Virginia Winder
It’s a meeting of great minds. Plant breeder and bee keeper Vance Hooper and pollination biologist Linda NewstromLloyd feed off each other, sharing plant knowledge, swooping on winter flowering species and examining the blooms for beefriendly features.
In Magnolia Grove, which will be open for the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular, Linda delights in finding a yellow Edgeworthia gardneri flower out. During the October 28 to November 6 festival she will be talking about Trees for Bees in an event at Magnolia Grove near Waitara and another in the Sanderson Garden in Manaia.
Originally from Canada, Linda studied for a PhD at Berkeley in California, then moved to New Zealand in 1994. Her late husband was a Kiwi botanist. Now based in the Hawke’s Bay to carry out research for Trees for Bees, her passion is to teach people how to look at a flower and know whether it’s good for the flying pollinators.
‘‘I interpret flowers – what they do, when they do it and why they do it,’’ she says. ‘‘A pollination biologist needs to know how a flower works.’’
Linda does have Trees for Bees lists of trees, shrubs, herbs and perennials, but what she wants to do is similar to that old saying: ‘‘You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day. You teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime.’’
‘‘I would rather teach people to look at a flower and see if it’s good for a bee.’’
She encourages gardeners and farmers to look at a flower and examine it for easily accessible anthers, the structure at the top of the stamen where pollen is produced. The pollen can be yellow, orange, red or in the case of fuchsias and thistles, purple. Nectar, a sugar-rich liquid, is produced in nectaries, which can be in any part of the flower but usually are found at the base of the stamens or ovary.
‘‘I don’t promote the difficult more complex flowers, I promote the easy open ones,’’ she says. ‘‘If the pollen is hidden or difficult to access then it’s hard work for the bees who will use up their energy stores working it.’’
Walking past a bare but intricate jumble of vine, Vance says that in spring the bees love this Wisteria floribunda. In flower is Magnolia stellata, which is highly scented and always murmuring with innumerable bees.
Linda is always on the hunt for Trees for Bees, for her MPI Sustainable Farming Fund Research project. They have been focused on planting on farms, including orchards, but will soon branch out into home gardens in rural or urban areas.
‘‘Providing bee forage as part of your on-farm planting just makes good sense,’’ the Trees for Bees team says.
But there are some flowering plants that should be avoided, especially if you’ve got bee hives. Some species of rhododendrons and all karaka trees are poisonous to bees. This is something to ponder because bees are endangered in New Zealand. Linda, who was the guest speaker for the garden festival launch on July 20, is dedicated to highlighting the plight of bees. ‘‘We can’t replace the honeybee fast enough if the rate of colony losses are too high.’’
A New Zealand survey shows there is a national average of 12 per cent colony loss in spring 2015 but some beekeepers lost up to 25 per cent.
The best way to prevent bee colonies from dying is good nutrition, which means planting the right flowers for them to feed on. ‘‘If you have healthy nourished bees, they are going to be able to cope better with the other threats – the pests, pathogens and pesticides.’’
She also talks about the importance of maintaining plant diversity to give bees a choice of food.
But she doesn’t support the idea of everyone keeping bees. If people do choose to have a hive they must register it and invest in educating themselves in beekeeping by finding a mentor or joining a beekeeping club, otherwise they could be generating problems such as the spread of disease or pests without knowing it.
Mass plantings of bee-friendly plants also help the honey-packers. But before buying a plant for bee nutrition, people need to examine the flowers in nurseries, especially camellias and peonies. Many of these have horticulturally modified flowers, which are beautiful in shape and form, but have had the stamens bred out of them, which means they are no use to bees because there is no pollen or at least very little.
Camellia ‘‘Fairy Blush’’, an open form with loads of pollenladen anthers, gets a big tick, but the red ruffled Camellia ‘‘Takanini’’ has no anthers, so gets a cross even though it is beautiful.
However, Vance’s garden is packed with goodness for bees in winter, including many forms of the magnolia breeder’s favoured trees, along with other forms of camellia that are user-friendly for bees. Explaining further about what the winged insects look for, Linda says: ‘‘You have to think like a bee…’’
She encourages people to imagine they are a scout bee flying over a garden and looking down for patches of colour or trying to pick up perfume. They would see some flowers and zoom down. ‘‘Then they come in and they take a little pollen or nectar, what’s on offer.’’
The scout bee would then take it back to the hive, where it would recruit other bees to go on a foodhunting mission by giving them the direction, distance, and scent of the flowers.
There are three main types of bees in New Zealand – the native bee, the honeybee and the bumblebee. Native bees and bumble bees forage as individuals.
Moving along the trail, Vance points out Gordonia yunnanensis, which suits its common name the ‘‘fried egg plant’’.
‘‘That’s a super-bowl flower – you always see multiple bees in each flower,’’ Linda is delighted. ‘‘The gordonia is one of our star species. It’s got tonnes of anthers. That’s what we are trying to maximise, the amount of pollen.’’
Moving on Vance folds back the drooping flower head of a green hellebore to show there’s plenty of pollen there too.
Like Linda, he’s extremely aware of what the bees love. He and wife Kathryn have three hives. Vance was a beekeeper for 20 years, then had a break for 10, but is back keeping them for the citrus trees.
‘‘We have got a wide range (of plants) now so the bees don’t need to go out in the world.’’
On the way, towards the hives, the scientist and the plantsman find more plants loved by bees. Camellia ‘‘Moon Moth’’, has plenty of stamens, and a dogwood, Cornus controversa (the Wedding Cake tree), is another main attraction in winter. Vance was going to take it out but the bees changed his mind.
The bees also go nuts over Plagianthus regius (lowland ribbonwood) and nikau also provides good fodder.
Onwards he points out a golden pohutukawa, which the bees love, along with the red variety also in this garden.
‘‘Most of our honey comes in when the pohutukawa are flowering – we get a massive, massive flow,’’ Vance says.
There’s also a change in the honey when the red-flowering gum Corymbia ficifolia is in bloom. ‘‘When they flower the honey tastes like butterscotch.’’
Moving on we meet more bee magnets. Michelia doltsopa ‘‘Silver Cloud’’ and Magnolia ‘‘Plum Pudding’’, the latter bred by Vance, are abuzz with pollenseekers. These are part of Vance’s extensive magnolia collection, which contains many he’s bred himself. Right now, it’s mostly a forest of bare branches, many studded with fury buds getting ready to bloom.
‘‘I love collections because you can compare which species are the best,’’ Linda says. ‘‘You can learn a lot about a species in the same genus having them all in the same garden.’’
Vance is also creating a dedicated bee garden, which has a Magnolia stellata hedge. He’s also planted a weeping forest pansy, a weeping orange, rosemary and thyme, plus a whole lot of other attractions for bees.
‘‘Citrus have really good honey. They are star performers for nectar,’’ Linda says.
By the hives, which Vance loves to sit by and watch the bees come and go, is another favourite – Banksia integrifolia.
‘‘That’s a star because it’s going all autumn and winter when there is not much else flowering,’’ Linda says.
Heading back to the house, Vance takes us into a formal area featuring a hedge of Michelia ‘‘Starbright’’.
Low down are perennial wallflowers in yellow and purple. ‘‘See the bees are going like crazy,’’ Linda says.
Magnolia Grove is a safe haven for the busy insects and a place for a biologist and plantsman to feed off each other, just like bees in the right trees.