- [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by: (upbeat guitar music) the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(upbeat mountain music) - If you haven't guessed it, you are tuned to Montana Ag Live, originating tonight from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and being brought to you over your Montana Public Television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

You know how this works, if you've watched the program before: you have to provide the questions, and this esteemed and very nice-looking panel tonight will provide the answers to you.

And before we get going, I'm gonna introduce everybody on the panel, and our phone operators, so with that, way on my left is Laurie Kerzicnik.

Laurie is our insect diagnostician, and she always brings her pets along, (Laurie laughs) and she's got a pet that she'll show you later on.

Believe it or not, she names all these spiders and so forth, Bill, Jim, Sherry, (Laurie laughs) things like that, but it's really fun to see some of the things that she brings in to show the audience.

Our special guest tonight is the bee lady, Michelle Flenniken, and actually, she's a microbiologist and a virologist combination, but she spends an awful lot of time working on various different problems with bees and other pollinators here in the state of Montana.

Questions about pollinators, crops that are pollinated by bees, or bees themselves, or the honey, here's a good chance to ask 'em tonight.

And our invasive weed scientist, how's that one?

- I like it.

- Okay.

- Invasive plant specialist, Jane Mangold, Jane's here quite often, and thank you for coming in this evening.

Weed questions, if you have noxious weed questions, any other, common lawn weeds, things like that, she will know the answer.

And Abi Saeed, Abi has been gone a couple weeks.

We tried to get her on through Zoom, that did not work.

Abi is our Extension horticulturalist, so if you have any questions concerning plants, when to put 'em to bed, when to plant 'em, what to plant, how to plant 'em, good chance to ask Abi this evening.

And with that, I'm gonna introduce Michelle and ask you to tell the audience what you do here at MSU.

- Great, so my name's Michelle Flenniken, and I'm an associate professor in the Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology Department on campus.

And research in my lab is focused on understanding the impact of different pathogens on honeybees at the colony, individual bee, and cellular levels.

And our focus is on honeybee viruses, for the most part.

- Okay, we'll get to you in a minute.

I want to introduce our phone operators, I skipped over 'em.

We have Cheryl Bennett and Nancy Blake this evening.

They're always here; I appreciate them taking the time to come in.

Before we go any farther, I'm gonna test this panel, and it's always fun to give 'em a little bit of a hard time.

I shouldn't ask Michelle because I'm sure she'll know, but what state produces the most honey in the 48 states?

I'm even gonna give you a clue.

(panelists laughing) - See?

- Does that help?

So, anybody wanna guess.

- North Dakota?

(panelists laughing) - You got her.

Now, here's where it gets tougher.

How many pounds of honey does North Dakota produce in an average year?

- I'm gonna guess 35 million pounds.

- Anybody else wanna challenge that figure?

Hey, the winter gets an all-expense-free trip to Wilsall, so.

(panelists laughing) - Okay, I'll render a guess.

How about 24 million pounds?

- I'm gonna guess 40 Million.

- 20 million.

- Okay.

- Like the Price Is Right.

The winner is, and I hope you like Wilsall, they produce 36.8 million pounds of honey.

Next question, how about Montana?

Where does Montana sit?

- Yeah, Montana usually ranks in the top five states for honey production, and typically, it's around 15 million pounds of honey in Montana.

- We've done as high as number two in 1950, and it's the 10th most valuable crop produced in the state of Montana.

So that gives you a pretty good idea of what we do with honey here.

First question from Missoula, and also, similar from Gardiner, for Jane: is applying nitrogen to cheatgrass a good idea?

- Yeah, the short answer is no, and well, I guess if you wanted to grow cheatgrass, it would be good to apply nitrogen.

But in general, these kind of weedy, fast growing species, they do better when you apply nitrogen in particular.

So if you're battling cheatgrass, applying nitrogen is not something you would wanna do.

- You encourage a weed, it's not a noxious weed but an obnoxious wheat, is that correct?

- Right, right, yes, for sure.

It is a regulated plant in Montana, so you aren't required to control it, like you are a noxious weed, but we do try to limit its movement in seed, hay, et cetera.

- Okay, thank you.

Michelle, a question from Missoula, they say they see a lot of different colored honeys.

I mentioned that to you ahead of time, and you brought in a couple.

Can you explain why there's so much variation in the color of honeys or honey that they purchase in stores?

- Yeah, and so, honey is just really dried down nectar.

Honeybees collect nectar for their carbohydrate resource, and they collect pollen and do pollination services as when they are collecting pollen.

But these are two honeys I have right in front of me here.

This is from last year, from Montana State University's honeybee colonies, and this is this year's, it's much lighter.

Lighter honeys are usually associated with pollinating things like alfalfa, gives you a lighter-tasting honey.

The darker honeys can be from a different species, of different clover, although they can range from light to dark as well.

And honey takes on the flavor of the nectar, that is, where the bees collect the nectar from.

So for example, in San Francisco, they have lots of eucalyptus, so they have eucalyptus honey, and we, generally in the stores, you buy a blend, so that the flavor and color is consistent in the stores.

But if you buy wildflower honey or citrus blossom honey, you'll taste different flavors, and that's due to the nectars that the bees gathered.

- It brings up a question, and I haven't paid a lot of attention to honey, 'cause to me, it all looks the same, kinda tastes the same.

But I've been in stores where you see, say a eight ounce container of honey that may be priced at $5, and then you go down the aisle, and there's a six ounce container that's $15.

