- Hi, thanks for joining us for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Bromeliads are a popular houseplant.

Today we're going to learn how to take care of them.

Also, bees are great in your garden, but not in your house.

That's just ahead on the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for the "Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to the Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Joellen Dimond.

Joellen is the Director of Landscape at the University of Memphis, and David Glover will be joining me later.

Hi, Joellen.

- Hi.

- You have some beautiful plants next to you.

- Yes, these are bromeliads.

- All right, so we're gotta talk about bromeliads and how to take care of them.

- Well, yeah.

First, let's find out what bromeliads are.

- Okay, let's do that.

- They are beautiful plants.

They have multicolored foliage in reds, greens, oranges, pinks, all kinds of colors.

The foliage can be either solid green, they can be spotted, they can be striped, or they can be banded like this particular one.

And there are like 2,500 different species of this.

- Twenty-five hundred?

- Yes.

And they have hybrids, thousands of hybrids and cultivars.

So there it is a large family, very popular, but it's considered a primeval plant because it has been around for millions of years.

- Wow.

- Millions of years.

- That's a long time.

- It evolved, yeah.

And of course, like orchids, these are epiphytes, which means that they can be grown on logs or some kind of other plant, but they only need it for support.

They don't take any food or nutrients from the plant.

- Good, so it's not a saprophyte.

- No, no.

- Okay, I got it.

- 'Cause they're understory plants in the forest.

- Right, so do they need soil to support their growth?

- Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Like I said, you can put 'em on logs and boards and things like that.

- Okay.

- Some of the most popular kinds are Guzmania.

These have long flat leaves that are multicolored that have bracts that are colored like poinsettias, you know?

These are the same way.

Neoregelia, these have pink and purple bracts.

Vriesea, these have feather-like blooms on them.

And there are two others that you may not understand that is a bromeliad.

Spanish moss is also a bromeliad because- - I didn't know that.

- 'Cause, you know, it hangs on the tree, but it doesn't take nutrients from the trees.

It takes nutrients from the air and the surrounding area.

And Ananas is another genus that is actually pineapples.

- Whoa.

- A pineapple is a bromeliad, and it's the only one that produces fruit.

- Okay, I learned so much good stuff.

I didn't know that.

- I know.

Isn't that interesting?

- Yeah.

- It's a very large family, and they're real pretty.

But we wanna talk about their care.

- Okay, let's do that, all right.

- They like 60 to 85 degrees.

So they're tropical.

- Tropical, right, right.

- Yeah.

They like humidity that's around 50%.

- Okay.

- Which is not... You know, most of our indoor air is at least that.

- Okay.

- They like bright light, but not direct sun.

Because think about it, in the wild, they're understory.

So they get bright light, but they don't get direct sun.

- Got it.

- Most importantly about them, they like well-drained soil.

Well -drained soil.

In fact, a lot of people will plant these in orchid mix and cactus mix, something that is well-drained and not just plain soil, because they don't like to be wet.

I mean, they can take moisture, but they like to dry out between waterings.

- I got it, okay, okay.

- Some of 'em, like this one here, you see has a cup-shaped center here.

And there is some water in here.

And think about Mother Nature, if it's raining, the water gets caught in this cup and it stays in there.

And sometimes, these type of bromeliads only like...

They can be watered that way.

You just fill the center with some water.

The thing is, you gotta watch that because it can get too much water and rot.

- See, that's what I was wondering.

Can it collect too much?

- It can, but the cup varieties are used to having water inside the center, but just not too much.

- Not too much.

- Now if you've got 'em in dirt like this and it's wet and you've got water in here, that could be too much.

- Okay, I got it.

- So, well-drained soil.

Well-drained soil.

Problems.

Probably the number one problem is over watering.

- Okay, I can see that.

- Yeah, I mean it rotting from being over watered is probably the worst problem that they have.

Now they can get some mealy bugs, some aphids, and some scale just like any plant on the interior of your house.

- Right, those are common insect pests.

- Yeah, you just, neem oils, and, you know, if you have scale, a little alcohol and rub 'em off, wash off the aphid, you know, some of the same things you would do for any houseplant to get rid of those.

Now, sometimes they will get nice and green and tall and thin strappy leaves.

And believe it or not, even if it's in like a south-facing window and gets interior light, if it gets like that, it means that it's not got enough light.

- Not enough.

- Mm-hmm, yeah.

'Cause most of these are pretty thick, thick leaves.

But tall, thin strappy leaves is a sign that they're just not getting enough light.

- Okay, so, would they need to be up-potted?

- Probably not.

They have very small root systems.

This is how they multiply.

They multiply with what they call pups beside each one.

This one has several on the outside of it.

This plant, bromeliads, only bloom once.

