Last in a series on pollinators.

KITTY HAWK — Denise Deacon inspects her bees. This year she only has one hive, although in years past she has had more — as many as eight.

She gently pries the lid off and points to the dark brown resin that lines the top of the inside of the hive.

“That’s the propolis,” she says, explaining that it’s resin the bees collect from trees and other plants that they use to weatherproof the hive.

She slides a frame out and looks at it critically. It’s still early in the season for honey production — they’ll get around to that later in the summer. Right now, the bees are concentrating on foraging for food, building the hive and reproduction.

The bees in this frame have been working on the honeycomb for some time and the comb fills almost the entire frame.

She pulls out another frame and in this frame the honeycomb is clearly a work in progress, the comb filling perhaps a third of the frame. Each cell appears to be identical, although they are not. The largest are reserved for the drone bees, smaller ones for workers and the queen bee gets her own shape and size.

The comb, the wax the bees produce to seal the honey in the combs, and the honey are unique to the honeybee. Other bees die off in the winter and emerge as the weather warms. Honeybees stay active in their hive all winter and the honey is their food source.

They produce more honey than they need for the winter, although beekeepers vary in how much honey they’ll harvest. Some, like Deacon, leave enough honey for the hive to get through the winter. Others take all the honey and feed the bees sugar water as a substitute.

“Some people do take off honey and then feed them sugar water, to make it through the winter. They will survive but they won’t be as healthy is my understanding,” she said.

This is Deacon’s 10^th year raising her own bees, although the idea had been in the back of her mind since childhood and the onetime attempt by her father.

“In my teens, my father started beekeeping,” she recalled. After a weekend away, “We came back and the house had been broken into and they had kicked over the beehive. He didn’t continue from that point forward. (But) that was just something in the back of my mind that might be a cool thing to do.”

She is a member of the Outer Banks Beekeeper’s Guild, one of the founding members, although she downplays that role.

“In my mind. I may have made phone calls to people to say, ‘Hey, let’s get together and talk about getting a group together,’” she said.

The guild is part of the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association, an amateur beekeeping organization that may be the largest in the country.

“We do have the largest state (bee) association, with nearly 5,000 paid members,” said Dr. David Tarpy, apiculture professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University. “Compared to even large states like California and Texas (we have) more beekeepers. In Texas and California, those are large-scale commercial guys so they have more colonies but fewer beekeepers.”

There are some large commercial beekeeping operations in the state, but Tarpy, when comparing North Carolinas commercial beekeepers to other states, said they are, “vanishingly small.”

The number could be fewer than a dozen.

Not all the commercial operations take place in the state; they are, in fact, somewhat migratory.

“There are large-scale beekeepers that reside here full time and go out to California every winter for the almonds and up to Maine for the blueberries and things like that,” he said.

There are 4,000 or so species of bees that live in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and the honeybee is not even native to the continent. The first shipment of honeybees arrived in the Virginia Colony in early 1622. By the end of the 17th century, they were part of everyday life, although beeswax was the more valuable commodity at that time.

As an introduced species, there is controversy surrounding honeybees. Deacon pointed out that even her lone hive could have an effect on the local ecology.

“The problem with honeybees, you’re bringing 40,000 insects into this realm of 3 to 5 miles and all these other native bees that are all out there competing for the same plants,” she said.

Tarpy sees the issue of competition with native species as overblown and, perhaps, one that misses more significant questions.

“Whatever competition has happened, it’s been going on for 400-plus years. Ecology responds a lot faster than that,” he said. “There probably has been competition and certainly when beekeepers move their hives into a very fragile area like a desert, they can swamp whatever species are there. So it certainly is an issue and one we need to be cautious about. But is it driving the extinctions of these other bees? I think there are bigger fish to fry for that: pesticides, those kind of things.”

The pollinator population in general is under stress. And, although careless pesticide use does threaten honeybees, the most significant natural peril is the varroa mite.

It is not the mite itself, though, that is the threat, rather it is the disease the mites carry.

