‘Can I borrow your bees?’ Cecil Township resident calls attention to decline in pollinator population
A bee pollinates a flower in Susan Koza’s garden.
Susan Koza’s yard is a Certified Backyard Habitat.
A colorful array of native plants in Susan Koza’s garden
Bees are back!
Bees are important to area wildlife.
Monarch butterflies are pollinators that feed on milkweed plants.
The bees are back in Susan Koza’s yard.
A pollinating butterfly visits Susan Koza’s garden.
By Harry Funk
Tomato-growing enthusiasts know that proper pollination is key to a healthy crop.
Susan Koza’s Cecil Township neighbor is one of them.
“He wasn’t able to get any of his tomatoes. So he came over and said, ‘Can I just borrow some of your bees? I’m struggling over here,'” she recalls. “And I told him what to plant.”
During warmer weather, her yard is abuzz, so to speak, with the types of animals that move pollen from plant to plant, aiding the reproduction process.
In fact, she tends to a Certified Backyard Habitat as part of an Audubon Society initiative to promote native plants, natural products, wildlife stewardship, clean water and homeowner engagement.
Koza’s efforts on behalf of nature extend beyond her own yard: She and two other residents of the Georgetown Estates plan convinced the homeowner’s association to steer away from pesticide and herbicide, and use organic yard products.
“I want people to know it’s possible in an HOA,” she says. “I just want other people to say, ‘Hey, you really did that? Then we could do that.'”
She also wants people to know about declines in the populations of bees and other pollinating animals, a problem that apparently escapes widespread attention.
According to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a search of nearly 25 million news items from six prominent U.S. and global news sources found “vanishingly low levels of attention to pollinator population topics” over several decades.
Koza wasn’t particularly aware until someone asked, “When was the last time you saw a meadow?”
“And I said, ‘I haven’t seen a meadow since I was a kid,’ because Peters used to be filled with meadows,” she says about the township where she grew up. “So he started telling me about the bugs and the pollinators, and I was actually horrified. I went home and I thought, he’s right. I used to have a big hydrangea in front of my door, and in the spring I wouldn’t be able to get into my house because it would be filled with bees.”
Not anymore, though.
“And then I started to look around here, and I thought, well, where would they find food?” she recalls. “We basically took all their food.”
Certain materials may do well to help ensure the green, green grass of home, but they aren’t exactly friendly to the types of plants on which pollinators thrive.
Koza learned more along those lines by visiting the Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel and Indiana Township, headquarters of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. There, she purchased a variety of native plants, species that attract pollinators while actually belonging in this part of the world.
“The best thing is when you plant these and you sit there, and you see these tiny, little bumblebees,” she says. “They don’t bother anybody. They’re hanging out in your flowers, just doing their job.”
Her enthusiasm has continued to, shall we say, blossom.
“I got really, extremely into this, and I kept thinking, why can’t we do this everywhere?” she reports. “The more I started reading about it, people were saying, if we just each do this in our yard and knit these together, the pollinators will come back and they’ll start to thrive. But people need to be aware that we’re losing them, in the first place.”
Koza welcomes conversations about it, no matter what the circumstances.
“There are always going to be people who don’t care and don’t believe you,” she acknowledges. “I never get mad. I just keep trying to find the next person who might believe me.”
She does encounter those who already have become believers, such as members of a family she met in the summer.
They saw a yard with a Certified Backyard Habitat sign and went to Beechwood Farms to buy appropriate plants for their own garden.
“I was talking to the parents, and I said, ‘It is so much fun to do with your kids. You’re going to have a blast,'” Koza recalls. “It would be so much fun for families to do this.”
Granted, the vegetation may seem to be a bit mundane to start.
“They’re not beautiful. They’re just plants,” Koza says. “But once you put them in the ground and they start to bloom, it’s like magic.”
For more information about plants that are native to Western Pennsylvania, visit aswp.org/pages/list-natives.
- Stop pesticide use in your yard to keep our pollinators and insects safe from toxic chemicals.
- Plant native flowers, the food source for pollinators. Once established, tnative plants will need less water and care so they actually save time and money. Native plants also provide food and shelter for insects, birds and other forms of wildlife.
- Plant natives for each season so something is always blooming in the spring, summer and fall. Pollinators need a constant food source.
- A few native plant ideas include blazing star, bee balm, butterfly weed, dreeping plox, cardinal flower, Joe-Pye weed, New England aster and hairy beardtongue.
- Let the leaves remain in the fall. Insects and animals need leaf litter to hibernate over the winter months. You can help by doing leaf cleanup in the late spring. Leaves can also provide nutrients for the soil.
- Reduce your lawn area as much as possible by planting various pollinator gardens that provide food for pollinators and birds.
- Work with your neighbors and community to create pollinator corridors that connect patches of pollinator gardens together.
- Keep pollinators hydrated all seasons by providing a water source. Learn how to make a water source that is safe for bees by giving them rocks to land on or pebbles in a shallow dish or birdbath.
- Plant native bushes and trees instead of ornamentals that provide little environmental value. Some native bushes include serviceberry, winterberry, buttonbush, common elderberry and silky dogwood.
- Visit the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania at www.aswp.org.