When this flower dies, that's the only time it's ever going to bloom.

You can cut the flower stock off, but then see it' reproducing it itself by these pups.

Well, eventually the center, original plant, will die.

- That's interesting, yeah.

- And then these pups will take over.

And, you know, you can leave them or you can up-pot 'em and have all of 'em in the same container if you want to, or you can take each one apart and have a new plant in a different pot.

- Oh, okay.

- Then it will take up to three years for each one of these pups to bloom like the original plant.

Have you noticed this one doesn't have any of the pups on the side?

And I have a theory.

My theory is a lot of people will buy these.

The blooms will be beautiful, and they'll die down, and then they'll have this beautiful foliage and this beautiful foliage, and then suddenly, this plant dies and it never produces pups.

It's just going through its lifecycle because they don't...

The only way they reproduce mostly is by the pups.

So if they don't have enough light to produce pups, then the plant will eventually die without ever having produced pups.

Now I do know that they reproduce by seed, but that's really complicated in a grower and a geneticist.

You know, I'm just talking the normal homeowner.

You know, they get these, it'll bloom, these eventually die, and they don't produce another pup.

I think it's just going through its life cycle.

- Right, so no fertilizing then?

Do we have to worry about fertilizing?

- This reminds me of orchids.

It doesn't really need to be fertilized.

And if you do, only fertilize it half diluted with a complete fertilizer, liquid fertilizer in the spring and summer only.

- Spring and summer.

- Because like all plants, you know, they have their downtime when the light levels are lower and they can't use the food anyway.

Like in the winter, you don't wanna over fertilize 'em and over water them.

- Okay.

So do they have root systems like orchids?

- No, they're not quite...

They don't have that thick of fleshy.

- Okay.

- 'Cause actually orchids prefer their roots out of the ground.

- Out, right.

- These don't necessarily.

You know, they're in the soil, and they usually stay in the soil when they're plotted in soil.

If they're on the side of a branch you just remember, at the forest, you've gotta water it, mist it a lot.

- Right.

- But that's why people pot it up 'cause it takes less care when they're in a container.

- All right, Joellen, we appreciate that.

How to take care of bromeliads, how about that?

Been around for millions of years.

- Millions of years.

- I'm impressed.

That's pretty good.

Thank you much.

- Thank you.

[upbeat country music] There's a lot of bees and butterflies here in the butterfly garden on this Sedum 'Autumn Joy' that we have blooming.

This is why it's important to have a long season of blooms in your garden because that's why they're all congregated here.

There's not a whole lot of things blooming this time of year.

So when you can extend the bloom season with perennials and annuals, you are giving food to pollinators.

So after this Sedum 'Autumn Joy' finishes blooming, then we have over here our aster, our blue aster and it will start blooming to extend the season even more.

So make sure you have fall-blooming plants for the pollinators.

[upbeat country music] - All right, so Mr. David, let's talk a little bit about bee removal.

What are the steps that we need to know?

- Well, first off, there's a difference between bees and wasps, and a lot of people can't tell the difference.

In fact, some of the pest control companies don't know the difference.

And so, it's important to educate.

Google knows a lot of things.

So if you've got something, look it up, go to the images, go to pictures, and you can see there's a distinct difference between yellow jackets, wasps, hornets, and honeybees.

Best bet, if it's black and yellow, it's not a honeybee.

- It's not a honeybee.

- Honeybees are orange, brown, black, little muted colors.

Bright yellow, yellow jackets.

That's the first step, we need to know that they are indeed honeybees, because if they're honeybees, I can deal with 'em.

If they're yellow jackets, wasps, hornets, that's your pest control company.

- Right, yeah, you don't wanna deal with those, right?

- No.

[Chris laughs] The second step is we do an evaluation.

We come to your home to see what's going on.

And sometimes, they still are yellow jackets.

- Oh.

- So I'll tell 'em what to do, but the next step is to do a thermal image of the house to look where they're seeing the bees.

And we can actually see the hive in the walls behind bricks.

That is just a first step because the bees incubate the brood about 94 degrees, 95 degrees, and that's what we see, but we don't see honey.

The wax and the honey, they keep it cool.

So I could have two cubic feet of bee space and then 20 feet of honey.

So that gives us a starting place.

And then we have to determine if we're gonna do this through the walls from the inside or the outside.

About 90% of the hives we remove from homes are in the ceiling joists.

They come from the outside of the house and they just go right across the joists as far as they can.

And those we end up doing from the inside.

Walls, sheet rock is a whole lot easier to repair than brick.

Recently had to do a brick job where we had to remove the bricks to get the bees out.

The hive was below the foundation of the house.

- Wow.