What's the variation in price, and why?

- Yeah, so honey will vary in price.

If you buy a blended honey that's produced by Sue Bee Honey, a general honeybee packager, that's gonna be lower cost than a honey that was just produced locally or has some special, maybe if it's only wildflower honey, it'll cost in the mid-range.

And then there's some specialty honeys, one of them is manuka honey, which is produced in Australia and New Zealand, and those bees forage on the tea tree plant.

And so some people say it maybe has medicinal properties, it serves as an antioxidant and so then, that can be marketed and sold at a higher price point.

- Is there a big difference in taste?

- Yeah, so actually there is a big difference in taste.

So the two jars I have in front of me, I personally, I think I like the lighter, less flavorful honey, but I think it's kind of like wine, right?

Some people like different tasting wine, and honey is the same.

The darker ones in general have a stronger flavor.

And so yeah, there's definitely a difference in taste.

- Okay, thank you.

I learned something tonight, which is not hard.

(panelists laughing) This question came in from Facebook during the week, and it was from Brian in Helena, and this person has bugs all over the side of their house.

He says they look like boxelder bugs, but he thinks they're bigger and browner, and I think boxelder have some red on 'em, if I remember right.

Any idea what they are?

- It could be the Western Conifer seed bug.

And I did bring one with me today, because I've been getting a lot of calls about 'em.

So the Western conifer seed bug is, is very similar in behavior to the boxelder bug.

It's looking for a place to come in and spend the winter, but it is harmless.

It's associated mostly with Douglas fir and pine seeds, and mostly it doesn't do any damage to any of the Douglas fir pine that it comes into contact with.

But we've had a big year for them, and I mean I was just up in Helena yesterday, and they were just, they were all over the buildings, and they like to sit on the south and southwest facing sides, but they're harmless.

They're not gonna bite, they don't reproduce inside.

But hopefully over the weekend, we'll get a big cold spell, and-- - [Jack] We're due.

- We're due, yeah.

- So that should take care of it.

Quick one here for Abi, from Livingston.

Their tulip bulbs arrived late, that they ordered.

Is it too late to put 'em in the ground?

- No, you can still put tulips and other early spring flowering bulbs in, but I'd get them in in the next week or so.

- Okay, thank you.

This is interesting.

This person has a hive, and a bear, probably a black bear, attacked his hive and ate the honey.

The queen is still alive and some of the other bees.

How can they keep the hive alive through the winter, good question.

- Yeah, so if your colony's been damaged, and then lost its food reserves to a bear, what I would be recommending is, feeding that colony now, and you wouldn't wanna feed it a lot of protein.

There's pollen protein patties that beekeepers buy, but you wouldn't wanna feed that in the fall, because that encourages brood or young bee rearing.

But definitely giving them a little boost would be good.

There's also kind of some sugar patties you can make, so that way, they can eat on that during the fall and winter.

But I would definitely try to get a little bit more food in there since the bear took their food reserves.

- Yeah, bears have become a much more serious problem with our honey producers, especially Great Falls area, Choteau, Dupuyer, up in that area.

- Yeah, and a good friend lost, had the same thing happen last fall to her colony, and she pieced it back together, and the bees did survive the winter, and so I hope-- - [Jack] There's hope.

- Yeah, there's hope.

- Michelle, what's typical for taking care of a honey bee hive over the winter?

- So typically, and you actually do have to harvest the honey, 'cause they have to work hard to keep their colony warm in the winter.

So the queen will be in the center of what's called the cluster, and they'll cluster around her.

The bees actually detach their wings from their muscles and kind of just vibrate them to keep the colony nice and warm during the winter.

And so if their house is a little bit smaller, then they don't have as much room to keep, but then you still need to keep enough honey, so that they can eat during the winter months.

And so probably, that's the biggest thing to get ready for.

We kind of baby the bees at Montana State University, we put a little bee cozy around them, to keep them a little bit warmer.

But the worst thing you could have in a bee colony over winter is condensation.

And so if you put the cozy on wrong, and you encourage condensation in there, that's worse than doing nothing at all.

So they've evolved to keep themselves warm over the winter.

- Even at 30, 40 below, they'll generally survive if protected and have sufficient food.

- Yep, I think so, so there's definitely beekeepers in Canada, north of us, that overwinter colonies, so yeah they can make it.

A wind break would be a good idea.

We've used hay and straw bales for wind breaks and things like that, and then commercial beekeepers now, there is a movement for commercial beekeepers to be moving some of their bees into called what's winter storage, and that can be like a potato seller in Idaho for example, or there's now even bee overwintering structures, and so, some commercial beekeepers have gone to that to increase survival over the winter, 'cause you do lose colonies over the winter.

- I've been told that about 2/3 of bees that live in Montana and North Dakota winter in almond orchards down in California, is that true?

- Yeah, that's true.

So I was just gonna mention that.

So most of Montana's beekeepers, commercial beekeepers, move their colonies, they move about 270,000 colonies to the Central Valley of California, and they start that moving process at about Thanksgiving time, and they stage the colonies there for the world's largest pollination event, which is the California almond bloom that is in late February or early March.

- Yeah, it's interesting.

Laurie, and I don't know where this came from, but it says, "Is there a reason "there were so many leaf miner problems this year?"

- That's a good question.

I don't know, I don't know.

I think they probably just overwintered really well and I don't know what type of leaf miner they're talking about, if they're talking about the beet leaf miner, or leaf miners in trees.

