars are eating and excreting machines.  After the egg develops into the first tiny larva, i.e. caterpillar – called the first instar – approximately 3-5 days later, there are four subsequent developments that span roughly 9-14 days, depending on climate. Each time, the caterpillar molts or sheds its skin. In the photo below, you can see the top caterpillar in the act of excreting its waste, called frass. Its head faces the stem, and the antennae-like organs are called the front filaments or tentacles. There are 3 pairs of jointed true legs near the front; the knobby things behind are prolegs and there are 5 pairs of them fitted with hooks to hang onto leaves.  Behind its head, the caterpillar has segments divided into thoracic and abdominal segments. The 8 abdominal segments feature tiny breathing holes called spiracles.

A milkweed plant is a messy place with this many caterpillars feeding.

Because my other common milkweed has no larvae, after checking online I decide to very gently relocate some of them from the rapidly diminishing plant nearby. At first they curl up in a defensive position.

But gradually they uncurl….

…. and soon they are climbing up the stem past the perfumed blossoms towards the tender leaves at the top.

JULY 23 – It is astonishing to see the efficiency of this munching army…..

…… as they strip the foliage and flowers from the new plant, too.

I make a little video of the caterpillars eating from the two species of milkweed.

I spot a tiny caterpillar and decide to try it on a plant of butterfly milkweed. It’s only later, after I watch it reject the other species, that I learn that while it’s fine to move caterpillars from one plant to another, they should be the same Asclepias species. It inspires me to create a whimsical little video for my Facebook page about this time in July to illustrate the quandary of “too many caterpillars, not enough milkweed”.

JULY 25 – On the dusty hillside behind my cottage, monarchs are on almost every butterfly milkweed plant.  July has been so dry, I feel compelled to water these forgotten plants so they provide nourishment for the caterpillars. It’s only now as I’m writing this blog that I note the bent stem and realize that this caterpillar may well have chewed it carefully until it almost breaks, thus preventing the toxic latex from reaching the top leaves.

In the monarda meadow near the cottage where the common milkweed grows, the caterpillars are now on the move, looking for a place to make their chrysalis. I spot one climbing along a blade of grass..

JULY 26 – I spy another on a fleabane stem, below. Note the chunky “prolegs” gripping the stem.  Like all insects, monarchs (caterpillars and butterflies) have six legs – but those are the “true legs”, and they’re found just behind the caterpillar’s head on its thorax.  They are used for locomotion. The cylinder-shaped prolegs, on the other hand, are used to grip stems tightly as the caterpillar moves its body around.  They are loosened one at a time as the caterpillar moves forward, beginning with the anal prolegs at the top in this photo . Prolegs also have a pad at the end called a crochet with tiny barbs that allow them to hook onto leaves, stems and other surfaces.

JULY 28 – Today brings a thrilling development: I spot one of the caterpillars on a wild beebalm leaf (Monarda fistulosa) conveniently adjacent to the path and it’s making the distinctive “J-shape”…..

….. that signals a chrysalis is about to emerge from that old skin, soon to be shed.

As happens with life processes (and life), it’s best to stay focused. I go inside for a few hours, thinking this will develop slowly.  Not at all. When I return later, there is a beautiful green chrysalis already formed and suspended by its black “cremaster” from the monarda leaf.

This process is utterfly fascinating and fortunately someone has captured most of it with his camera. If you have a spare 10 minutes, this is a pretty cool realtime video by Jude Adamson.

JULY 29 – So now the waiting game begins. The chrysalis is so well camouflaged I eventually need a stick on the path to mark it in my monarda meadow (so called because that’s the main plant of summer, for my bumble bees.)  Can you see where that yellow arrow is pointing?

AUGUST 2 – My three young grandchildren (6, 4 and 2) arrive for a holiday.  I’m so excited because they’re here for 10 days and that means they should see the butterfly emerge. The 4-year old finds the chrysalis immediately.

Five days old now, it is a beautiful work of nature. Cousins, aunts, uncles and great aunts walk down my path to look at it.

AUGUST 4 – Just by chance, the 6-year old and her daddy have brought up coffee filters and instructions for making beautiful butterflies. They catch the light in the cottage window.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, we climb up the hill and at the very top in the septic bed, we find my original butterfly milkweed (the one where I photographed the monarch egg 7 years ago) with more caterpillars feeding. The leaves are already wilting from drought in our hot July, so I connect two hoses and run them up the hill to its base.

Must revive those wilting leaves for these caterpillars!

