Final report for FNC21-1289
Project Information
I have up to ten bee hives on a flower farm that specializes in lavender production and produce comb and liquid honey. I carried out sustainable practices before this grant by raising my own queens, ensuring yearround forage, and overwintering in Iowa.
In Dec. 2019, Iowa had 1,330 registered beekeepers (20 commercial) with 2,353 apiaries and 14,174 colonies. The proposed planner will support all beekeepers, especially new ones. It will also address the benefits that sustainable agriculture and my beekeeping practice stand for. It is ecologically sound as it sustains the flora on which beekeeping depends by using phenology, raises awareness of the interconnectedness of beekeeping and the flora around the hives, and possibly leads landowners to increase the amount of native pollinator plants to fill in forage gaps for the bees. The planner will make operations economically viable as the user makes note of phenological events that can maximize nectar flows, manage for swarms with explosive forage bursts, and possibly harvest specialty monocrop honeys at higher prices. It could also be a future source of income for the proposer. Lastly, the planner will be socially responsible. In my five years as a beekeeping instructor and ten as a club leader, I have not found Iowa-specific beekeeping reference materials. By crowdsourcing data, the statewide community would become stakeholders. The planner can especially assist beekeepers without a mentor as its practical nature could lead them into better management for a sustainable apiary.
After using the Planners for a season, 22 users completed a survey and 6 users agreed to an interview about how well the Planner worked for them. These results were then workshopped at the Iowa Honey Producers Association Annual Convention, which led to the creation of A Beekeeper's Year (prairie edition) Calendar. This new Calendar combines relevant phenology events with beekeeping chores.
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- Increase an individual’s floral awareness with relation to dates by crowdsourcing in 2021
- Share data by distributing planners to individuals and magazine editors in 2022, then measure planner effectiveness by asking users:
- How many native plants could you identify or notice before using the planner?
- How many native plants could you identify after using the planner for a season?
- Will you add more native habitat to your apiary/talk to your landowner about same?
- Was this planner an asset to your practice (bigger harvest, captured swarms)?
- Would you share more?
- Share answers at state Honey Producers convention
- Create and distribute new Calendar to assist beekeepers in correlating phenology events with beekeeping chores.
Research
Content: From experience, publications, crowdsourcing. Bell adds queen rearing information. Lane pulls dates on swarm calls. I combine her swarm information with mine and add crowdsourced data. Visually on the left side, the planner has a bee to-do list and phenology for a particular month. On the right is a calendar and area for notes. The value of this planner has been affirmed by 100% of the community leaders asked.
Crowdsourcing: Photographers may increase their phenology skills, become invested in the planner, and establish the date and geographic ranges of each species. Photographers have their name printed in the planner’s credits and receive a free planner, thus building investment in the project. Submittals are validated by geolocation and date stamps and sent by email only.
Promotion of planner: Email and presentations explaining the project to existing beekeeper lists.
Editing, book design, printing of planner: By beekeepers who understand community needs.
Distribution for planner: USPS Media Mail. Option: a digital copy on my website for printing at home.
Measuring effectiveness for planner: A tiered approach. First tier is a digital survey. I have created online surveys for years, people are accustomed to them, and results export for easy analysis. Second tier has two options. Option 1: the survey ends with the participant checking a box for me to call them for more feedback or leave a longform comment. Option 2: I set up virtual meetings with bee clubs for feedback.
Outreach for planner: Virtual presentations. I introduce the project, crowdsourcing, how to use the planner, present results and get feedback. A review copy will be sent to the Iowa Honey Producers Association newsletter editor. The planner will also be presented as a model for other states by sending a copy to trade magazines.
Adding on for 2023
Content for calendar: Data submitted for the planner was used for the calendar with the addition of my own submissions for the months of Oct. - March. One side is more visual and low text with the look of a Gantt chart. The top and right margins contain beekeeping chores and the space below shows bloom times with colored bars, inspired by the State Department of Transportation's Blooming Prairie poster. The reverse side has the same information in table form with only words. On the left is a table for phenological events and on the right is a table for beekeeping chores. Both tables are in chronological order.
