Gardening is good for the Soul - and Pollinator Health!

Horses and Honeybees

We need honey bees. As horse owners and lovers, we need to educate ourselves now because the decline of pollinators is beginning to impact our food and livestock crops. The implications of this are higher prices and potentially fewer types of feed based products, possibly feed shortages in the years to come. Bees also produce products that are beneficial to equine health, such as Honey and propolis, a powerful anti-bacterial and anti-fungal material. Visit our video page to watch a wounded horse get a HONEY WRAP. A university study (Sydney, AU) found that when used on wounds, honey could speed healing as much as 27 percent faster healing time. Honey has been used for centuries as a treatment for disease and infections.

Equines and Pollinator Health

Sustainable Horse keeping, when combined with pollinator health awareness and practices is an important key to creating excellence in equine management.

The Beauty and the BEE’s

Create a Photo BackDrop for your Horse

Many horse photos I see have unattractive things lurking in the backgrounds, so here is an opportunity to easily create a beautiful scene while supporting pollinator health, growing beneficial herbs and horse treats (sunflower heads) while implementing manure pile re-use.

With a load of soil and a handful of sunflower seeds, a few discount herbs and sale shrubs, you can make a photo background to be proud of and really show your horse off! Help a friend sell their horse or create a memorable horse birthday photo complete with (easy to grow) flowers!

It can change with the seasons and support many bees and native pollinators, mine had tons of  bee and hummingbirds, so mesmerizing to watch. What a fantastic horse keeping conversation piece. (pictures coming!).

Here’s a simple sunflower bed below so you get the idea, the horses loved the chunks of sunflower seeds!

On Toxic Plants

Planting wildflower seeds on an equine property can lead to unwanted and hard to eradicate toxic plants. Choose zones that are well away from horses, in areas you can mow around to check the spread of any beautiful but toxic plants. If you have a horse that “snatches” at passing vegetation, plant your wildfowers set back from areas where you may lead your horse, such as driveway entries.

Monarch Butterfly Populations at Risk, But There’s an Easy Way to Help”

Here is an interesting article about the monarch population.

A problem for horse owners is Milkweed - they neglect to mention that this plant was actively eradicated by farmers, not displaced. There was a very good reason for that - Milkweed is toxic to horses and livestock.

Somehow, we need to find a balance. We need to intelligently plan and rebuild pollinator numbers while keeping the spread of plants that are toxic to livestock and horses to a minimum.  This is exactly why dialog is crucial between horse owners and university departments, or county government offices, as spreading milkweed seed in the country or along rural zones could have tragic and predictable results.

Oregon beekeepers continue to see unsustainable losses 7/8/14- Read the article Here:

Please Visit SustainableHoneyBees.com for more information.

If you live in Oregon, and you see a strange insect or butterfly you want to know the name of  go HERE to identify it.

Archer grazing amongst the Wild Carrots