AUGUST 6 – Meanwhile, a big male monarch butterfly is seen nectaring on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) down by the lake shore.

AUGUST 7 – The next day, he’s gracing the flowers of butterfly milkweed too. How do I know it’s a male? Because of the two paired black scent glands near the bottom of his hind wings; these are used to attract females. I’m assuming this is one of my caterpillars, since my meadows and milkweed are fairly isolated on this lake surrounded mostly by white pines, red oaks and hemlocks.  There are perennial borders for nectar at a few of the neighbouring cottages, but most of the milkweed is found on the highway edges (where it hasn’t been mown down) and in old fields.

Here’s a little video I make of him the next day foraging for nectar on this milkweed, which has been growing in this spot for more than 12 years now.


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Will my male still be around when his ‘siblings’ emerge?  Given our latitude 45oN – the same latitude as Minneapolis – he and the pupa still in the chrysalis are part of the long-lived “migration generation” of 2019’s eastern monarch population (the western population is west of the Rockies).  Unlike the other generations they exhibit delayed sexuality, so do not mate now. Provided they survive, they will leave Muskoka and fly south on an arduous, unique migration journey that I wrote about in a blog in 2014 in conjunction with the screening of a 3D film called Flight of the Butterflies. Here’s the trailer for the film, showing the oyamel firs in Mexico where this generation will roost for the winter, until they finally begin their remarkable migration north next spring and breed in Texas or near the Gulf of Mexico, before dying.

AUGUST 8 – It is raining today, but I’m keeping a close watch on “Bella”, as my 6-year old granddaughter has decided to name her. We know it’s a girl because when I lift up the monarda leaf to look at the back of the chrysalis, we see the little vertical seam near the top, as shown by the yellow arrow below.  And look at the embossed butterfly shape within.

AUGUST 9 – It pours again today, making up in August for all the dry, hot days of July and making the meadow flowers very happy. The chrysalis also needs moisture, but the developing butterfly inside – called a “pupa” – is well protected from the weather. I make a video showing my meadow and its special guest in the rain.

I spend a lot of time watching the chrysalis, since the transformation to a butterfly – the “eclosure” – can happen quickly.  I can just see the wings forming on the pupa inside.

AUGUST 10 – It’s my birthday! And I can’t imagine a finer gift than to watch a butterfly emerge while my grandkids watch. The cool overnight rain has caused some of the hundreds of bumble bees in my meadows to sleep in the shelter of the wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) flowers until temperatures warm up. I’m watching them stir to life…..

…. when suddenly I glimpse something extraordinary. All this time I’ve been watching Bella’s chrysalis, just down the path another monarch pupa has been developing in a clump of aphid-infested false oxeye daisies (Heliopsis helianthoides). It’s only because it is black in colour and transparent, meaning it’s about to eclose, that I notice it now. How exciting is this?!  Can you see it?

Now I have two sites to watch. Fortunately, I have no meals to prepare on my birthday and can spend as much time as I like outdoors!

I think about the ecology of this planted meadow, where the chrysalis of a native butterfly is sharing space on a native plant with that plant’s associated native red aphids (Uroleucon obscuricaudatus). Fortunately neither insect seems bothered by the other.  The photo below is at 10:50 am.

Even though I’m determined to photograph the new chrysalis as the pupa ecloses, I’ve been watching for almost 3 hours now and have a few chores to do indoors.  But not having researched enough, I fail to recognize an important sign that things are starting to happen.  See that little gap in the horizontal pleat, below? It means that the butterfly inside is starting to expand and push out on the chrysalis and eclosure will likely happen within the hour. This is 2:30 pm.

So I’m disappointed, but also happy when I come out at 3:38 pm to see family members on the path admiring our brand new female butterfly…..

……….hanging from her chrysalis, which has now turned white. My granddaughter names her Bianca – which seems like a lovely name for a butterfly that may well be living in Mexico in a few short months.

I settle back into my chair and, as my grandchildren come down the path to point her out to relatives and watch her find her wings, we all rejoice in this timeless last chapter of monarch metamorphosis.  Watch with me for a moment.

Though I conscientiously videotape almost all of her movements as she climbs the heliopsis plant over the next two-and-a-half hours, I gaze away for a moment while deep in conversation and Bianca shivers her beautiful wings…….

….. and takes flight, landing way up in the boughs of a white pine tree as if she’s practising for the oyamel firs of Mexico.