“I would say that public enemy No. 1, 2, and 3 are all called the varroa mite,” Tarpy said. “They’re like little vampires, sucking the bees until they’re so anemic that other stressors start to compound. But the biggest thing that we’re actively researching is that it’s not really the varroa mites that kill bees. It’s the viral pathogens that they’re vectoring. They’re like little dirty hypodermic syringe needles.”

There is no easy way to protect bees from varroa mites. The N.C. State Apiculture Program is concentrating on two areas of research: strengthening hives so they can better withstand stress and early detection of infection.

“We offer this service that if you send in your bees, we can … look at all of these different pathogens and see if we can identify if you have an overwhelming pathogen load within the colony,” Tarpy said.

Tarpy’s research is finding ways to identify the strongest queen for a colony. The apiculture lab has developed empirical measurements that can be applied to queen bee health, and Tarpy’s research has shown healthy queens correlate to a healthier hive.

“If you have a bad queen, your ceiling is low. If you have a good queen, your ceiling is high. The queen is this singular thing that beekeepers have control over,” he said.

The work is currently conducted in a dilapidated building on the N.C. State campus.

“Research is being conducted in one of the worst facilities in the University of North Carolina system,” according to the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association’s website. “There is inadequate room for instruction, storage and research … The teaching classroom is in the former kitchen and dining area where long leak stains adorn the sheetrock ceiling. During rain showers, buckets are strategically placed in order to catch rain water that drips through the sheetrock.”

The association lobbied state legislators for funds to replace the building and the North Carolina General Assembly responded in 2019 with $4 million for a new apiculture center.

“We’re on the downhill slope of the design phase, which is the fun part for me because we get to decide what kind of rooms we want, what we’re going to put in it and how we’re going to use it. We’re building this facility exactly the way that it would really work well for apiculture, science and extension. It’s having all the elements that we could ever want,” Tarpy said.

Construction is estimated to be completed in August 2024.

Part of a series on pollinators.

When people shop for ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers for their gardens and yards, visual appeal is usually top of mind. Chain stores and nurseries offer lots of striking choices, but often plant species native to the North Carolina coast are hard to find.

Biologists say that’s a problem.

It can take some effort to find a retailer selling native species, and professional landscapers often fail to include them in their designs, but these plants play a critical role in providing for bees, butterflies and other pollinators here.

Amy Mead of the North Carolina State Extension for New Hanover, Pender and Onslow counties explained to Coastal Review last week that native species are the foundations of coastal ecosystems. For insects like bees and other pollinators, native plants provide nectar, but that’s just one facet of their importance, Mead said.

“Especially for butterflies and moths, so many of our native plants are host plants for their caterpillars, and so they’re looking for these plants to lay their eggs on,” she said. “These native plants are providing the food source for those caterpillars to complete their life cycle. They are absolutely critical, and then that moves up the food chain to these birds looking for these caterpillars to be able to complete their life cycles, as well.”

It’s not an unusual sight in North Carolina: Vines of kudzu or wisteria sprawling across the landscape, reaching up, wrapping around, covering and choking the life from trees and other vegetation and creating a mess that’s not only unsightly, it’s also bad for the environment.

Though common, these vines aren’t native to this area, they were introduced as ornamental plants and subsequently became invasive. They’re just a couple of high-profile examples of plants that cause ill effects because they don’t belong here.

So, how can coastal property owners and landscapers avoid harmful landscaping plants? What plants native to North Carolina would be better alternatives?

A collaborative called the Coastal Landscapes Initiative has compiled a new guide of what it describes as “attractive eco-friendly plants” to substitute for commonly used “bad actors” that the initiative has identified as landscaping plants to avoid.

The Coastal Landscapes Initiative, a public-private partnership created more than five years ago to promote beautiful, functional, cost-efficient and environmentally friendly coastal landscape designs, recently released its free guide, “Plant This Instead!” The publication is available in print at county Cooperative Extension offices and online at the North Carolina Sea Grant website in PDF form.

“The Coastal Landscapes Initiative was started to find ways to promote and support landscaping practices at various scales, practices that meet our human needs and our desires, but also protect and enhance our coastal resources, resources like water quality fisheries and wildlife habitat,” said Gloria Putnam during a webinar in March that shared the title of the new publication.

