I have a question. I’m a new beekeeper but love to fertilize my yard a couple times a year. What is safe for my bees?
Qande McKenna: Manure
Neil VanCamp Jr.: Thanks for responding. I was hoping someone would at least say lime. Lol
Ken Burdick: Liquid manure
William McIntosh: Compost. Chicken droppings. Lots of different things, natural stuff.
Ben Petrone: No chemicals .Any manure or fish oil compost leaves saw dust .
Neil VanCamp Jr.: I dont have enough chicken poo yet. Lol. I was hoping that there was something that I could buy and use. So lime is out of the question?
Ben Petrone: Neil VanCamp Jr. only if your soil is acidic/ is when you apply lime
Sarah Collingwood: Get chickens and let them free range.
Rick Ward: Best answer yet
Gaven Brantley: I have 20. they do a real good job. hell, they even fertilize the driveway!
Brian Horne: Just apply a regular fertilizer in low doses (not weed and feed). Best to apply 1/3 of what they recommend and apply every month or so.
Nicholas Lee: What does fertilizer have to do with bees
Gaven Brantley: fertilizer should be fine. it’s the pre and post emergent you need to worry about.
Sarah Lynn Blackmer: Ok, I’m a horticulturist and a bee keeper. chemical fertilizer, liquid or granular are not going to hurt bees. You might hurt bees when using these products if you drop the bag on a bee, or if you hose down the bee with the fertilizer, though the pressure from the water is probably more harmful than the fertilizer. Composted Manure is great for yards, it poses he same threats that I previously mentioned, you could squish a bee. You will have to bring in far more product to deliver a similar N-P-k ratting, we are talking truck loads. The big difference between going natural vs chemical is that chemical products do nothing to increase aeration or water retention. The plant doesn’t know the difference between natural vs chemical. Available nitrogen is available nitrogen. If your plants struggle due to bad soil, a 1” topdressing of manure is beneficial, but if your soil is good or even if it sucks, it is ok to use chemical fertilizers.
Neil VanCamp Jr.: Great. Thank you for responding. I’m not trying to kill anything but more than less helping everything to grow.
Kane Wallace: As above, my family owns a professional gardening business and im a full time Pest controller. We have had glyphosate around the hives, liquid iron etc. We have never lost a hive or noticed any kind of negative effect on the bees. We once had a batch of honey lab tested to make sure no syrup was remaining in any of the stores (so we could label syrup free) and they said our honey was really top quality.We have since killed off everything around there and seeded it all with clover to save mowing. Clover can be added around there and strimmed off as a natural green mulch as can borage. borage has deep roots that bring nutrients to the topsoil and clover draws nitrogen into the soil from the atmosphere
Neil VanCamp Jr.: Thank you. This may be a common question for a lot of folks out there wondering like myself.