Cost-share help for Ohio’s honeybees

COLUMBUS — Ohio farmers rely on bees to pollinate more than 70 crops, but 50 to 80 percent of the honeybees raised by Ohio’s registered beekeepers died last winter.

Researchers suggest a number of reasons for this phenomenon, including the loss of the flowering habitat bees need to strengthen and grow their colonies.

A program

The Natural Resources Conservation Service, the USDA agency responsible for helping landowners protect their farms and forests, now has a program to increase honeybee habitat.

Called the Honeybee Pollinator Environmental Quality Incentives Program, this program will allow the service to design honeybee friendly habitat with landowners, plus help them cover some of the cost of creating it.

Ohio counties

Agricultural producers with cropland, pastureland, forestland and farmsteads in the following 24 Ohio counties can apply for the Pollinator Environmental Quality Incentives Program : Allen, Ashtabula, Auglaize, Cuyahoga, Defiance, Erie, Fulton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Lake, Lorain, Lucas, Mercer, Ottawa, Paulding, Sandusky, Seneca, Shelby, Van Wert, Williams, Wood, and Wyandot.

Farmers can create flowering habitat without taking a whole field out of crop production by planting borders around fields or along streams, planting flowering trees, or mixing flowering plants into pastures.

Natural Resources Conservation Service recommends using flowering plants native to Ohio, such as pasture rose, Canadian milk vetch, slender bush-clover, and many others.

To provide a continuous source of flower pollen and nectar, it’s best to use a seed mix containing flowers that bloom at different times throughout the growing season.

Certain pesticides or pesticides applied improperly appear to contribute to the decline in honeybees, so Natural Resources Conservation Service encourages limited or no use of pesticides on or near honeybee habitat.

Natural Resources Conservation Service also encourages keeping bees hives, called apiaries, nearby. Ohio has 4,390 registered beekeepers with 7,199 apiaries across the State.

Program application

Call or visit your county Natural Resources Conservation Service office to fill out a program application by July 18. Visit the Ohio Natural Resources Conservation Service website for office telephone numbers and addresses or look in the Federal Government section of your telephone directory.

Visit the Natural Resources Conservation Service website at www.nrcs.usda.gov for information on pollinators, their habitat, and how you can help on your farm or in your backyard.