Putnam, North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal resources and communities specialist who leads the Coastal Landscape Initiative, said that the North Carolina coast has diverse ecosystems, and each has its own distinct set of plants that are naturally found here – they are native to the area.

“The type of soil, the amount of water and the temperature are really the primary determinants of the type of plant that can live in an area, and the type of plants that are there determines the kind of animals that can exist. In other words, native plants are naturally adapted to the local soil and climate conditions. These plants co-evolved with other species in the area. Some of these plants have highly specialized relationships with animals, and they work as a system,” she said.

Putnam, during the webinar, cited the cedar waxwing and the eastern red cedar as an example.

“Eastern red cedar is actually Juniperus virginiana, so it’s not a cedar at all. It’s juniper, which is why it’s important to know the scientific name,” she said. “Red cedar is very common on barrier islands, and they’re adapted to the conditions there. They’re adapted to the soil and salt aerosols and drought, and the waxwing depends on the cedar for food. And the cedar depends on the waxwing for seed dispersal.”

Invasives can be costly

A big problem with nonnative species is that they can outcompete the native plants, and often with devastating results, environmentally and economically.

According to the publication, estimates of invasive plants’ economic effects can vary. But costs to control just one ornamental species, Lythrum salicaria, commonly known as the European purple loosestrife, and the loss of forage associated with the invasive plant are estimated at $45 million each year in the 48 states where it is found.

The publication cites a 2018 University of Delaware study of residential yards in the Washington, D.C., area, which found that Carolina chickadees there could sustain their numbers only where available plants were at least 70% native species. That’s because Carolina chickadees mainly eat caterpillars that often rely exclusively on a limited number of native plant species for their food.

“A single clutch of chickadees, hatched from 3 to 10 eggs, consumes up to 9,000 caterpillars in the 16 days it takes to develop into fledglings,” according to the publication.

Native plants in coastal landscapes support numerous other birds, as well as other animals and insects, including bees and butterflies.

The guide includes alternatives for commonly used nonnative species, with options for various landscape uses, such as trees and grasses as accent plants, shrubs for foundations and borders, privacy screens and hedges and ornamental deciduous vines to add “vertical interest and flowers.”

For example, the guide suggests Amelanchier canadensi, or serviceberry, and Cercis canadensis, or redbud, trees instead of commonly used Pyrus calleryana, or callery pears, that include Bradford and other cultivars.

Bradford pears, which bloom beautifully in March along much of the North Carolina coast and are frequently featured in landscape designs here, were bred to be sterile, but because they are grafted onto other pear rootstock, which can send out suckers that flower, they can cross with other pear trees nearby.

“Bradford pears can’t crossbreed with one another but they can crossbreed with other cultivars and other pear species,” Mead said during the webinar.

Mead said the Bradford pear had become a “poster child” of good intentions. Structurally weak and “malodorous,” she said that, while it is a beautiful, spring-blooming tree, “I have heard the blooms described as (smelling like) rotting fish or urine, not something that I want to have in my yard.”

Alternatives to the Bradford pear include Cornus florida, or flowering dogwood, Magnolia virginiana, or sweetbay magnolia, and Acer rubrum, or red maple.

For shrubs, plant Ilex vomitoria, or yaupon holly, instead of Nandina domestica, or nandina.

Instead of ornamental grasses like Cortaderia selloana, or pampas grass, the guide suggests planting taller cultivars of native Panicum virgatum, or switchgrass — or Muhlenbergia capillaris, or pink muhly grass, where plant height is not a priority.

Supply and demand

So why aren’t native plants more widely available in stores here?

“It’s sort of a chicken and egg — there’s got to be a demand for the native plants in order for box stores to start carrying these, but then it goes all the way back to the supply chain. The nurseries need to have the demand from the box stores to be able to start growing these plants,” Mead told Coastal Review.

She said it’s not always easy growing native plants on a commercial scale. There’s the matter of the native seed supply, and then figuring out how to grow them.