I check quickly on Bella, but her chrysalis is still green. And then it’s time for my birthday dinner.  It’s been a perfect day with the best gift I’ve ever had – witnessing one of nature’s miracles, followed by chocolate cupcakes presented to me by my famlly!

AUGUST 11 – It’s time for the grandchildren to return home and they’ve finished packing all their important possessions.  After lunch, they drive off with mommy and daddy.

Meanwhile, out in the breezy meadow, I sit and watch. A clearwing hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe) darts from beebalm to beebalm.

An uncommon bumble bee (Bombus perplexus) nectars in the blossoms.

Bella’s chrysalis is turning darker. That means she should eclose within 48 hours. Will today be the day?  I set up my camera on the tripod and make this video at 6:26 pm.

AUGUST 12 – By the time I go out to the path the next morning at 7:40 am, the distinctive expansion of the horizontal pleat on Bella’s chrysalis has begun. It is her 13th day in the pupal stage. I set my camera to video mode and wait. An hour later, it begins. The video below compresses an 8-minute period into less than a minute. I am fascinated by her strenuous efforts to use her forelegs as anchors to push out of the chrysalis. In a strange way, it reminds me of all the physical effort of the labour that precedes childbirth.  Alas, since I’m new at this eclosure watch, I only realize near the end that my lens is too closely focused on the chrysalis; when Bella emerges, she falls out of my frame. Fortunately, she hangs onto the very tip of the beebalm leaf and I quickly adjust my lens.

Having missed Bianca’s eclosure, I’m thrilled to have witnessed Bella emerging. I keep my camera focused on her and note the drop of meconium suspended through her anal opening. This is the waste product from her weeks in the chrysalis.

She hangs her wings to dry them, with lots of room in the meadow to manoeuvre.  Some newly-eclosed butterflies are said to injure themselves when they cannot fully stretch their wings. The next step is to pump her wings full of liquid to expand them prior to flying.

Then I wait and watch. I sit in the path reading my book, checking my emails from time to time, but mostly staring at this tiny little creature, willing it to fly.

For more than eight hours I wait and watch, keeping her in my viewfinder.  I check the internet to see how long it might be before a young monarch finds her wings. Two hours is the average, maybe a little more. I give her all the benefit of doubt; we have waited so long to see her.  Blue jays and song sparrows call from the pines, cicadas drone noisily and train whistles echo beyond the forest. I watch Bella try repeatedly to pump her little wings open, but she fails. The video below captures almost nine hours in less than 2 minutes.

Bella is shrivelling up now. She’s just a little insect, a tiny speck in the universe, but I am devastated.

Some of my friends have raised monarchs in captivity, carefully monitoring the various stages and releasing them safely after they eclose. My friend Kylee Baumle wrote a popular book called The Monarch: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly.

Carol Pasternak, the “Monarch Crusader”, wrote a book called How to Raise Monarchs: A Step by Step Guide for Kids.

Bella was to have been an experience in the wild, in our very own meadow, but unlike Bianca she paid the heavy cost levied by mother nature. It’s estimated that more than 90 percent of monarch butterflies fail to survive in the wild. I search online for the most compassionate way to end her short life. Then I remove her gently from the beebalm leaf and hold her on my hand. I feel her little feet tickling my palm. I thank her for letting us watch. And I cry buckets of tears that I realize are not all for Bella, but for the sad things that happen in everyone’s life at some point, the things we fail to properly mourn.

When I began this blog, it was going to be a celebration of the birth (or eclosure) of the first monarch butterfly I’d ever seen form a chrysalis. It didn’t turn out that way, but it was a fascinating journey nonetheless – and a lesson that nature can be harsh and survival isn’t assured with beautiful, much-loved insects, any more than it is with other animals on this planet.  Thank you Bianca, and thank you most especially little Bella.

 

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If you liked this litle rumination on monarchs, please leave me a comment. I’d love to hear about your own experiences.

Searching for Carden Alvar

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It’s a free day at the cottage and I pack a lunch and my cameras and head out on the highway to visit one of Ontario’s newest parks, the 1917-hectare (4,737 acre) Carden Alvar Provincial Park.  I am an armchair geologist… well, in my own mind, where it’s possible to be anything I want to be.  But having spent a few months reading John McPhee’s fabulous, Pulitzer-Prize-winning, 660-page anthology Annals of the Former World (1998) followed by geologist Nick Eyles’ engrossing Road Rocks Ontario (2013), I have decided to explore one of Central Ontario’s rare protected alvar habitats. I want to see for myself what Eyles describes as “these windswept grasslands that are now Ontario’s prairies.”  Alvar is a Swedish word, first coined to describe limestone plains with little or no soil, exemplified by the biggest alvar in Europe, Stora Alvaret off the Swedish island of Öland.  The Burren in County Clare, Ireland, is a large alvar.  But in North America, the alvars are found near the Great Lakes, including Manitoulin Island and the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron, and Pelee Island in Lake Erie.