But yeah, I don't, they probably just, we had a mild winter, and they probably survived pretty well, so, usually those are pretty harmless, depending on what we're talking about.

But yeah, we did see a lot of leaf miners this year.

- The good thing about 'em, they got my spinach earlier this year than they normally do.

- [Laurie] Oh yeah, yeah.

- They really like spinach.

- [Laurie] They do.

- No doubt about it.

This is a good one.

Came in last week, we didn't get to it.

Actually a couple weeks ago, from Billings.

The viewer is tired of his bluegrass lawn.

He says it takes too much work and too much water.

What are some better alternatives, particularly that are dog friendly?

- Yeah, that's a good question, and especially with water restrictions Bluegrass is pretty water intensive for a lawn, but fine fescue or turf-type tall fescue are some grasses that do really well.

They look very similar to bluegrass.

They require less fertilizer, less water, and would be dog friendly, would be a good option for your yard.

- There's been a movement toward xeriscaping, or using no plants in yards, so you reduce water use.

Is that catching on at all in Montana?

- I think it is, and in various cities, they're encouraging people, the city is encouraging people to swap out or to reduce just the amount of turf grass that they have, to help conserve water, or to help use it more efficiently.

But they're xeriscaping, or non-irrigated landscaping, is becoming more popular, especially with drought-related issues that we see more and more.

- We are getting shorter and shorter of water in a lot of cities, there's no doubt about that.

This is from Missoula, for Michelle.

This person noted a lot fewer bees in his yard this year, in comparison to previous years.

Has this been observed in other areas of Montana, or just in the Missoula area?

- Yeah, so it definitely depends on the situation.

We were just talking about water, so water comes to mind.

Sometimes bees, and definitely honey bees, go and collect water too, so sometimes, if you had a slight drip in your hose, you would have bees visiting to collect water, or if you had different blooming plants, bees would visit your yard, differentially.

If you's talking about honeybees, there could have been a closer resource for them that year.

They'll go to the most close resource.

There's also hundreds of native and wild bee species in Montana, so depending on how those bumblebees overwintered in the ground, it depends on what bees he's talking about.

But there is a wild bee survey of Montana going on.

Dr. Mike Ivie is leading that, and Casey Delphia is involved, and Abi here is involved as well.

And so, I couldn't speak to the Missoula area, of how their bees are faring in general, but probably with just one yard, it would be hard to tell.

But these could be some reasons why you saw less bees this year.

- And conversely, I think I saw more bees this year.

- [Michelle] Yeah.

- Here in the Bozeman area, than I have in years past.

Does that mean that wet spring we had here was favorable for bees, or created more flowers, or more noxious weeds for them to feed on?

- Yeah, I think that probably the nice moisture we had this spring and pretty much throughout the summer, we had a good summer here in Bozeman, is good for the bees.

They have more to forage on, more nectar to collect.

But then of course, in the northeastern part of the state, where it was much drier, harder there, so definitely, bees need water for themselves and then the plants that they forage on definitely need water.

- [Jack] Okay, thank you.

- It seemed like it was late too, like everything was two or three weeks late.

- That's true.

- And I noticed, both doing field field work, but also just out hiking and whatnot, that it took a while before the wild bees really started flying this summer.

- Yeah, and we give our bees a little bit of food in the spring, just so that'll get 'em over that couple two weeks, in case they've broken their cluster, they're looking for forage, but we might not necessarily have it.

We have that early dandelion bloom and some, soon as the trees bloom, bees are happier then, they can get some food.

- Okay, thank you.

Jane, this person has thistles in his yard.

Doesn't say which kind.

I suspect they're probably Canada thistles, and would like to control them.

Any suggestions on what they can use, and can they still do it this fall?

- Does it say where the, the viewer is calling from?

- [Jack] Bozeman.

- From Bozeman?

I live right in Bozeman and I haven't had a hard frost yet at my house, so I think there'd still be time, and you could use like a 2,4-D or Dicamba product, if he's looking for herbicide recommendation.

There's also, I've mentioned this on the show before, but Roundup for Lawns.

- [Jack] Lawns.

- And I've been trying that on different species in my yard, and it seems to work fairly well.

I don't have Canada thistles, so I haven't tried it on that, but if the viewer does wanna check that out, make sure you get Roundup for Lawns, and not just Roundup in general, because Roundup in general is glyphosate, which is non-selective, and it will kill everything.

But the Roundup for Lawns is a combination of two, or I think there's actually three different active ingredients in there, and they're all broad-leaved herbicides.

- And as a follow-up to that, I've also heard, do you recommend cutting off the seedheads, so it doesn't spread more or not really?

It's too late for that, or?

- Well, it's probably too late.

I mean, Canada thistle would've been flowering a while ago.

If it's in his lawn, he probably has been mowing it, would would be my guess.

- Oh yeah.

- Yeah, I used 2,4-D and Banvel or Dicamba this year and it really did an excellent job, and I probably applied it maybe a little bit too early, maybe the third week of September, and I probably should have waited till closer to frost.

But those two products combined did a pretty decent job.

- Yeah, it's been so dry in Bozeman that I don't like my own lawn.

There's not much growing in it at all.

So I don't know, even the Canada thistle might not be growing much unless he's watering.

- Okay, this is a good question.

A 12-year-old student from Bozeman loves science, they're curious, Michelle, how many honey bees it takes to make a pound of honey.

I wanna know too.

(panelists laughing) - Yeah, this is a hard one, and I was gonna say, now I forget this little factoid here.

