Love Bees?
Are you aware that "Friends of the Earth" are running a campaign to protect bees by pressuring stores like Home Depot to stop selling bee-killing pesticides and plants that have been sprayed with them? They need your support!
Willows that supply food for Bees
Willows are the earliest flowering tree in most of North America, providing abundant pollen and nectar for bees that leave the hive in search of food early in the year.
Here is a list of Willows suitable for providing food for bees.
Did you know that male willows provide both nectar and pollen?
M = male variety available
F = female variety available
E = earliest blooming varieties
L = latest blooming varieties
X = these 10 varieties give continuous bloom
from mid-late March until mid-summer, earlier in warmer climes.
Please note: Many Willows flower better on 2-3 year branches or older. The exceptions are the early flowering varieties that flower equally well on previous years' growth as on older wood.
Clicking on the names at right
will lead you to the page of that variety
alba 'Raesfield' N/A
caprea 'Ogon' N/A
daphnoides 'Continental Purple'
xfragilis 'Frangeels Rood' N/A
xmeyeriana
'The Hague'
triandra 'Whissender'
'Winter Glory'
F
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
E
E
E
E
E
E
E
L
L
E
E
E
E
E
E
E
E
E
L
L
L
L
E
E
E
L
E
L
L
E
E
E
Willows for Bees
Willows are great for bees: they provide food very early in the year in abundance. Male willows provide both pollen and nectar.
Willows are rarely sprayed for pests, so it's safe for them to harvest the nectar and pollen.
Bees on Willows >
Photographs courtesy of
Bob Peterson
@BobinSwamp
North Palm Beach Florida
Stop the Madness
Monsanto sells soybean seeds coated in neonicotinoids (a class of pesticides directly linked to the mass die-off of honeybees) under pretense of helping farmers increase their yields. I believs chemical this was developed in Germany during WWII to kill people in concentration camps.
But according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pre-treating soybean seeds with neonics doesn’t deliver on that promise. And now, new evidence suggests that not only do pretreated soybean seeds not provide any benefit to farmers, they may actually cause a decrease in crop yields.
So why perpetuate the madness? When we know neonics are poisoning pollinators, our soil, our drinking water, and even our food?
Profits, of course. Neonic sales are a $2.6 billion business, according to a report by Friends of the Earth. And the big profiteers are the usual suspects: Monsanto (who sells the seeds), plus Bayer and Syngenta, who make the poisons.
WillowWorld
of Michael Dodge