Located northeast of Lake Simcoe and east of Orillia at the western edge of Kawartha District (its map address is City of Kawartha Lakes), Carden Alvar is less than an hour from my cottage on Lake Muskoka.    But as with any exploration of new areas, it’s a good idea to research thoroughly beforehand. This becomes clear as I  drive blithely south along Highway 169, past Highways 46 and 47 where I should make my turn, while listening to the dulcet voice of Google maps telling me ‘Signal is unavailable’. In time I pull over and consult a map, turn around and retrace my route, and eventually come to the corner of McNamee & Wylie Roads…..

…. which, like much of the Carden Alvar, is considered an IBA – Important Bird Area.   Eastern bluebird, bobolink, eastern meadowlark, savannah sparrow and the critically endangered loggerhead shrike are among many denizens of the grasslands, marshes and forest here.

It will be some time before I realize that I am not going to find a traditional ‘park’ with a visitor centre or the kind of facilities we associate with that term. Instead, I find a series of neighbouring farms with roadside signs describing their relationship variously to the Couchiching Conservancy, Nature Conservancy, Carden Field Naturalists and/or the Carden Alvar.  I get out of my car at the sign for the Bluebird Ranch – clearly a clue for the bird that would be seen here in season.

I don’t see an alvar, but a wet path leads through a small meadow riddled with poison ivy.

I’m glad I changed from my flip-flops to running shoes, as there are warnings posted on all the conservancy signs. (Note to self: check to see if poison ivy prefers alkaline soil. We rarely see it on the granitic Shield in Muskoka.)

I walk back through the small pull-off parking space and kick at a plastic vodka bottle lying in the gravel. Clearly local folks come to Carden Alvar to party. But the gravel reminds me that the very fact that so many roads and building projects use crushed limestone is the reason that so much rural Ontario property is sold to quarrying companies. There is a real need to conserve alvar habitats, especially those that time and circumstance have kept fairly pristine.

Wylie Road is lined with numbered eastern bluebird nesting boxes. (Another note to self: Return in spring when the bluebirds are nesting!)  As this blog on the Couchiching Conservancy says, “The bluebird is doing well in Carden, thanks to two things: first, a local man named Herb Furniss has spent the last few decades building and distributing white bluebird boxes throughout the region, quietly making a huge difference for these little birds; second, Wylie Road rolls through an area where more than 6,000 acres of grassland, forest and wetland has been conserved as natural habitat.”

I get back in my car and begin driving north on Wylie. Somewhere I saw that this is a 9-kilometre road, but that won’t be significant for a few hours. Minutes later, I see the sign announcing the conservation of the next property, Windmill Ranch. It thrills me that so many landowners forego profit for philanthropy, and so many ecological institutions devote themselves to saving properties like these from development.

I’m excited to spot a little outcrop of limestone in the farm field – i.e. the limestone ‘pavement’ or epikarst. It reminds me that much of the limestone here is under the soil, but where it peeks out or hasn’t been eroded to soil and planted to crops, the plant species it supports are unique, often rare and typically found on prairies.

Windmill ranch occupies 4 kilometres along Wylie. At 647 hectares (1600 acres), it was farmed for cattle by the late Art Hawtin – first with his dad in his 20s and 30s, then with his wife Noreen into his 80s. In 2006, the ranch was acquired by the Nature Conservancy of Canada in an arrangement with the Couchiching Conservancy; in 2014, it became part of the Carden Alvar Park.  In writing this blog, I discovered that Art Hawtin was not just a favourite math teacher for 17 years, but was a POW held by the Germans in the same prison in Poland, Stalag Luft III,  as the Allied fliers who escaped in 1943 in the breakout that would be celebrated in a book and the Steve McQueen film, The Great Escape.

As I drive along the road, grazing cattle move towards the fence and my car. I presume they’re used to being tended to here by ranch employees — the only people who likely use the road, along with bird-watchers.  Parts of the properties under protection continue to be grazed or farmed for hay.

Before long, I come upon a small pull-off where I park. Just beyond is a little ochre-yellow bird blind.