“And then there’s the psychology, too, of what plants people will buy in the box stores. It has to look pretty and be blooming, and so there’s so much more that goes into it rather than just saying, ‘Hey, you should grow more native plants,’” Mead said.

The effort to increase awareness of the importance of native plants is so that it will drive more demand. “So people will start going into these large home improvement stores and asking for native plants and then they will start asking the growers to grow these plants as well. We’re hoping to drive that supply and demand and we’re starting with education,” she said.

Knowledge could steer folks away from what Mead calls “the starter pack of crepe myrtles and loropetalums,” plants easily found in stores and widely used – sometimes to the exclusion of all other choices – in residential landscaping.

Mead said there are so many more plants to choose from that will thrive on the coast and provide benefits to the environment. These plants can be added to established gardens, including those planted with nonnative species.

“I’m not a native purist,” Mead said. “We don’t live in a natural forest, but I would say add plants. I’m a big fan of expanding your garden beds, adding in plants. If you’re ready, if you have failing or older plants, it’s a good opportunity to plant something new.”

She advises trying to plant 70% native species, and then ornamental plants can be included as “ornaments in your yard.” Sometimes a few nonnative plants can simply bring joy.

“I have a beautiful gardenia bush that reminds me of my childhood. And so that’s something that gives me pleasure, and I can have it in my yard. It’s important that something is beautiful and gives me pleasure,” Mead said, adding that Japanese maples are similar. “Something that I really enjoy having in my garden, as well. Those are going to be beautiful, they’re not going to be invasive or cause any harm.”

Find a nursery

To find native plants, contact your county office of the N.C. State Extension, which also offers the following links to help you locate a nursery near you that sells native plants:

• North Carolina Botanical Garden
• North Carolina Forest Service
• North Carolina Native Plant Society

Part of a series on pollinators.

What began as a grassroots effort in the North Carolina mountains a decade ago to save honeybees has become a nationwide initiative to protect pollinators.

The program, Bee City USA, got its start in Asheville as an independent nonprofit in 2012. Founder Phyllis Stiles grew the program by welcoming affiliates across the country and adding Bee Campus USA for colleges and universities.

In 2018, the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation absorbed the programs that provide a framework for communities and campuses “to come together to conserve native pollinators by providing them with healthy habitat that is rich in a variety of native plants, provides nest sites, and is protected from pesticides.”

The Xerces Society, like many other pollinator conservation programs, offers special programing during National Pollinator Week, June 19-25.  

The seed for the awareness campaign was planted when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in 2006 designating June 24-30, 2007, as National Pollinator Week, and recognizing the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, or the Pollinator Partnership, which now holds National Pollinator Week the third week of June.

Bee City USA Coordinator Laura Rost told Coastal Review that the organization celebrates National Pollinator Week with a different theme. This year, the theme is “Bee Safe” and the organization is focusing on reducing pesticides. Information on National Pollinator Week can be found on the website.

Bee City USA, and the Xerces Society’s pollinator conservation program as a whole, are based on four principles: plant native plants that bloom throughout the growing season, reduce or eliminate pesticide usage, protect natural nesting sites for bees, and spread the word.

“The key ideas of pollinator conservation are really quite simple, native plants blooming consistently, and pesticide reduction. If you can have those two elements and you’re paying attention to natural nesting sites, the habitat comes together on its own,” she said.

Rost said that while Bee City USA initially concentrated more on honeybees, the focus has shifted to native bees.

“It’s not just honeybees that feed us, it’s our native bees as well,” she said.

“We can thank bees for one in three bites of food we take,” Rost said. For example, 85% of all flowering plants rely on pollinators for reproduction, and 67% of agricultural crops rely on pollination.

“Honeybees, though they serve a lot of functions for agriculture, are nonnative,” Rost said. There are 3,600 species of native bees in the United States, but many are in decline. “There’s this whole diversity of native bees that need protection.”

She added that of the 3,600 native species, 90% are solitary nesting, so they’re not in hives, and then 70% are ground-nesting species. Most native bees rarely sting, rather they tend to be very gentle and keep to themselves.

