Fruitful Futures: Growing Orchards for Native Bees (Ep. 32)

Posted on

Research has shown that on a bee-per-bee basis, wild bees can be more effective pollinators than honey bees. This is especially true when it comes to pollinating fruit trees. Native bees emerge sooner than honey bees and even many species of bumblebees. Many that fly in the early spring are better adapted for flying under poor weather conditions and they’ll visit flowers and pollinate in cool and cloudy conditions. In warm, sunny weather, wild bees often begin foraging earlier in the morning and fly later into the afternoon. That’s why supporting a diversity of bees has advantages over relying on a single species (such as the honey bee) to provide stable pollination.   

Today we’re talking about orchards and native bees in Ireland with our guest Garry Connolly. He shares his story of how he became interested in native bees and harnessed a wide spectrum of his community into taking action.

Images courtesy of Garry Connolly

Host in Ireland is spearheading this initiative, uniting companies within the data center industry to collaborate with the Irish National Biodiversity Data Centre on the “Orchards in the Community” program. This program falls under the larger umbrella of  “DC for Bees”, which gives the industry the opportunity to not only make a personal impact but also provides them with the resources to educate, advocate, raise awareness, and take action. They base their actions on the National Biodiversity Data Centre’s All-Ireland Pollination Plan which you can review here. DC for Bees was also a Reuters Events: Responsible Business Awards 2023 Finalist in the Biodiversity Champion category.

Good to know

Native bees don’t fly far; they forage in smaller areas, most often close to where they wake up. It’s important for orchards to have nesting habitats near the trees, providing bees their much-needed pollen. Bee hotels are an excellent way to supplement leaving nesting space around the trees. You’ll have great habitat for both cavity and ground nesting bees. You can learn more about nesting habitats with episode 14, Vacancies at the Bee Hotel and episode 2, Building for Bees.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Bee’s Knees. I’m your host, Jacy Meyer. The Bee’s Knees is a podcast wild about native bees. Wild and native bees are under threat worldwide. In each episode, we look at actionable things we can do to support these adorable little guys whose pollination work is crucial for maintaining biodiversity.

Thanks for being here.

I know you’re listening, but take a moment to imagine a scent. Specifically, the sweet scent of blossoming fruit trees, fragrant blooms that will soon deliver us crunchy apples, plump plums, and sweet cherries. Are you with me? Now let’s visit Ireland. One third of the country’s wild bee species are threatened with extinction.

Mainly due to dwindling food sources and safe nesting sites. Our guest today is Gary Connolly, president and founder of Host in Ireland. A conversation with his daughter led him to start thinking a bit [00:01:00] more deeply about the plight of bees in his homeland. In response, he launched DCs for Bees, an industry initiative led by Host in Ireland.

to help save Ireland’s declining bee population. One of their programs is Orchards in the Community. Let’s learn more. We start by talking about native bees in Ireland. How are they doing and what are their biggest threats? Yeah, native bees in Ireland are having the same challenges as they are globally, to be frank, in Ireland, on the island of Ireland.

We have just north of 100 bees, only one of those guys is the honeybee. So effectively we’ve got a hundred other solitary bumblebee, carver bees, etc, etc. And you know, some of the numbers that are coming out are quite extraordinary that of the hundred, 50 percent of them have seen significant drops since 1980.

And we arrive at 2024, where the national scientists of this area, the Irish National [00:02:00] Centre for Biodiversity, are now saying that 33 percent of those face extinction by 2050. So ultimately, yeah, they’re under real pressure. And you know, we can talk about the rationale and the reasons for it. It’s the same globally.

Over farming, monoculture, stripping out all their natural habitats, the hedgerows, and all of these other things that just because of 1980, 2024 lifestyles of humans, um, we’re basically going through with a bulldozer. So yeah, they’re under pressure. One of the things that’s so important to our initiative DCs for bees is not to get sucked into a challenge of unintended consequences, and I think one of the things at the moment is there’s a lot of virtue signaling, and it’s really great to have a beehive on the top of your office.

Or in your garden, et cetera. And I [00:03:00] think that we need to look at that really, really carefully because that’s a colony of maybe 40, 50, 60, 000 bees. And let’s assume, which we know they’re not, let’s assume that they all gather the same amount. You know, if you’ve got 200, 300, 400 of your solitary guys, they’re just going to be.

starved out of the place. So again, what we try and do is we say, are all bees under pressure? And the reality is no, not, they’re not. So using the bees, their challenges are our challenge. We sort of said, you know, what we should do is we should find the scientists that actually are our North star. Cause one of the things that I find in my own life.

And in other areas is sometimes unintended consequences of good actions mean that you really shouldn’t have done it in the first place. And when you’re playing with an ecosystem, you’re messing around with an ecosystem, [00:04:00] whether it’s a business ecosystem or a life earth ecosystem, you know, one change in something could have a massive

negative detrimental effect. You’ve just saved the bees, but you’ve killed off all the ladybirds. That’s not a great gig for the whole thing. So actually we were lucky enough, um, that in Ireland, we have a center of excellence called the National Centre for Biodiversity, which publishes for the island of Ireland, a pollinator plan full start, middle, and hundreds of things you can do, whether it’s just don’t mow your lawn to don’t put beehives on your roof and everything in between.