I undo the latch and enter, gazing through one window…….

…… then the other. What lovely framed views.

I wish I was the kind of person who wakes up early and goes out with binoculars to check off avian species on a life list.  But I’m not. I notice the species list (a little damp from rain) published by Bob Bowles of Orillia.

(An aside: I have fond memories of Bob, in the navy ball cap, coming to my own cottage in Muskoka one autumn to help my hiking pals and me identify mushroom species on our peninsula.)

When I go back out to get in my car, I’m rewarded with the sight of barn swallows diving across the road and returning to sit on the wire fence. Evidently, they are increasingly threatened by loss of habitat.

Here I see adults….

….. and sweet little chicks.

There seems to be a great abundance of wild fruit along the road: lots of staghorn sumac as well as non-native honeysuckle.

All around is the buzz of bees visiting the blue flowers of viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) and white sweetclover (Melilotus albus).  Though they’re not native, they’re feeding every manner of bumble bee and solitary bee.

I stand for a while and listen to the meadow and the wind in the grasses.

The day before saw a deluge of rain in central Ontario, and the fields in lower sections are partially flooded. One of the characteristics of alvars is shallow soil and frequent flooding.

Wylie Road ahead of me is a series of giant, deep puddles stretching from one side of the limestone gravel surface to the other.

I stop at an interpretive sign for the Sedge Wren Marsh Walking Trail and get out of my car and begin walking in …..

….. but decide that the puddles on the path might be too much for my footwear.

Coming out I make my first sighting ever of wild fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica).

Back in the car, I come to lovely wetland and open my car window to gaze at spotted Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum) and cattails (Typha latifolia) right beside me.


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As I cross a rusty bridge, I gaze out across a fen with floating sedge mats and a forest of white spruce in the distance.

I adore central Ontario’s wetland plants, including the fluffy, white tall meadowrue (Thalictrum pubescens) here.

And then, of course, there are the usual alien suspects: bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) and Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota).

From time to time, farm fields give way to fragments of woodland, like these lovely aspens. That ‘edge’ habitat bordering on open fields is excellent for attracting birds of all kinds.

A sign advises visitors not to block traffic on the road. I smile a little, since the only car I’ve seen in my two hours of dawdling along Wylie Road is mine!  But it’s popular with birdwatchers, especially in spring. Have a look at this blog for some fabulous bird photos made in late May, when pink-flowered prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) appears to fill the fields.

Now I come to Art’s Ranch.

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is one of the most abundant native shrubs in Ontario, growing on both the northern Shield and the central limestone belt. Its fruits feed myriad birds and mammals.

Roads made of limestone tend to erode easily because limestone carbonates break down in water of any kind, and even more quickly in acid rain.  I cross my fingers that my car is up to the rough conditions (I’ve never had a flat tire)…..

…. and begin to drive north, splashing deep every few minutes.

Finally, as I begin to think I’ll never reach the end of Wylie Road, I do. And here is the North Bear Alvar, a 325-hectare (800-acre) parcel of the Carden Alvar that was conserved in 2011.  According to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, there’s a 4.5 kilometre ( mile) wilderness loop trail here “that leads you through a lush wetland where blueflag iris and swamp milkweed grow. Keep an eye out for turtles basking on logs or rocks…. Continue through a meadow of wildflowers, listen for the music of grassland birds, such as upland sandpiper, and watch for the flash of the brightly coloured golden-winged warbler.”

I drive west on this road and come to the definitive clue that I’ve been in the right place for the past 2-1/2 hours, a signpost for Alvar Road.

At the west end of Alvar Road, it intersects with Lake Dalrymple Road.  I drive south along the lake and here I have my most thrilling avian moment – if not exaclty a notch on an alvar species list. High up on a power pole is a massive nest…..

…. in which two juvenile osprey are chirping their hearts out, waiting for their parents to return with fish.

Have a listen to their plaintive cries. (I have no tripod, so the extreme zoom on my little Canon SX50HS camera is put to the test.)

Back in the car, I continue driving south along the lake and come to the Carden Township Recreation Centre. The door is locked and the place is empty…..

…. but there are interpretive signs nearby promising wonderful flora on the alvar…..

….. and rare bird sightings.

I walk out on a path and see the same abundant milkweed meadows I might find near my cottage. Clearly, I am late for the alvar floral display, which seems to have peaked in late May and early June, but I see a lone monarch butterfly circling..