Rost is based in Oregon and oversees both Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA. As of Thursday, there were a total of 354 city and campus affiliates in 46 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

To become a certified Bee City USA, a town needs to apply, establish a standing Bee City committee for the town, pass a resolution or memorandum of understanding committing to conservation measures, and pay an application fee that depends on the size of the city population.

New affiliates have a year to meet the requirements detailed in the resolution, which are to host a pollinator-focused activity, implement a pollinator-friendly habitat with native species on public and private land, create a list of recommended native plants, and adopt an integrated pest management plan that guides pesticide usage. Affiliates receive Bee City USA signage and must include on their website information about the program. 

Communities can base their native plants list on those provided by the Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Resource Center. The organization recently updated its native plant lists for every area of the country. The list contains suggestions about plants that tend to be easier to grow.

There is also a new list, Buying Bee-Safe Plants, that offers ways to help find plants that are safe for bees, and includes tips and questions to use at the nursery, a guide to reduce pests without pesticides, and suggestions on creating and maintaining habitat on the website as well.

Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA are great ways to build community and create a sense of identity. You can create projects that reflect the beauty of your own ecosystem and add your own interests and priorities as a community, Rost said.

Each town or campus can create its pollinator habitat project and “it can look like a million different things” — vegetable gardens, a meadow in a park, wildflowers along a roadside, a green roof and even bioswales and rain gardens.

You can incorporate pollinators into existing projects, too, and it doesn’t have to be flowers, either.

“It could be trees and shrubs because those are kind of the unsung heroes for native bees, especially early in the season. A lot of newly emerging bees really rely on crab apples and willows and actually fruit trees in general,” Rost said, adding that trees have been called the meadows of the sky. “If you think about it, there’s so many blossoms in one tree.”.

Additionally, choosing native trees for streets that attract pollinators is “a beautiful way” to incorporate a pollinator habitat. A bonus is native plants are low maintenance.

“The nice thing about native plants is you probably don’t need to water them as much because they’re adapted to your ecoregion,” Rost said. “They may not get as much disease or pest pressure because they’re happy and healthy in their environment.”

They’re encouraging people to rethink how they see their yards, and see them as habitat, where plants and animals are welcome, Rost continued. Residents can add more pollinator habitat without eliminating your lawn. Allowing their yard to be a little messier, a little wilder “can really go a long way.”

If plants have bites taken from the leaves, that doesn’t mean that your plant is dying, especially with native plants, it means you’ve created an ecosystem by bringing in those native plants.

“Pollinators may be really subtle at first or even subtle long-term, but if you hold still, especially in the early morning and in the evening and you look at some of your flowers, you’ll be surprised by that diversity you see,” she said.

Rost, who has a degree in environmental studies, with an emphasis on social science and policy, said she feels “insects are where it’s at for conservation because if you protect the biodiversity of insects and invertebrate life, everything else comes together.”

The foundation of life is all these insects and invertebrates that all these other species rely on, she continued. “If you create good habitat for invertebrates, you create good habitat for everything else … and it’s not very often you have such a fun way to help with environmentalism … planting beautiful flowers.”

Which is what they’re doing in Southport.

Kate Singley, a representative from the Southport Beautification Committee, said the Brunswick County town’s designation was approved in April 2022.

“Being an affiliate of Bee City helps bring communities together to sustain pollinators, increase the abundance of native plants, provide habitat and nesting sites, and reduce pesticide use,” she told Coastal Review.

The Southport Beautification Committee has supported a native plant pollinator garden at Lowe-White Park, 226 E. Leonard St., since 2017, where brochures are available as well as at the Fort Johnston-Southport Museum and Visitors’ Center at 203 E. Bay St. 

“One of the goals was to plant a demonstration garden for the community to show the ease and importance of using native plants to attract pollinators and educate, regarding the important the role pollinators play in our ecosystem and everyday life,” she said. “Southport has shown that being a Bee City is important by staying aware, and the town does not spray any mosquito pesticide near the pollinator garden.”