- The facade, the brick facade was where they were coming in.

And because the bees had been sprayed by a pest control company, they were trying to get a new exit from the house.

And they see light.

Inside light is the same as the sun.

And so they're coming in around the window into the bedroom.

When we remove the bees, we cut out all the comb.

The brood comb goes into a hive box.

Honeycomb goes into a bucket and there's going to be trash comb.

There's gonna be comb that's empty, doesn't have anything in it, or there'll be leavings where we're cutting the brood to fit into a hive frame, and those go into a trash bucket.

- Wow.

- The big thing for us is to save the brood.

The brood is the babies.

That's the eggs, the larvae, and the potential adult bees.

And to find the queen.

Without the queen, the hive is basically useless.

- Do you normally find the queen?

- I'm about 97% this year.

That's pretty good.

- That's pretty good.

- And the queen, it's important 'cause she's the only fertile female.

In the spring and summer, we can always raise up a new queen, but in the fall, it's important to find the new queen and make sure that she's in there.

When we do work from the inside of the house, we open a window.

We actually open the shades so there's light on the glass.

The bees that come into the house, instead of going all over the house and crazy, they go straight to the window.

All nature wants to get out.

- Sure.

- And so when they get to the window, we just vacuum 'em out of the window, and they go into a two-stage vacuum.

The bees are safe in there.

- Vacuum.

- Vacuum.

- But the bees are safe.

- It's a two...

Think sawdust collectors.

You've got the vacuum over here, but you've got your sawdust being collected here.

The buckets that I use are basic five gallon buckets.

They have eight pieces of plastic foundation Lincoln logged into the bucket.

In the bottom of the bucket is a half inch of foam, and the bees get sucked into there.

They hit the foam, they bounce.

They have an exoskeleton.

- Right, right.

- They're real bouncy.

And we can get about 20,000 to 30,000 bees per bucket.

- Wow, really?

- Really, really.

And in midsummer, those hives, we can leave with three buckets of bees.

- Wow.

- And when we're setting up the new hive, we open the bucket and we release the bees back into their hive.

It's an eviction.

It's a removal.

It's a relocation, but their home smells like home.

And so they go right into the box - How about that.

So let me ask you, you said earlier that some of those bees were sprayed.

What happens to bees when they're sprayed with a pesticide?

- Well, they die.

It's a -cide, you know, homicide, pesticide, something's dead.

And when the bees are directly sprayed, those will die.

But wax is very absorbent.

And a lot of times when people use a can of wasp spray and they spray at a hive of bees, that first piece of comb catches the pesticide and stops it, and it doesn't enter in the rest of the hive.

So the bees don't get killed.

They're not like wasps.

When people call about bees in a house, they're looking at a small nest.

They're thinking wasp.

The reality is it can be huge.

The first few months that they build in a house, they'll build two cubic feet of comb.

- Wow, that's impressive.

- That's cubic feet.

And that first piece of wax [claps] stops the pesticide.

If the bees can find another exit, then they'll use that as their new entrance.

I've seen on chimneys where they've been on one side of the chimney and they sprayed, and the bees now use the other side of the chimney as their entrance, and they build all the way around the chimney.

- Wow, what kind of experience do you need to be able to remove bees?

- You need background in construction.

You need to understand how houses are built.

You need to know what's behind the walls.

- Good point.

- And you need to know that there are pipes, there's electricity, there are other things in that wall besides bees.

And when we work through those walls, I'm always looking for electricity.

This is an exterior wall.

They could be bringing electricity along the side and down the wall.

And when we find the wires, you don't want to cut 'em.

[Chris laughs] It's not good for us or the bees.

- Right, golly.

[laughs] - And I've been in situations where there were nine wires coming through.

I've been there where the can lights, where the bees have built their comb over and around the can lights in people's ceilings.

On a fireplace, you've got the can lights in the front, really looks nice inside the house, but it makes it difficult in removing the bees because we have to remove all that comb off the wires and off the lights.

- Right, how about that?

- So construction, deconstruction.

- Deconstruction, okay.

- And making it possible for the homeowners to get that put back together, I like to call it minimally invasive.

The smaller the hole, the better for me - Okay, got it.

- And the better for the contractor who comes and does the repair.

- Sure, have you ever experienced a time where the bees were actually dead that you went into remove?

- Several times.

- Okay, how is that?

- Well, it stinks in both ways.

- Right.

- You're thinking 40,000 bees.

One bee doesn't smell bad, but when they're all sitting on top of each other, they start to molder, and they smell like a dead dog.

- Wow, how about that?

- It's pretty bad.

Plus it stinks because there's nothing to save.

So I've had situations where the bees have been sprayed and they're all dead, and the honey is leaking down through the walls.