I do teach a fourth grade sometimes, we do fourth through sixth, this honeybee investigators course, as part of Peaks and Potentials in the summer.

I think it's, one bee, I think, produces about a 1/16 of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime, so I'm gonna give the math question back to the 12-year-old.

(panelists laughing) So one bee, 1/16 of a teaspoon.

So they're gonna need to calculate the pounds, and then calculate the number of bees, but I can't do that in my head on, on air.

- I would not be surprised if we heard back by the end of the program.

- That'd be great, that'd be great.

- I know when I heard that stat, I really started becoming way more careful with honey and how I use it.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause that's such a small amount of honey, when you think about even a teaspoon of honey.

- It's true.

- That you might stir into your tea.

- Yeah.

- So there are about 40,000 bees in an average honey bee colony.

So if that kind of makes you feel a little bit better and we have about 300,000, 270, 300,000 colonies in Montana here.

- [Jane] Okay.

- Yeah.

- [Jane] I'm still gonna be careful.

(panelists laughing) - They work hard.

From Bozeman, Facebook question.

They have hundreds of black bugs coming into their house.

They don't seem to be doing anything harmful.

They're not sure what they are, and they'd like to know.

And is there anything they need to do about 'em?

- Well we are getting a lot of, we have a couple of invasive seed bugs that are coming in, and they were introduced from Europe several years ago, and there's some that are about 1/4 to 1/2", and the biology's kind of poorly understood, but they, I don't know if I'm pronouncing this weed right, the mullein, common mullein?

- [Jane] Mullein.

- Mullein, common mullein, one of 'em likes common mullein and a lot of 'em are associated with abandoned pastures.

So some people just get dozens of these if that's what they are.

Some get dozens of these bugs that come in at once and they like to hide on firewood too.

But there's not a good way to to control 'em except to maybe just vacuum 'em up, and just know that, also like the western conifer seed bug, they're not reproducing in the home.

- [Jack] Okay.

- But they're annoying, yeah.

- It's been a good year for all kinds of bugs.

- [Laurie] Yes.

The millers are gone now.

- They're gone, yep.

- [Jack] Finally.

- The last couple that were in my house are gone.

- And our vacuum sweeper is pretty full.

(panelists laughing) - Yeah.

- It was an amazing year for miller moths.

- It sure was.

Good for the grizzlies.

- Yeah.

- They had a lot to feed on.

- They're army cutworm moth, if I remember.

- [Laurie] Yeah, they are, yep.

- Okay, here's one I have not heard of before, and we're gonna see how smart Abi is here.

It came from Billings, and the caller wants to plant something they call Egyptian or walking onions, and when is the best time to plant them?

What are Egyptians or walking onions?

- Yeah, so this is something I learned about recently.

It's, it's an unconventional onion, they're also called tree onions.

They grow little bulbils in clusters, and you can harvest those bulbils and just plant those in the ground, and the best time to plant those is now, is gonna be in the fall.

Just plant them a couple inches deep in the soil.

You can also plant them in the spring, but the fall would be a great time to do that.

But it's an interesting onion.

I haven't tasted it but, yeah.

- All onions are good.

Some are just better than others.

- Is it planted as for a food crop, or is it an ornamental?

- It's a food crop.

- Okay.

- Yeah, some of them, when I was reading about it, some of them taste really spicy, so depending on if you get the really young tender ones or the older bulbils, but.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

It'd be interesting to try it.

- Okay, thank you.

I learned something, I've learned a lot tonight.

(panelists laughing) I know, don't say it.

From Darby, this is the second question we've had from Darby, this person would like to know, in Montana, what plants, crops, are dependent upon bees for pollination, good question.

- Yeah, so right away, I think about cherries.

You need bee pollinators for cherries.

Also, if you're doing alfalfa seed production, you certainly need bees for seed production.

Canola is another one that needs bee pollinators or benefits from that, especially for And then, yeah, just in general, fruit, nuts, and vegetable crops, so the smaller scale gardens need bee pollinators to produce those crops.

- Okay, do they help garden crops, very much?

Or plants in the garden?

Any particular ones in a garden that rely on bees?

- Yeah, I would say squashes do, a lot of wild and native bee pollinators are involved in that pollination as well.

And in general, honey bees and wild pollinators can pollinate the same area and work together to pollinate that garden.

Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating your tomatoes.

So, to have bumblebees in your yard, you actually need some degree of bare earth, 'cause bumblebees nest in the ground.

And so keeping a little bit of bare earth, not putting weed mat on everything, keeping some bare earth for those bumblebees to nest is really important, 'cause bumblebees do what's called buzz pollination, and that's critical for your tomatoes.

- That brings a point: for the last two or three years until this year, I didn't see hardly any bumblebees.

This year, even though it was wet and so forth, I saw a lot more bumblebees.

Is there a reason for that?

- I'll give it a shot and then I'll turn it over to Abi.

But what I think of bumblebees is, if you plant bumblebee forage, they will come.

So the horticulture farm is an example of this.

We have about a half an acre site there, a demonstration pollinator garden.

And since planting that, we see loads of bumblebees out there.

And so that has phlox, it has some bee balm, it has lamb's ear, asters, all these kind of flowering plants, and having something bloom all the time and some open earth, we see lots of bumblebees out there.

So I think keeping stuff in your yard will keep the bumblebees around.

- Yeah, I agree with that.