Awareness and educational programs have taken place over the years, and the committee has a display highlighting Southport’s Bee City USA designation planned for the month of August at the Fort Johnston-Southport Museum and Visitors’ Center, she added.

“Beautification volunteers working in the garden hear many positive comments from people who frequent the garden daily or visitors to Southport. One highlight was a letter from a high school student who visited the garden while on vacation with his family. He was the editor for the school newspaper and wrote an article about the garden for Earth Day,” Singley said.

Part of a series on pollinators.

Spring is the time of year when things start growing and blooming. It’s also when pollinators like bees come out and get to work.

An awareness campaign called “No Mow May” is urging people not to mow their lawns this month, or even this whole season, as a way to help make sure that these pollinators have enough to eat. Many of the small flowers that pop up in the spring can provide a critical food source for bees. Mowing these blooms robs the bees of this potential sustenance.

Bees are critical to the health of our ecosystems, but they are also in trouble.

Wild bee populations have experienced substantial declines due to factors including urbanization, pesticides and undiversified agriculture. Increased urbanization has led to the fragmentation of pollinator habitat — a widening in the space between areas where bees can find food or live. Without bees, our food system would never be the same.

“(When) we think of habitat loss, we think of forests being logged and things being plowed and built on,” said Matthew Shepherd, director of outreach and education for the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation. “But then, every acre of featureless grass is just as much loss of habitat as anything else.”

History of the Green Lawn

The American attachment to the perfectly trimmed green lawn aesthetic has a history rooted in settler colonialism. Americans modeled their landscaping after wealthy European elites, who used a pure grass lawn as a way to signal their wealth.

This thing that originated as a status symbol is now a hallmark of the American backyard. Despite that it is an extremely common sight now, most green turf grasses are not native to the United States. Therefore, they can require a lot of upkeep — excessive water, pesticides — to keep them going.

Covering 40 million acres across the country, grass is now the biggest irrigated “crop” in the U.S. — surpassing even corn. And yet, it gives little to nothing back to native ecosystems.

No Mow May

Green grass lawns, in effect, extend the fragmentation of pollinator habitat. That’s why Plantlife in the United Kingdom started the awareness campaign, No Mow May. This movement has also taken hold in the U.S. The idea is that not mowing your lawn for even a month can allow for the growth of things like clover that bees can use for food.

Of course, not mowing your lawn can present issues, such as enforcement of local ordinances, or even just the local status quo. There are homeowner associations bylaws and legal prohibitions on any deferred lawn maintenance that could be characterized as overgrowth.

Related: Celebrate pollinators Saturday during World Bee Day

Facing ordinances like this, some U.S. residents have challenged the idea of what a yard should look like. In Maryland, one couple pushed back on an HOA requirement and it resulted in legislation that prohibits unreasonable restrictions on low-impact landscaping such as a pollinator-friendly yard.

Beyond May

Ultimately, said Shepherd, No Mow May should ideally serve as a springboard for a more comprehensive conversation about making spaces pollinator friendly all year round. Shepherd said there are three things you can focus on: creating nesting areas, flowers for food, and quitting pesticides.

If all you’re doing is not mowing your lawn for a few weeks, said Shepherd, you’re not achieving any long-term benefit. Because if you don’t have any blooming flowers in your lawn, you’re just growing long, green grass. And if you do, teaching bees that there’s a food source in your yard and then taking it away can be harmful. So ultimately, true support for pollinators has to go beyond the campaign.

“The real benefit from (No Mow May) is that people are talking about lawns — they’re talking about the bad things of lawns, how the lawns could be, what the changes can be,” Shepherd said. “And we’re seeing a much broader conversation about pollinator conservation in our neighborhoods, and what we really should be doing to support the bees.”

Advocates say focusing on native, flowering plants is also a good idea, as is spreading awareness to other people in your community and beyond. Critically important is eliminating things from your yard, like grass, that might require regular pesticide applications.

“Anything we can do to bring habitat back into our neighborhoods, our towns, our farmland and so on, is going to be beneficial,” Shepherd said.

After May wraps up, June is National Pollinators Month. Follow along for more in this series about pollinators.