Back in the car, I drive a short distance south and come to the Lake Dalrymple Resort.  I pull in.

When I ask the proprietor about the alvar flora, he looks puzzled. “There’s a sign back at the Recreation Centre”, he offers, as he scoops me an ice cream cone, I tell him there was no one at the rec centre. “Maybe another sign down the road,” he says, pointing south.  (The flavour is Muskoka mocha, and highly recommended.)

A short drive down Lake Dalrymple Road and I slam on the brakes. Looking east and up a rise through trembling aspens, I see the characteristic layers of a limestone shelf. When I set out in my boat on Lake Muskoka this morning, I left a shore of Precambrian gneiss that is somewhere between 1 and 1.4 billion years old.

Here, on the other hand, these exposed layers of fossil-rich limestone in the Bobcaygeon Formation were laid down in the Iapetus Ocean in the Ordovician era, roughly 500 million years ago.  While sediment deposited when the glaciers retreated 10-12,000 years ago covers much of Ontario’s limestone, here in much of Carden Alvar, it forms the pavement (epikarst).

Finally, having driven counter-clockwise around much of the alvar, I come to the place that holds such appeal for me. It’s the Prairie Smoke Alvar, a 2006 donation by artist Karen Popp to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and now managed with two other conservation bodies.

But I am a little puzzled, because from here, it just looks like a hayfield. Indeed, hay-baling is happening at this very moment.  It will be days before I understand the relationship between the farms and the conservancies that manage them. Indeed there is a mandate for this hayfield: “Hay fields near the entrance of the property are being managed to support grassland breeding birds such as Bobolinks and Eastern Meadowlarks, and also provide grazing for several dozen White-tailed Deer in early spring.”

Understanding these relationships and the late May flowering on limestone pavement of many of the rare alvar species, including prairie smoke and Indian paintbrush will dictate a return trip next spring and a walk down this well-worn track to find them.

I finish my search for Carden Alvar in the small parking lot of the 1,214-hectare (3,000 acre) Cameron Ranch…..

…… and leap-frog rain puddles to stroll the boardwalk. Here, according to the Couchiching Conservancy, are “northern dropseed, tufted hairgrass, early buttercup, alse pennyroyal and prairie smoke.”

I’ve been exploring the alvar for 4-1/2 hours and it’s time to drive back to Muskoka. As I head back to my car, I gaze down at my feet standing atop limestone gravel.  For decades, the only use that people made of central Ontario’s Ordovician limestone and dolomite was aggregate for roads and buildings or flagstone pavers for landscaping.. Today, intelligent, ecologically-attuned people understand that digging out more and more limestone quarries for human use eradicates vital habitat for many species that depend on these ecosystems.  As I kick the 500-million year old gravel beneath my shoes, I give thanks for the efforts of the many conservancies that have secured vital protection for Carden Alvar.

And, of course, I promise myself a return trip next spring to see the prairie smoke in bloom.

A Garden for Wildlife in Texas

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When the newspaper cartoonist and trailblazing conservationist Ding (Jay Norwood) Darling (1876-1962) established the National Wildlife Federation in 1936, he had conservation as his goal.  “Land, water and vegetation are just that dependent on one another. Without these three primary elements in natural balance, we can have neither fish nor game, wild flowers nor trees, labor nor capital, nor sustaining habitat for humans.”  Ruthie Burrus’s Austin garden meets those critera, and an NWF sign proclaims her intention for all visitors to see.

But it’s not really necessary to read the words on the sign, for you can discern Ruthie’s intent based on the masses of pollinator-friendly plants flanking the long driveway at its start near the road…..

…. and the painted lady butterfly nectaring on the mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea)…..

…. and the honey bee foraging on the blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella)…..

…. and the cottage garden-style matrix of self-seeding, mostly native wildflowers and grasses.

For structure, Ruthie has used the “it plant” that we saw in almost every Austin garden, the beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia).

Not every plant is native – brilliant, bee-friendly corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) have been incorporated, and self-seed regularly.

But the Texas natives do attract their share of pollinators, including this beautiful pipevine swallowtail butterfly nectaring on Hesperaloe parviflora, or red yucca.

There was lovely pink evening primrose (Oenothera  speciosa)….

And Engelmann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia)…

And lemon beebalm  (Monarda citriodora…

And rock rose (Pavonia lasiopetala).

The curving driveway’s retaining wall is draped with bee-friendly rosemary.
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When we reached the top of the driveway, we were treated to a tamer garden surrounding the Burrus’s lovely limestone home.