That if you plant it, they will come, and a lot of times some of those flowering plants, especially those early season ones for the bumblebees, so having something flowering as soon as possible, that's when the queens are getting ready to start their own nest.

Those are some of the most important resources for them starting out.

- Okay, thank you.

From Stevensville, Laurie.

In the past couple weeks, they say they've seen many, many white flies in their yard.

Should she treat her plants with insecticidal soap or neem oil, or not worry about it?

- Hmm, white flies aren't super common in the yard, so I'm wondering if it's something else.

I wonder if it's maybe some aphids, and because we have some aphids that come into our elm trees, wooly apple aphids and wooly elm aphids that come in, they're coming back to overwinter on their trees, but I would suspect it might be something else.

So I'd be happy to follow up.

Where did she say they were landing?

- Get a look here, Stevensville.

- Okay, I just didn't, definitely gimme a call, at 994-5704, and we'll follow up on that to try to figure out what type of insect that is.

Maybe just a couple pictures would help, because I would suspect, maybe especially this time of year, that it would be an aphid.

- And this time of year with impending cold temperatures, I wouldn't worry about hardly any insects in any area right now, is that correct?

- Yeah, and I think some of the aphid situations coming back to the elm trees are, I mean they're mass aggregating on the trunk so it is an opportunity, if that is the case, to maybe spray some insecticidal soap or something like that, just to cut down on the populations.

But normally you don't have to really do anything at all.

- You mentioned aphids, and I'm one of the few people that really like Brussels sprouts.

Michelle does too.

(panelists laughing) Good Brussels sprouts can be grown here in the Gallatin Valley and probably many other areas of Montana.

However, there are a lot of aphids that really cause most of them to prematurely rot because the aphids are fat on 'em.

Is there anything I can do to reduce, myself included, the amount of aphids that you have?

- Well sometimes I think it's hard to reach, they have a very waxy surface, so it's usually a cabbage aphid that does that.

So if, I think if you could mix some sort of horticultural oil into your solution that might help break down a lot of that waxy layer, but that's why a lot of insecticides haven't worked very well on that aphid, because that waxy layer's so hard to penetrate.

- Okay, thank you.

- [Jane] I have a suggestion.

- Oh here we go.

- Just don't look very closely (panelists laughing) in the pot or your plate when you eat them.

- That's your protein, yup.

- Or put enough bacon in it to kinda mask the, yeah.

(panelists laughing) - The first time I tried growing Brussels sprouts, 'cause I like Brussels sprouts, we ate 'em anyway, even with the bugs in 'em.

(Jane laughs) - [Laurie] There we go Jane.

(panelists talking at once) - Good job.

- That's right.

- Okay, let's move on to Abi.

This person had their lawn, and this is in Helena, sprayed by a commercial operator for broadleaf weeds.

Now they're raking their grass after they mowed the yard.

Is there a problem if they use that for mulch, winter mulch?

- Yeah, that's a really good question.

And so if you had your lawn treated, I would say the best thing to do, if you are wanting to compost that, or if you wanna use that as a mulch, is to wait for two to three mowings, and then use it after that point, so that way, you're not concerned about any sort of residual in your plant.

So two to three mowings.

- I think that's probably very good advice.

And I have a question here again, that came in on Facebook, they heard about the honeybee collapse syndrome, they'd like to know a little bit more about that.

So is that still a problem and if so, how do you address that?

- Yeah, so colony collapse disorder was probably coined in around 2008, and it was a term to describe honeybee colony losses that we didn't really understand, but that weren't due to, overt mites infestation or the queen died and so then the colony can't survive without a queen, or they had plenty of food.

And since that time really, and what my lab focuses on, here at Montana State, is just colony losses in general, not just particularly colony collapse syndrome.

And unfortunately, colony losses in the US have still averaged about 38% since from 2008 to 2018, and so, we do have high colony losses and our commercial beekeepers have done an amazing job mitigating those losses, and how they do that is they split their colonies to make up the loss, so a beekeeper can get two colonies from one colony, if that colony is healthy and robust.

But we are still experiencing, I would say, high annual colony losses in the US, and that's one of the main focuses of research in my lab, is to try to mitigate those colony losses that are associated with viral infections.

- Okay, thank you.

Question from Manhattan.

This person has what he thinks is either quackgrass or reed canarygrass growing in their barley.

Now I know that's not your specialty, it's still green generally into October, even after harvest.

Can they control it at that time?

You want to render a guess?

- Yeah, I don't feel like I have a good answer for that.

So it's potentially, it's a perennial grass that's in their barley, is that what you were saying?

- Yeah, it'd be in their stubble now, and it's coming back.

- Yeah, I wonder if-- - I think you can go with Roundup?

- Yeah, a Roundup application, if everything's been harvested and it's just stubble, it seems like a Roundup application would be what would make the most sense?

- I think so.

- Yeah, the best person to talk to, to get better answers than I can give, would be Tim Seipel, who's our cropland weed specialist.

And I don't remember Tim's number right off the top of my head, but he'll probably be on the show in a couple weeks.

- [Jack] He will be, he'll be back.

We'll save that again for him.

- Okay.

From Nye, the first question we've ever had from Nye, it's not a huge community, it's a neat little area.

They have a lot of chew marks on their lilac, and do you have any idea what that might be?

- We have a lot of root weevils that will chew little notches on lilac leaves, and I think that's probably most often what it is.

If it's just little, little tiny notches on the sides, that's probably lilac root weevil.

And we have a couple other root weevil species that will do that.

