Conventional Farmers ain't all bad

Natural beekeepers are known to dislike conventional farming practices but in this case some of the stuff they do seems helping the bees at this time of the year in my locality.

At one stage the farmers have cut down all the grass on their fields for hay production, cutting down the Clover flowers as well. This made me sad because at that stage Clover was the only one flowering a lot.

The bees have considerably reduced flying after that. 

Another thing happened when farmers cut down the grasses; they have cut down the Hawkbit and Hawksbeard plants as well which were just about to start blooming. This have only postponed their flowering and the fields now are all yellow. It feels like the beginning of Dandelion nectar flow back in May :)

fields covered in Hawkbit flowers

Lots of pollen

Honey extracting nectar with proboscis 

Bee flying from one flower to the next ...

Sisters in action

But not all looks great on the farmers fields. Most of the farmers till their grass fields once covered with Dandelion and Hawkbit plants because they believe that such plants give no benefit to their cattle. They only want grass and to make that possible they first spray the field with poison called RoundUp which kills literally all plant life. After that they till the land and after some time they saw new grass seeds. Such fields will not offer anything to the pollinators until Dandelion and Hawkbit seeds find their way back onto those fields. This can take several years.

And here we see the problem arising from not keeping landrace cattle which can thrive on flowering fields. The swedish landrace cows are small and give less milk than the imported ones but they also need no extra feeding, no need for high quality grass diet.

Think about it. We will buy a farm soon and I will make sure we only have landrace animals, which are adapted to this climate and nature.