Ruthie Burrus was waiting for us there, ready to tour us around.

But even here, the plant palette was chosen to attract pollinators, like the honey bee on Salvia guaranitica ‘Amistad’, below.

In the shade, surrounded by ferns, was a water trough fountain with a slow-trickling stream of water cascading to the plantings below, then recirculated.

This was Texas hill country, and the view st the back of the house over the pool to downtown Austin was spectacular.

I loved the outdoor living room, protected from Texas gullywashers by a roof, and featuring a fireplace for cool evenings.

Beautiful succulent designs filled pots and troughs outdoors.

Many homeowners are including woodburning pizza ovens in their landscapes these days, and Ruthie’s was beautifully landscaped with Phlomis and agaves.

Nearby was a sweet building that Ruthie calls her garden haus.

A large cistern — one of two on the property — gathers rainwater channelled to it via a system of drains. A pump then facilitates irrigation of the garden.

We were just leaving when I heard excited voices at the front of the house. Looking up, I saw a huge tarantula on the cool limestone wall.  At the risk of anthrpomorphizing a little, it seemed to be saying, “I’m a Texas native insect too, and there’s room for all of us here!”

 

Pollen for Honey Bees in a Rainbow of Colours

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You hear a lot about flower nectar, when people talk about growing “flowers for bees”, but you don’t hear nearly as much about pollen. And given that pollen, and by extension pollination, is the principal quid pro quo in the evolutionary pact that sees bees trade sex services for food, much more should be written about pollen. It is of vital importance to the bee larvae, for which it is the protein that develops their growth. In one of my classic old books on beekeeping, Plants and Beekeping by F.N. Howles (1945), he writes: “It has been calculated that about ten average bee loads of pollen are necessary to produce one worker bee and that on an average one pound of pollen rears 4,540 bees, which works out at about 44 lb. of pollen for an average colony’s breeding requirements in a season.” Without sufficient pollen, the colony would die off.

Because I spent several years photographing honey bees (Apis mellifera) for a book idea I once had, I got to see a lot of pollen up close and personal, like the golden pollen being patiently collected from Gaillardia ‘Mesa Yellow’, below.

I saw bee faces completely dusted with sticky pollen; I watched them perform aerial dance maneuvers as they packed pollen into their corbiculae, before settling back onto flowers; and I observed them flying back to the hive, legs laden with saddlebags of pollen in all colours of the rainbow, like the white datura pollen below.

It’s pollen colour in all its wonderful variety that I want to celebrate here, from the first blossoms of spring to the last of autumn.

Let’s start with hardy perennials and bulbs. Crocuses have very large pollen grains. I’ve watched honey bees curling their entire bodies into silken crocus chalices, like C. x lutea ‘Golden Yellow’, below.

Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) produces azure-blue pollen.

Little striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) rewards visitors with beige pollen.

Grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) can often be seen with bees working the flowers as they open from the bottom of the spike up. Pollen is whitish-cream in colour.

Orchards are filled with bees in spring, among them honey bees, thus ensuring that there will be tasty fruit come late summer. This is the hardy ‘Reliance’ peach (Prunus persica) with light-brown pollen.

The Dutch call alpine rockcress (Arabis alpina) “honigschub’ or honey bush and it’s easy to see why. Very early in spring, before most perennials have thought about emerging, arabis is feeding the bees nectar and a sticky light-brown pollen.

Although forget-me-nots are prodigious nectar sources – especially considering the vast quantities of the tiny flowers in spring gardens – their pollen grains are among the smallest measured and from my observations, not very prominent in corbiculae (pollen baskets). But for a bee to insert its tongue into the narrow corolla of a forget-me-not, the net result will be that some pollen will dust off on the proboscis and the head, which the bee will gather for the hive. And because of that narrow opening, pollen is often mixed in with the nectar that forget-me-nots yield, and is measurable in the honey.

Though the shrubby European honeysuckles like Lonicera tatarica, below, can be invasive, they are good early sources of pollen.

The bright-orange pollen of California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is always a great lure for honey bees.

When the yellowwood tree (Cladrastis kentukea) has a good year for bloom – sometimes just one year in three – the flowers with their tawny-gold pollen are avidly sought out by honey bees and native bumble bees and solitary bees.

Beekeepers always know when Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) are in flower, because homecoming bees are dusted with black pollen.

Peony stamens are a rich source of pollen, with one count estimating a single peony might have 3.5 million pollen grains.  This is Paeonia ‘Sunday Chimes’, below.