It's really not doing anything to the lilac, but we do have quite a few, quite a lot of damage from those root weevils.

But they do come inside sometimes too.

But yeah, I would just let 'em be.

- [Michelle] Yeah, kind of a misnomer there.

Root weevil, chewing up the leaves.

- Kind of what?

- Misnomer there, root weevil's chewing up the leaves.

- Yeah, yeah.

(panelists laughing) I mean as immatures, they feed on roots, but typically, here they haven't been causing that much damage to any of our roots, but with the numbers that we're seeing, maybe, you can never say never for that.

So we might start to see root damage, but it's the larvae that are doing, the immatures that are doing the damage.

- A follow up question, and I know this is really not your specialty, but this person says they've had grasshoppers for two or three years in a row, in large numbers.

Do you think that cycle will turn down over the next couple years?

- I think I've said on the show before, I'm really terrible at predicting grasshopper populations and I feel for the grasshopper people, that are having issues, it's really an epidemic in certain areas and I haven't seen a lot of Eastern Montana where we've had just, just biblical proportions of grasshoppers.

But I mean, they're supposed to go through outbreak situations or outbreak cycles, and I mean this outbreak cycle's been going on for quite a while, and I'm not sure, with overlapping populations and high populations, they're supposed to overwinter in the egg stage.

But we have lots of overlapping generations and it's pretty tricky to predict.

- You know, it's interesting, we had Ken Watson on here last week.

He farms and ranches north of Malta, and he said they had a lot of grasshoppers early, but since there was nothing green for them to feed on, because they're in a very extreme drought up in that area, that the grasshopper population has dropped off.

Is that a natural type of biological control, would you think?

- No resources?

Yeah, possibly.

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on what stage they are.

The migratory grasshopper can can migrate several miles, so I'm not sure.

- Yeah, that's true.

- If they find a resource... - Okay, well I had to throw some tough questions at you guys.

(panelists laughing) It's more fun that way.

Abi, this person from Missoula would like to know, is it best to deadhead their perennials in the fall or in the summer, and tell 'em what deadheading is.

- Yeah, that's a good question.

So deadheading is when you cut back your spent flower stocks and branches for a lot of your perennial plants.

And I would recommend not deadheading in the fall, because we were talking about native bees, about 30% of native bee species are cavity nesting species.

So they'll nest in existing cavities, or they'll excavate little cavities out of pithy stems.

Things like raspberry canes, they'll nest in those hollow twigs of grasses, things like that, so not cutting those back in the fall means you're leaving that extra habitat, the nesting habitat for these native bees.

So I would recommend waiting until the following year before you cut your perennials back, to leave that habitat.. - Good advice, and that leads me to a question I have.

We have how many different types of bees in Montana?

You don't have to tell me the exact number, but roughly how many different types and species?

- We have between 500 to 750 estimated, and possibly even more, is what the wild bees of Montana scientists are estimating.

And we also have the most bumblebee species of any state.

We have 28 species of bumblebees that can be found here, which is really cool.

- Yeah, it is kind of cool when you stop and think about it.

Very diverse, and you know, Montana agriculture is pretty diverse too, which serves well for a lot of these different species.

So good information, I learned something again tonight.

Question from Facebook.

They are on dry land and they have bull thistle.

What should they do to get rid of both this?

And you might explain the different types of thistles that we have in this state.

- Yeah, so we have probably five to eight different exotic thistles in Montana.

We also have about a dozen native thistles in Montana.

But people are probably most familiar with Canada thistle, which is a rhizominous thistle.

It has that extensive root system.

It's a perennial, but something like bull thistle, musk thistle, scotch thistle, those are all actually biennial thistles.

So they're vegetative one year, and then the next year, they shoot up that flowering stem, flower, produce their seeds, and then that plant dies.

They're actually easier to manage than Canada thistle.

And you want to, if you have plants that have already seeded out, they've flowered and seeded, those plants are dead.

So you don't wanna spend any time managing them.

You really need to manage those biennial thistles like bull thistles when they're in that vegetative stage.

So when you have those big thorny looking rosettes and they haven't sent that flowering stem up, you can mechanically control them.

They're actually kind of fun to just use a spade and cut them.

(laughing) Jack, you're making faces at me.

- I've done that, it's fun.

(panelists laughing) - Thank you, Laurie.

You can use a spade to just cut those thistles a couple inches below the surface of the soil.

You can use herbicides and spray those rosettes.

You can mow, if you let them grow up, you can mow them off when they're in the flowering stage, but before they start to produce seeds.

So the biennial thistles, there's actually quite a few options for managing them.

- Okay.

- I will say, since we're talking a lot about pollinators tonight, it's amazing how many pollinators you bull thistle, scotch thistle.

I mean they have these big beautiful flower heads, and they are magnets for a lot of our native wild bees that I have noticed.

- They ought to be happy around Bozeman.

There's plenty of bull-- - Everywhere.

There's lots of thistle, yeah.

- I'm sitting here looking at that cage that Laurie has down there and I know, Is that Pete or is that George, your favorite pet?

- I actually named her Gladys, 'cause I had a feeling that people were gonna ask for what her name was.

So this is, she is a banded argiope spider, and she is from Broadus, Montana.

We have 'em all around the state, and she is quite large right now, 'cause she's getting ready to deliver an egg sac at some point, and that's the stage that will overwinter, and so, we've seen this last year, we had a big year, and they're an orb weaving spider so they build, so they're also called a type of garden spider.

