Pollinator party buzzes with important lessons
Summer is buzzing along too quickly. But there’s still time to put together a little party — a pollinator party — to celebrate the butterflies, birds, bats and most especially the bees and other insects responsible for a good portion of what we eat.
It could be lunch for the kids or a family dinner, but in either instance, the idea is to highlight foods that count on fauna for the flower-to-flower pollen transfer.
The list of these edibles includes apples, almonds, cranberries, avocados, melon, squash, cherries, mangoes, chocolate and coffee. Honey, of course, is there to sweeten it all up.
For guidance, I headed to Wehr Nature Center in Franklin to meet with Director Debra McRae, who masterminds many of the center’s environmental programs, and naturalist Emily Brown.
The 220-acre center, located within Milwaukee County’s Whitnall Park, has an upcoming Bug Day, with plenty of pollinator information, on Sunday, Sept. 17.
“Pollinators are responsible for one out of every three bites of food,” said Brown, referencing an often-quoted statistic regarding the many important food crops, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts, that are either entirely or partially dependent on pollinators.
Other crops such as wheat, rice and corn are wind-pollinated — so they don’t get top billing here.
“Lunch for kids can just be almond butter and honey sandwiches. And the kids can make some fruit salad — they can scoop out the melon. No need for a recipe or measuring,” said Brown, who is the mother of 3-year-old twins.
For an extra treat, have a simple honey tasting with perhaps three different varietals of honey, from strong to mild. It might include buckwheat, raspberry blossom and clover.
Don’t forget to tell the kids that “honey is bee barf,” Brown said with a laugh, explaining that bees “barf” the honey into the honeycomb cell.
And McRae added that although “the European honey bee is the Wisconsin State insect, there are also 500 native bees in Wisconsin.”
To get the junior naturalists outside where they can catch sight of a bumblebee here and a butterfly there, take them to the edge of a garden, suggested McRae. “If you don’t have a spot in your own backyard,” she said, head to one of the county parks.
Her advice for avoiding stings is to “teach the kids to walk slowly and quietly” to avoid attracting attention to themselves.
One good observation post would be the Trial Garden, near the formal gardens at Boerner Botanical Gardens, where you’ll see pollinators on both vegetables and flowers.
Brown likes to bring a camping chair for each participant. “It keeps them focused. Tell them — this is your
spot — and have them sit for a minute per year of age.” So a 2-year old might sit on the chair for two minutes.
For older children, put on a scavenger hunt with an illustrated checklist that would include the likes of a butterfly, a nectar plant, a bee and a hummingbird. There’s a simple printable form at To Be a Kid Again ( tobeakidagain.com).
If you decide to do a pollinatorthemed dinner, start the adults off with a mead spritzer. Mead, as you probably know, is a beverage fermented from honey.
At Bos Meadery in Madison, Colleen Bos’s favorite over-ice spritzer calls for equal parts of her Hammer Smashed Cherry Mead, which is flavored with Door County cherries, and lemon sparkling water.
“There are lots of fun combinations of meads and sparkling water flavors,” she notes.
You might have to call around to find the Bos Meads, but Discount Liquor, both in Milwaukee and Waukesha, carries them.
For an entrée that both adults and kids will like, try chicken drumsticks baked with turmeric, paprika and honey. And, yes, most spices rely on pollinators.
The recipe is from climbing griermountain.com, where the suggestion is to serve the drumsticks with roasted vegetables. Pollinator-dependent summer squash is an obvious choice. If you want to be more creative and ambitious, Avocado Pasta, from “Damn Delicious” by Chungah Rhee (Oxmoor House, 2016, $24.95), is a recipe that can be used as a side or as a vegetarian main dish. Serve it on regular pasta or on spiralized zucchini.
For dessert, make honey ice cream and you’ll be queen for the day. David Lebovitz, author of “The Perfect Scoop” (Ten Speed Press, Paperback 2010, $18.99), has a custard-based recipe that requires advance cooking and chilling, and ideally an ice cream maker.
If you’re short on time, there’s always store-bought ice cream and chocolate sauce. Cocoa plants are pollinated by a small fly called a midge, which seems to be the only creature that can figure out how to navigate the plant’s intricate flowers.
For information about pollinators, check out the Pollinator Partnership, a nonprofit organization that focuses on protecting the health of pollinators through conservation, education and research.