So we had a great run book, didn’t we? And we had scientists behind it. And like every business community, we had loads of people who had a few money. And we also had a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, that would like a bit of virtue signalling and would like all this type of stuff. And you know what? We have to just embrace everything.

Because ultimately, if you’re driven by action, which is what we are, you need money, you need resources, and you need [00:05:00] people. So our community group, which is the digital infrastructure space, we said, you know what, let’s launch something, call it DC’s for Bees. Let’s create our own pollinator plan, which basically is a refined version of the scientific one.

So specific to what, if you’re building a very large data center and you’re putting it in the middle of Ireland, then guess what the 40 acres that you’re not building on, leave it away. Plant this, do this. So basically that’s how it grew. It started to get and solve a problem for a lot of corporates that they wanted to do something.

We had the North star cause we qualified it out with the scientists and then we basically got behind it and we find ourselves in 2024 now with a whole structure of activities. people around three A’s advocacy, awareness, and action. They have to be brought to the table and we 59 ambassadors. Now we’ve got, uh, our [00:06:00] own pollinator plan.

We have, uh, revisions of that because the scientists are constantly revising. So we basically update ours. So between that, then that leads ourselves into, okay, there’s nothing like. When we turn all that talk into action, because what we can do is we can create opportunities of common purpose. And when we create these opportunities of common purpose, we bring people from all parts of organizations, not the big mouths like me, who are meant to be the leaders and stuff, but the person from accounts, the person from warehouse who have passion.

So we bring them together around action orientated activities, like for instance, Orchards in the Community. What’s Orchards in the Community? Well, it’s everything you want it to be for a community, the community of bees, the community of society, and the community of business, all bound together by this common purpose to plant as many orchards [00:07:00] in as many places.

as possible. So you got to keep looking after the whole thing. And therefore what we did is Orchards in the Community. We launched it oh, two, three planting seasons only ago. And as of this last dormant season, we’re up to 4, 000 orchards. That’s 20, 000 trees in 32 counties. For those of your listeners who aren’t overly familiar, Ireland is two countries, but bees don’t understand borders.

So this is a national geographic initiative feeding into the national pollinator plan. So we have 32 counties in Ireland and we were, we managed to be able to find community groups like schools, nursing homes, tidy towns, groups, whatever, in every single one of the counties. And we’re planted 20, 000 in three.

So now we have this very [00:08:00] unique situation, which is great where we’ve got the same type of tree. Why are orchards fantastic? Because they, they flower early. So the poor little solitary guys, when they come out, they’re starving. They see these beautiful trees. That’s great. They’re also great for habitat because underneath them.

It’s great for the, actually the, the ground based guys, and then ultimately it gives you a great opportunity because people love apples at the end to eat or pears or plums and stuff. So it becomes like a trophy and people tend to look after them. Unfortunately, beech trees and oak trees and these guys, you know, they’re great and deciduous.

They’re great and all, but you can’t eat them. So it’s got a nice little top and tail, um, and it also gives us an opportunity, um, to observe these as they grow, um, and even, um, maybe do some data collection on it with the National Biodiversity Group. Yeah, here are people who are prepared to do really [00:09:00] great work for stuff that aren’t even being paid for.

So it seems that we’re on to something where you find an area of common purpose. And often people, money people, spreadsheet people, Oh, they’re, they’re suits. How do you find a way to connect them with people who are probably the other end of the spectrum who are into earth and into that? Well, you do it via an orchard.

And why are you doing the orchard? Because of the bee guys. Do you have plans to expand on or otherwise develop the Orchards program? We ask the National Pollinator people, Okay, Orchards, that’s a great start. We’ll come back to that again. But what else can we do to augment that? I’ll let you in on a little secret.

They are bulbs underneath the orchards. So next year, what we’ll have is we’ll have Bulbs in the Community, and that’ll be a million bulbs. That’s the target to augment the orchards. to create this wonderful meadow, which will stop them cutting the grass [00:10:00] underneath the orchard, which will basically then be a pit stop for a bigger pit stop, which then we’ll have hopefully have corridors.

So it’s this idea of constant asking people who understand the science. Connecting it with people who want to do the work and care for the work and then connecting that in a way and presenting it in a way to the business community so that they can get on board. So it’s that common purpose thing, always going back to science, always going back to the why.

And the why is because bees are starving. Bees are dying. Bees are losing their habitat. And even if there’s one person from all the gang we’re talking to, who through our activities, our awareness and our advocacy, just one, gets himself or her into a position, at some stage to say, no, because of my learnings.

It’s a success. You and your daughter have [00:11:00] another project that I love. Oh yeah. Tell me about the bee houses you build. Oh yeah. Airbnb. Basically, yeah, what we did was for my sins, I’ve got a bit of a thing now for, obviously I know a bit more about bees than I ever did, but I also, I’m of an age now where I was either going to buy a Ferrari or having an affair or do something crazy, you know?

