Bee-Friendly Beef
Project Objective
This project aims to support the recovery of declining pollinator communities through habitat enhancement on working farms. By introducing native floral resources to livestock pastures and assessing pollinator community response, research findings will be used to provide recommendations for bee-friendly grazing strategies.
Description
In collaboration with Virginia Tech (VT) and the University of Tennessee (UT), VWL piloted a new study in 2021 to develop bee-friendly beef production practices through a series of demonstration sites and on-farm trials. What do we mean by “bee-friendly beef?” Pollinators have experienced precipitous declines in recent decades due, in part, to changing land-use and declines in floral resources. The objective of this project is to explore avenues to increase pollinator conservation opportunities on working farms. Integrating native wildflowers into pastures across the 37 million acres of the fescue belt in the Southeastern U.S. has the potential to conserve pollinators while maintaining cattle production. The predominant grass across these landscapes, tall fescue, feeds millions of cattle and grows well during the cool spring and fall seasons. However, this non-native grass introduced from northern Europe outcompetes native grasses and wildflowers, which contributes to declines in populations of pollinating insects. This project examines the integration of native wildflowers into traditional fescue-dominated grazing systems.
In 2020, experimental trials were initiated at VT and UT sites to determine optimal methods for establishment of wildflowers in actively grazed sites. In 2021, we used results from the first year of establishments to initiate six on-farm trials through VWL in Northern Virginia. VWL staff conducted baseline vegetation surveys in the study fields at each farm, followed by field preparation to decrease cool season grass cover. A winter cover crop was planted to provide grazing forage and to control erosion within the study field. Following a second spring field preparation, the native wildflower seed mix was sown with a seed drill into the wildflower-enhanced treatments in early June 2022. The wildflower seed mix was determined based on species that are native to North America, are nontoxic to cattle and sheep, and bloom at different times of the season so that flowers will be continually available to pollinators throughout their foraging period.
Follow-up vegetation surveys and pollinator surveys are being conducted in the late summer and early fall of 2022 and in subsequent growing seasons to compare floral resources and pollinator abundance and diversity within cattle pastures enhanced with native wildflowers vs. traditional fescue pastures. These research findings will be combined with results from a forage analysis and an economic impact study through VT and UT to provide recommendations for bee-friendly grazing strategies.
Sources of Funding:
Collaborators:
- Virginia Tech (Bee-Friendly Beef)
- The University of Tennessee
Project Contact:
- Erin Shibley, VWL Survey Coordinator, ShibleyE@si.edu
In the News
Volunteers Assist with Pollinator Counts
Bee-friendly Beef Producer Workshop
- Bee Friendly Beef Seed Mix
- Are U.S. consumers willing to pay a premium for bee-friendly beef?
- Workshop Summary and Highlights
- Creating Higher Diversity Native Grass Pastures
- Diverse Pasture Performance Persistence and Management
- Methods to establish native wildflowers into tall fescue pasturelands
- Pollinator preference in diversified pastures
- Case studies and preliminary research findings from Virginia Working Landscapes Bee-Friendly Beef farms
Recent Publications from Bee-Friendly Beef Research Partners with Virginia Tech (VT) and University of Tennessee (UT)
- Native Forbs Interseeded into Native Grass Pastures Persist Under Grazing
- Blooming and Forage Characteristics of Twelve Native Forbs Subjected to Repeated Defoliation
- Evaluating Different Methods to Establish Biodiverse Swards of Native Grasses and Wildflowers for Pasturelands
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VWL is supported 100% by grants and donations and our work is made possible by the generous contributions from our community.
The Smithsonian Institution is a 501(c)(3). All contributions are tax-deductible.
GET IN TOUCH
Virginia Working Landscapes
Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
1500 Remount Road, MRC 5537
Front Royal, Virginia 22630
SCBIVWL@si.edu
540-635-0035
