Bee-friendly beef: rehabilitating cattle pastures to increase pollinator habitat

Dr. Parry Kietzman is a research scientist in Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Sciences. Here she describes a new experiment aimed at improving Southeastern grazing lands to improve cow health, provide habitat for pollinators, and conserve plant biodiversity. A member of the bee-friendly beef team since 2020, her work focuses on the ecology and conservation of pollinating insects.

Across the world, pastures account for over 20% of the Earth’s land surface, an area roughly the size of Africa. Many of these pastures were once species-rich meadows, prairies, and woodlands that offered abundant and diverse food resources for pollinators, but are now limited to a handful of species that provide forage for grazing livestock.

Lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata), a native composite sewn into an active cattle pasture near Stuart, Virginia. Photo credit: Parry Kietzman.

Pollinating insects such as bees, flies, butterflies, moths, and beetles are currently in crisis, as habitat loss from development, intensive agriculture, and other human activities have diminished the food sources and nesting sites they rely on. The conservation of pollinators native to each particular region is especially important, as many plants depend on native specialists for pollination. The widely-kept, domesticated, European honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), though of great importance to modern agriculture, is often not successful or at least not as efficient at pollinating certain plants as the bee specialists that coevolved alongside each particular species. Landscapes rich in a diversity of plant species native to that location are therefore needed to provide habitat for these native pollinators.

Some types of beetles, such as the soldier beetles (Colanoptera: Cantharidae) pictured here, also visit flowers and can provide pollination services. Soldier beetles feed on nectar and pollen and do not damage their plant hosts. Photo credit: Parry Kietzman.

Researchers at Virginia Tech, the University of Tennessee, and Virginia Working Landscapes are currently collaborating on a multi-year rehabilitation project to plant native North American prairie grasses and wildflowers in cattle pastures in Virginia and Tennessee. The project is based on the idea that a landscape can be supportive of healthy cattle production while at the same time providing ecological niches for pollinating insects. Bringing back diverse food sources for pollinators in pastures, however, presents some significant challenges. First, the plants must not be harmful to livestock that may graze on them. Second, they must be hardy and practical to establish in new and existing pastureland. Finally, they should be native to the region in which they will be planted, as this will be most beneficial to that region’s native pollinators and help prevent the accidental introduction of invasive species.

Some of the wildflower species used in our experiment, such as this blanketflower (Gaillardia pulchella), are native to North America but not naturally found in Virginia or Tennessee. Photo credit: Parry Kietzman.

Our team is currently working to identify and successfully establish seed mixes that thrive in Virginia and Tennessee without becoming excessively weedy or crowding out grasses grazed on by cattle. Once established, pollinator diversity and abundance will be measured in plots with and without wildflowers introduced. Herds of cattle grazing in the pastures will also be monitored for health and body condition.

Bumble bees are common visitors at our wildflower-enhanced sites. Photo credit: Parry Kietzman.

Results from this study, including critical information about best practices for establishing the seed mixes, optimal grazing regimes to promote blooms, and wildflowers as forage will be disseminated to growers and other stakeholders through extension services such as published fact sheets, protocols, and workshops. This foundational work will help inform researchers and land managers around the globe how to transform pasturelands into landscapes that can help save our pollinators.

For more information on this ongoing study, visit the team’s website: beesandbeef.spes.vt.edu.

A wildflower-enhanced pasture in southwestern Virginia in mid-summer 2021. Photo credit: Parry Kietzman.

Restoring Peruvian Forests for Bees

A box of little angels (angelitos). Freddy sells their honey, as well as the nutritious, yellow pollen that accumulates near the opening.

There are bee hives all over Freddy’s farm in Oxapampa, Peru. An old tree stump houses a colony of curco negro, a stingless bee native to the eastern Andes. Another species, commonly called niño de monte real, has nearly been extirpated from the area. These bees are Freddy’s livelihood, and the basis for a collaborative reforestation project with one of the world’s most diverse national parks.

Freddy is one of a handful of farmers cultivating land within the buffer zone of Yanachaga-Chemillén National Park. His family has been here since 1978 and has seen the area transform from forests full of Wattled Guans and Andean bears to eroded cow pastures and pesticide-laced rows of passion fruit.

Now some of these degraded areas are being replanted with native trees. Peru’s national park service is using sticks and carrots to create a buffer around Yanachaga-Chemillén. Law mandates that farmers working in special use areas must only do agriculture that is nature-friendly – things with trees, like shade coffee. But the park service also offers funding to farming associations to help them make the transition. In Freddy’s case, the park service provided tree seedlings, fertilizer, and transport of these to his farm, at the end of a very rough road.

Tree seedlings and an edible fruit, Solanum quitoensis, are sprouting up in this native tree plantation.

Honey from the flowers of native trees. I tried some, and it was delicious.

Freddy and the national park managers see this arrangement as mutually beneficial. As we walked through his seven-year old plantation, Freddy pointed out native trees, like cedro (Cedrela sp.), and told me about the flowers they produce for his bees. At different times of the year, Freddy’s bees collect nectar and pollen from different trees. The artisanal honey he sells is well-known in Lima. These plantations also help protect the core of Yanachaga-Chemillén National Park by reducing outside influences, like domestic animals that wander into the forest.

It’s not all gravy though. Programs like the one in Alto Navarro have not been as successful everywhere. Of seven farming associations that are currently receiving funds from Yanachaga-Chemillén, three are stalled with infighting. In one case, thousands of native tree seedlings were transported to a community six hours’ drive from Oxapampa; a year later most of the seedlings still sat unplanted by the side of the road.

Within individual projects there are also compromises. One project area in Alto Navarro was planted in exotic pines – trees that are little more than wood factories. But these pines can be harvested and sold after just ten years, and in the meantime cows can graze in the understory. This short tree rotation makes it more economically attractive to plant other areas with native trees, which will not be available to harvest for much longer.

Cow grazing lush grass in an exotic pine plantation at Alto Navarro.

Is this ecological restoration? In one sense, no. When Freddy plants native trees, he plans to use them to make honey, and then to cut them down and sell them for timber. The area will not turn into a mature forest. But these same trees are likely reducing edge effects, like elevated wind and light, in the adjacent national park forest. Trees planted just outside the old-growth forest could increase habitat area for plants and animals that live in the forest interior. At a broader scale, the collaborations between the national park and local farming associations are also likely restoring natural capital, stocks of natural assets like soil, water, and biodiversity.

Freddy and me in a cow pasture at the edge of Yanachaga-Chemillén National Park. Freddy plans to plant native trees here in May 2015.