So I got into woodwork, right? I got into making stuff because I spent too much time on screens and I’m not making anything. Well, maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but I’m not making anything tangible. So we got ourselves a little engraver. To see could it engrave things. And of course we then realized that it could engrave slate, wood, metal, and we live in a forest, forests fall over.

So we cut the wood effectively. It’s not great for a podcast, but I’ll show you. They’re just simple bee hotels and they are for the solitary bees and they are [00:12:00] half cross cut of wood with a little bit of protection on the top. From the rain and it’s great because it’s tangible and it’s something that you can bring into a community and show them and my experience in life is that when you give something to somebody free without any expectation, it’s amazing that olive tree branch what it does and we just say, put that in your community, put that in your school and all we ask is that you just leave it wild and native two, four or five meters around as far as you can.

Don’t do anything. Don’t put the grass around it. Don’t put any roses, don’t put any, any, just let natural go on. And we have now made 1500 of them. In fact, a big gang of them went out with our orchards last year to augment the orchards. Again, it’s about sort of finding purpose. Some are nice, some are more decorative than others, but what it does is it starts a conversation for people to ask, why would I need that?

That’s all you’re looking [00:13:00] for. So rather than preaching to people that they should do something, what you’re looking for is people to say. Why would I need one of them? There’s bees everywhere. And that’s your sedge way in to say well actually, actually dying out. And that’s really what we’re looking for.

We use them, I guess it’s a bit like a business card back in the day. Oh, it’s a conversational piece. Oh, that’s a lovely font. Oh, you’ve changed your title. You know, it’s just these things that are tangible that help people in conversation. And now we’re lucky enough that, uh, with the community groups that we are working with on the Orchards.

They’ve started now to come back to us and say, can we get a few more of them? Job done. Because you are focused on the science and are working with the National Biodiversity Data Center, you have the opportunity to track concurrent pollination success. First, tell us what is concurrent pollination success and have you had any results?

So yes, this is an interesting [00:14:00] byproduct or a positive. Unintended consequences of planting nearly 4, 000 20, 000 fruit trees is that they’re all effectively going to be planted or have been planted in the same two and a half planting seasons. So they’re all relatively at the same growth stage. So what that means is that.

The national pollinator people will commence a process next spring where they will now start to use those 4, 000 orchards, 20, 000 trees to connect with the people who are managing them to be able to ask them on particular days or different days during the year to do data gathering. So how many bees, what types of bees are on the same product or same growing product at the same time, because one of the great challenges we have is that if you ask two people, one in a lavender [00:15:00] field and one on roses or other at the same time of year to give you a count, you’ll get totally skewed different answers.

This way, at least we know because they were centrally managed, centrally distributed to all 32 counties, they’ll be able to correlate the validity of the data and they won’t have to have caveats, caveats, caveats, caveats, which dilutes the value of the data. So yeah, it’s great. 20, 000 trees next year with all the schools, community groups, the nursing homes, they’ll be asked, go out, take a picture, take a stat.

Feed it in. And of course, over the years, hopefully that becomes better and better and better and then they can effectively the central pollinator people, not ourselves, and they can then to do some findings, good, bad or indifferent. So that’s effectively what it is. The whole data gathering post planting gives us the opportunity to do.

So what’s next for DC for Bees? [00:16:00] So yeah, what’s next for, well, whatever the Úna FitzPatrick and her people down the National Biodiversity Data Center tell us is the next thing that we should be considering. Then we will bring our creativity. Our abilities to mobilize people so that’s where it will lead us but what’s interesting is we get requests from international people for the run book and we just give them all the info we have because again unintended consequences is that what works in Ireland.

In our ecosystem of our biodiversity sprang may not work in South Dakota, the intent will though the intent and the, and the basic outline will, all you have to do then is find your scientist, find your biodiversity or pollinator group, but the rest is pretty straightforward, but it’s not a one thing fits all, you can’t actually apply the 60 to a hundred national pollinator things to do for Ireland.

In France. So yeah, where, where will it [00:17:00] go? Who knows? Who knows? It’ll, we’re being driven by the outside in quite a bit, which is interesting. Community groups are telling us, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You delivered on that. We’re building a bit more trust. We’re building more trust with the national biodiversity people.

The partners seem to like it. So yeah, it’ll go wherever it goes, but the intent will always be right. And, uh, we’ll try and look after the bees. They’re the most important person to have front and center. In all that we do, Putting bees front and center. I love Garry’s attitude that everything DCs for Bees will do will follow the science

they’ll ask the experts and then put their resources to work, ensuring Ireland’s native bees are given a fighting chance to survive and thrive. Thanks as always for being here and I hope you enjoyed this Irish jaunt. Please check out the website to learn more about orchards in the community and see photos of Garry’s bee hotels.

Until next time, let’s take [00:18:00] action.