Crowdsourcing: The attendees of my breakout session at the State Honey Producers convention workshopped the calendar's final form in regard to size, folding, and paper selection.
Promotion for calendar: Social media, email to beekeeping instructors.
Editing, book design, printing: By beekeepers who understand community needs.
Distribution for calendar: in-person with users, club leaders, and beekeeping instructors; or other arrangement.
Outreach for calendar: Presentation at Practical Farmers of Iowa conference and my beekeeping classes. Review copy sent to the editor of the American Bee Journal.
Measuring effectiveness for calendar: With time constraints and prior affirmation from the planner, feedback will only be sought in person to person interactions that occur in the PI's natural life. No formal interview sessions or surveys have been scheduled.
Forty-one bee farmers submitted dates of bloom to me during 2021. These were recorded and used to find differences in bloom dates for the same species across the state such as north vs. south and east vs west. Differences were found to be minimally spaced on the calendar.
Twenty-two people took the survey as users of the planner and their responses are shown in the tables below in percent. Overall, the planner led to increased identification skills and incorporating more native habitat to bee yards.
Q1+2: How many native plants could you identify or did you notice before/after using the planner?
| 0 | (1-10) | 10+ | |
| Q1. number identified before planner | 18.18 | 40.91 | 40.91 |
| Q2. number identified after planner | 9.09 | 40.91 | 54.55 |
Q3: Will you (or landowner) incorporate more native habitat to your apiary in 2023/2024. Examples include moving hives to a different setting, planting more natives in current bee yard, etc.
| yes | no |
| 90.91 | 9.09 |
Q4: Was this planner an asset to your operation (floral awareness led to bigger harvest, informed queen rearing, made splits, swarm control, avoided dearth, etc.)?
| yes | no |
| 63.64 | 36.36 |
Six users also agreed to an interview for longform feedback. The genesis of this planner project came from years of community desire to tie plants to beekeeping chores, and that idea persisted into the interviews -- users wanted recommendations for beekeeping chores that strongly correlated to the calendar. This is something I had always hesitated to make because beekeeping is very local depending on each individual bee yard's environment. Instead of giving times of the year based on months in a calendar, I would base my recommendations on bloom time. However, after examining the data from the participants in 2021, I saw examples such as gaps in budburst for the same tree in different parts of the state that were two weeks or less apart. This gave me confidence in giving general instructions based on months in a calendar and led to the creation of A Beekeeper's Year (prairie edition) Calendar.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
The nuc supplier who gave a Calendar with each order (mentioned above) wrote, “They’ve been really well received by my customers this spring at nuc pickups. Thank you!” A winter seminar participant was very enthusiastic and foresaw a lot of reference to the new Calendar because it wasn’t text heavy.
The visual designer and I were unable to get copyright. While the Calendar itself is the first of its kind to combine beekeeping chores with phenology, it is essentially a data set. Perhaps in 2024 we could add elements to make the Calendar copyrightable.
My goal was to encourage beekeepers to identify their native forage and plant more of it as a way to build a sustainable business and rebuild a sustainable natural environment. In speaking with Calendar users to assess for effectiveness, I’m observing that we have beekeepers in different pools and each pool has a different approach to adding phenology to their practice.
One pool contains beekeepers who need to first be confident in their animal husbandry skills. Once they gain confidence in their skills, they can focus on observing native habitat that coincides with the bees’ instincts. Another pool of beekeepers were native habitat stewards before they were beekeepers. Once this group of people began keeping bees in their habitats, they gained a new understanding for the way honey bees interacted (or did not interact) with the different trees and forbs and could use the Planner and Calendar the way I intended. The third pool of beekeepers are those who will look only at the Calendar's dates and bee chores and ignore the bloom time information. I predict this group will miss nectar and pollen flow and swarms.
A few users have really dived into identification. However, the webpages that I created for beekeepers to use as a reference were not widely used. Book users turned to paper field guides and mobile users turned to existing apps. Because of this, I removed all the webpages intended for plant identification with no comments from users. This leads me to assume that people will use the reference guide of their choice and focus on timing of beekeeping chores with either the Phenology Planner or their own recordkeeping method. This project has been a success in raising floral awareness and tying it to beekeeping chores.