So they build really, really large spiral webs and she makes a very good pet, and she's actually, probably won't see her too much longer, but she will leave the egg sac with me.

Hopefully the spiderlings will hatch in the spring.

- I feel like I can ask this question 'cause I get a lot of questions on The Bee Movie, but what kind of spider was Charlotte?

- Charlotte was an orb weaver, yeah, yep.

(panelists laughing) - Yes, I did not know that.

- She built that orb web when she made those beautiful messages in there.

- Okay.

- And yup, that was the type of spider she was.

- I feel more fond about this one here by me.

- Yeah, people forget about Charlotte, but it's also, it's October, so it should be spider month, and definitely spider week during Halloween week.

So it's spider appreciation time here right now.

- Laurie, will she die then, after she delivers the egg sac?

- She will, yes.

- And how old is that spider?

- This spider is just an annual,they just live a year.

- [Jane] Okay, that's a big spider.

- It's a big spider, yeah.

She was feeding very well in Broadus, she had a lot of grasshoppers to feed on.

- So, how many offspring, just outta curiosity.

- I don't know the, the answer to that.

I'd say at least several dozen.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Yeah, and they're cannibals, so I think at least a few will survive, once the egg sac hatches.

(panelists laughing) (panelists talking at once) - They skipped that part in "Charlotte's Web."

- Yeah, think of how wonderful Charlotte is.

- Okay, here's a good one and I'll throw this one to Jane.

I always like to throw at least one curve.

This person is wondering if deer droppings would make good fertilizer for a garden, or would it have weed seeds in it?

He has lots of deer leaving droppings in his yard.

- I get that question?

- Yes.

(panelists laughing) Weed seeds.

- Yeah, I thought Abi was going to get that one.

- Well, you can share it.

- Weeds, ah, I wouldn't be that, I mean seeds definitely can travel through animal droppings for sure.

I'm trying to think if deer would be eating weedy species when they're flowering, or when they have seeds.

I think that would be the key is what, what are they browsing on?

- Seems like leaves more than, right?

- Yeah.

- So maybe they wouldn't have the seeds.

- My tulip beds for sure.

(panelists laughing) - They eat everything in your yard.

Yeah, that's a good question.

I would have to think more about like, what a deer would be eating at the time of year when you would have weed flowers that have have produced their seeds.

- That could be a good question for Jared Beaver, The vertebrate specialist.

- Yeah, the wildlife specialist, yeah.

- Well and we'll try to get Jared on, either this year or next spring.

- Yeah.

- Really, a little information that, what deer eat and so forth.

But this is probably 20 years ago, and this happened out here in Manhattan, where they had sprayed some Tordon on some noxious weeds in the gullies or coulees, and that's where the deer spent a lot of time.

They'd snack on those plants and in the evening, at dark, they'd go up into the alfalfa field and urinate and you'd see spots like this.

So I know some herbicides can pass through deer systems.

I'm sure some seeds can too.

- Yeah, the growth regulator herbicide, some of them pass through livestock and One comment I can make about seeds passing through animals.

There has been work done with targeted grazing for weed control, and some of the work that's been done, including work here at MSU, shows that most of the seeds that pass through livestock, very few of them remain viable after passing through the digestive tract of sheep, goats and cattle.

So I don't know how deer, what their digestive system is relative to livestock, but I think it's like 10% of the seeds that would pass through and still be viable for livestock.

- Maybe composting them would be a good way to mitigate that further.

- Yeah, yeah.

- As a follow up question from Bozeman, they would like to know, and they've heard, that you should wash your car often after being in areas, hunting or fishing, where there are noxious weeds, because you can transmit noxious weed seeds via cars.

Is that true?

- Yes, definitely.

I think this is a good question, thinking about hunting season coming up.

A lot of offroad use, a lot of people driving around.

A lot of weeds that have produced, they've produced seeds by now.

There was actually some pretty interesting work done at MSU.

Dr. Lisa Rue, she and her lab did a lot of work looking at how seeds move around on vehicles, and there were some kind of alarming numbers concerning how many seeds like an ATV can pick up, especially in the fall, it was even ATVs driving on trail could pick up close to 400 seeds per mile in the fall.

And if they went off trail, it was like thousands of seeds per mile driven.

So, and then those seeds can remain attached to vehicles for many, many miles before they would drop off.

So you think about a species getting picked up in one part of the state and dropped off in another part of the state, it's a very real thing.

And the work that was done here at MSU is really good justification for the somewhat inconvenient activity of washing your vehicle and washing the undercarriage.

- Okay.

- [Jane] And the wheel wells.

- On that note, let's just mention that with hunting season coming and people going in, what about weed free alfalfa?

You want to promote that a little bit, while we're at it?

- Yeah, so there is a weed seed free forage program and it includes gravel now, in Montana, and if you are recreating on public land, and you're taking animals in, you are required to use weed seed free forage.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And that is an important part of hunting season.

If people are packing in with animals, the last thing we wanna do is take forage alfalfa hay into the back country and drop some seeds of spotted knapweed or Canada thistle or bull thistle.

- And is that food source readily accessible?

Can people just go buy it or how do you get that?

- You can, so hay producers get certified as certified weed seed free hay, and you can find producers, the Department of Ag has a website where you can find producers.

You could probably also locate people through the Extension offices.

A lot of our Extension agents and our county weed coordinators are certified inspectors and they know who is producing locally.

- [Michelle] Great.

- [Laurie] Is the supply down as well this year, like it was last year?