The knotweeds (Centaurea sp.) are excellent plants for bee forage, and beautiful in the late spring-early summer garden.  Globe centaurea (Centaurea macrocephala) offers pollen in golden-yellow…..

….. while Centaurea dealbata ‘John Coutts’ produces creamy-beige pollen.

Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) is irresistible to bees when the prominent stamens are yielding their creamy-white pollen, below.

Native American copper iris (I. fulva) is popular with hummingbirds, but on the High Line one day, I watched honey bees patiently working the flowers and securing ample loads of near white pollen.

Knautia macedonica is my very favourite pollen producer, yielding a rich magenta-pink pollen that makes honey bee faces look adorable and their packed corbiculae seem like airborne jewelry.

Roses, especially single and semi-double forms with prominent stamens, are often good sources of pollen, which they yield mostly in the morning, apparently. The David Austin shrub below produced amber-brown pollen.

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Certain clematis species are good sources of pollen. One that flowers in early summer is Clematis koreana – and the bee working it had packed a jewel-like pollen pearl in her pollen basket.

Filipendulas are good forage plants and native qneen-of-the-prairie or meadowsweet (Filipendula rubra) provides pollen in early summer for native bees and honey bees. This is the showy cultivar ‘Venusta’ with creamy-white pollen.

Bumble bees and honey bees are always buzzing around globe thistles (Echinops sp.), which yield a whitish pollen from the masses of tiny flowers.

To see a planting of helenium or sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) in full sun in late summer is to see a happy bee festival. And the abundant pollen is rich orange. One source mentions the bitter nature of helenium honey, but at the point where helenium is in flower, beekeepers are often letting the bees collect nectar for winter honey stores.

Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida) yield neglible nectar but the yellow stamens are rich sources of white pollen.

With its masses of tiny, white flowers, sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) is very popular with bees. I watched the honey bee below doing an intricate aerial dance to pack in white pollen from a massive vine.

By the end of summer into early autumn, the various goldenrods and asters (Michaelmas daisies) offer nectar that is often vital for bees to survive winter, though most beekeepers must provide additional winter food for their bees. (Goldenrod makes a strong honey that is not generally sold commercially.) But bees also collect pollen from these late perennials, like the very late-blooming showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), below, with its golden-yellow pollen. This will help sustain the hive until spring.

Of the asters, I loved this image of a bee hanging from lance-leaved aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum), its corbicula packed with yellow pollen…..

….. and the beautiful New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) and its many cultivars, like the one below, are well worth growing in every garden – something lovely for you and the bees as the season ends.

Annuals and tender perennials and bulbs can also be good sources of colourful pollen. This is Ageratum houstonianum with lots of pure white pollen.

Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) and their many cultivars are a treat for all types of bees, especially the native sunflower bees adapted to this North American flower. But honey bees enjoy nectaring on the tiny ‘true’ flowers and gathering the yellowish pollen, too.

Single portulacas (P. grandiflora) have bright orange pollen, as you can from the bee crawling out of the silky blossom below.

I’ve seen lots of tender S. African bulbines (B. frutescens) growing in summer gardens recently, much to the delight of honey bees gathering pale yellow pollen from the feathery stamens.

Weeds like Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) are never appreciated by gardeners, and many are highly invasive and on noxious plant lists. But you will often see bees of all kinds foraging for nectar and pollen on thistles…..

….. and dusting themselves completely with the white pollen of the pretty blue summer flowers of chicory (Cichorium intybus)…..

…. and flying about with the telltale yellow ‘pollen head’ that is a sure sign that the bee has been in a toadflax flower (Linaria vulgaris).

Finally, I’d like to include a few vegetables that bees like – not for the stems or the roots, but for the flowers that have resulted from the plants “bolting”. This is what happens to a radish (Raphanus sativus) when it’s going to seed – yellow pollen much appreciated by this little honey bee.

Brassicas like broccoli, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts also form flowers as part of their biennial life cycle – and the bees love the yellow pollen that forms.

Last but not least, a perennial vegetable we all know and love for its tender spring shoots – but have you watched bees gathering bright orange pollen from the tiny, yellow male flowers? It is a feat of acrobatics worthy of any high-flying trapeze act!

(PS  – Are you a bee-lover? To see a large selection of my honey bee stock photography, visit my Smug Mug pages.  And you’ll find a load of bumble bees and other native North American bees and bee kin on my page as well.)