- Well, I think the hay production was way better this year than last year.

I don't know, in terms of weed seed free certified hay, I know the Department of Ag would always like to get more people producing the certified weed, and you get a premium for it, people will pay more for that.

- You don't want it in large bales though?

- No, no, these are typically the small bales.

- Okay.

From Harlowton, they would like to know what are the best plants to draw honeybees to?

- Yeah, so I would say some that are easy to grow would be bee balm, prairie coneflower.

Sainfoin is easy, catmint, even, attracts a lot of different bees.

Let's see, wildwood rose, wild geranium, asters, all these would be great for bees.

And actually we have a pollinator health center here, at Montana State University, and as part of that center we have our resources webpage, where we list a bunch of plants that are great for pollinators and have Montana and Northwest targeted plants listed on that website.

So that'd be great place for them to check that out.

Jane, do you have any other plants to add?

- No, I think everything you mentioned is good.

- So if you live in the Gallatin Valley, and you grow alfalfa, I'm sure there's plenty of dandelions in most alfalfa fields.

Do the bees like the dandelions?

- So I've heard, and maybe Abi will chime in here as well, but bees will go to dandelions when there's nothing else there, but the minute those trees bloom, I feel like we even here, on campus, we see them move from the dandelions to the trees.

So the minute there's something else for them to forage on, they seem to shift.

Would you agree, Abi?

- Yeah, I would say that too, but dandelions aren't that nutritious of a nectar source for bees.

But yeah, if there's nothing else available, they're going to go to those plants.

- Okay, well there's plenty of them around here, there's no doubt.

From Philipsburg, Facebook question.

This person says there are thousands of insects that are covering the base of their elm tree.

What are they doing, and should they be concerned?

And I don't know what those would be.

Laurie, have a clue?

- I think, is that the question that came in from Stevensville, that maybe it's the same thing, that maybe some of the aphids flying around and congregating on the trees.

'Cause we see that with elm trees sometimes, we see it with ash trees and that would be, what I'd be suspecting, so sometimes they look like little, little fairy aphids too.

I sometimes I get those calls this time of year.

They're wooly and winged and they look like little angels, but I don't think people really think they're angels.

- Laurie, what are they doing?

Are they going into the bark to overwinter, or laying eggs in there, or?

- So it depends on the species, but a lot of 'em are actually laying eggs in the bark.

So the wooly elm aphid often uses apple as a secondary source.

So sometimes they will overwinter in the roots, but mostly the other ones are laying eggs in the bark and around branches.

- While we have you up, and this one is fascinating to me.

It's from Kalispell.

They, or this person, she said they've seen a lot of ladybugs this year.

They're wondering why.

- Gosh, yeah, I haven't had a whole lot of lady beetle questions this year, so I'm not sure, I haven't-- - [Jack] Probably have a lot of aphids someplace there.

- Yeah, so they do feed on aphids, but they are, they call 'em generalist predators, so they feed on a whole variety of prey.

But typically, they're going after aphids.

They're one of the first things that targets aphids when you see 'em on the plants.

So yeah, probably a big aphid percentage in that area for sure.

- Where do the lady bugs overwinter here?

- I think that's a good question.

I don't know, I think some of 'em go to higher elevations, but then I don't know if they stay in those higher elevations and I don't know if Abi, if you know the answer to that question?

- [Abi] I don't.

- I'm not quite sure where they overwinter, so I know that they do become a resource for bears to feed on as well, but I'm not sure if they come back.

- [Jack] Okay, interesting.

Question from Billings.

They said that they used to see a lot of what they called large beehives in alfalfa fields in the Hysham area.

They don't see as many anymore.

What's the deal with that?

- So Montana's beekeepers usually register their beekeeping sites with the Department of Ag.

And so either that site is no longer, or that beekeeper is no longer, or they found that that site, for whatever reason, they're not utilizing that site.

But those sites are usually pretty coveted and pretty traditionally used by the same beekeepers, but they can move around their bees.

Bees also need water and things like that.

So that for a variety of reasons, they might not be using that site.

- You know another thought there, in that Hysham area, we used to have a lot of alfalfa seed producers, and they had these big alfalfa boards or whatever you call them.

That might be what they were seeing out there.

- Yeah, they have the alfalfa leaf cutter bees, and those are the boards, those are rather than honey bees, yep, and if they're cutting the alfalfa before bloom, and like you mentioned, the leaf cutter bees will certainly prefer to forage in alfalfa, whereas the honey bees won't forage on it as much as these leaf cutter bees will.

- Okay, thank you.

Quick one Jane, hoary alyssum, this person is concerned about it.

What can they do to slow it down?

- Yeah, there's several different ways.

I mean you can use mechanical control, herbicides, cultural control, we do have what I think is a very nice Extension publication on hoary alyssum that covers a lot of different management.

So check out the MSU Extension store and look for hoary alyssum.

- It's really increased in the last few years, okay.

Folks, we're coming toward the end of another program.

I want to thank the panel for being here this evening, especially Michelle, our special guest.

Next week we're gonna have Cory Cheguis here, who's expert on coal seam fires.

He's coming from Miles City to join us.

We got that idea by looking at an article here in a magazine called A High Country News, and it talked about the effects of coal seam fires on the sustainability of ranching operations out in the Potter River Basin.

I'm gonna learn a lot next week.

I think you will too, invite you to join us again.

It's been a pleasure this evening.

Thanks for your calls.

Have a good week, and good night.

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