It just coats through the insulation.

It comes underneath the wall, gets into the padding of the carpet.

And one house in Germantown, actually, they knew something was wrong 'cause their floor was squishy and sticky.

And spraying is never a good answer because in the end, you're gonna have a higher cost in the repair because all of that wet stuff has to come out of the house.

- Wow.

- If we can get it on the front end before anything gets sprayed, I have little controls that I use to keep the honey from leaking into the house as we remove them, catch it, you know, absorb the honey that's pooled up and get it out.

- So what happens to the honey, though?

I mean, does some of that pesticide actually get into that honey you think?

- Well, I'm a little nervy when it comes to pesticides.

So if I come to a hive that's been sprayed, and I can see in the wax that it's been sprayed, that honey's never saved.

It's never used.

I talk with the homeowners and ask 'em if they want some of the honey.

If the homeowner's willing to eat the honey, they haven't sprayed the bees.

So that honey can be saved and it can be fed back to the bees, or it can be harvested and eaten.

- Wow.

- So the largest hive I removed had 20 gallons of honey in it.

- Twenty gallons?

- Twenty gallons.

- My gosh.

- And think a 5-gallon bucket about 50 pounds, that's 200 pounds of honey sitting in someone's ceiling.

- Wow.

- Yeah, if it falls, the ceiling crashes in.

- Wow, how about that?

- It's crazy.

- Thanks, David, that's some good stuff, man.

We appreciate you coming on the show and sharing that with us.

- Oh, I love coming back here.

- We know you do.

We appreciate it.

[upbeat country music] - Our oregano is almost finished blooming here.

We've got a few flowers left on it, but we wanna rejuvenate it and get all of these off of here.

So we are going to cut them back.

I'm basically gonna cut these just down past this foliage that's here 'cause I don't wanna take a chance of cutting any of the other foliage, so in case it wants to start blooming again before the cold starts.

And as you can see, all the stuff that's falling off of these are actually seeds.

Now whether they are viable or not, I do not know, but some of them probably will come up.

I have this oregano at my house, and it did this earlier in the season, and I cut it back and it has bloomed and is blooming again.

There, now it's all untangled from the other perennials, and it's back to its original size and it may start blooming again.

[upbeat country music] - All right, Joellen, here's our Q and A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- All right.

These are some great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"What are these balls on my ball cypress tree?"

And this is Scott in Cincinnati, Ohio.

So what are those balls on that tree?

- They are the cones of that conifer.

You know, bald cypress are deciduous conifers.

And so that is how they reproduce with those cones that have seeds in 'em.

So those are just the cones of the bald cypress.

- Just the cones, inside are those seeds.

- Yeah.

- Wildlife will enjoy them, right?

- They will, sure, yes.

Squirrels will like them, the birds, uh huh.

- That is good.

So that's what that is, Scott.

We appreciate that question and the picture.

- And a great picture.

- Yeah, it's a good picture.

So appreciate that, Scott.

Thank you much.

All right, so here's our next viewer email.

"What is this plant and why does it have such an interesting stem?"

And this is Larry from Oxford, Mississippi.

We know what that plant is, don't we?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- It's winged elm.

- Winged elm.

- Yes, Ulmus alata.

- Aw, look at you.

- Ulmus alata, winged elm.

They grow... Well, elms grow everywhere.

- Oh, okay.

- Winged elms have a very large part of the United States-- - Really?

- That they will grow in, yeah.

- Okay, so what are those wings?

Why do they develop those wings, you know?

- You know, I have no idea.

- Yeah, they're kind of warty, wing-like structures, if you will.

- Yeah, they'll get that way.

- I think it's a nice characteristic, you know, of the elm itself.

- It's one of those good identifiers that you can tell what type of tree that is, but I don't know.

I've never read up to see if they have an advantage for having those on there.

- That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

- Yeah.

- Okay, but it is a good tree.

So you would suggest that Larry keeps the tree?

- Oh yes.

- Right.

So, Larry, keep the winged elm tree.

All right, thank you much for that question and a nice picture, you know, as well.

We appreciate that.

Here's our next viewer email.

"What is this fungus on my magnolia tree leaves?"

And this is Glory in Mokena, Illinois.

So what do you think about that?

So what kinda magnolia tree did you think that was?

- Well, it's a saucer magnolia, Or a northern magnolia.

Magnolia soulangeana.

I would think it's some type of leaf spot on it.

They get a lot.

There's 15 different kinds of leaf spots that it could be.

So which one it is of those, I don't really know.

- It's a lot.

- Magnolias get a lot of them.

- Mm-hmm, they do.

- The thing is, though, it's at the end of the growing season.

I wouldn't worry about it.

We've had a drought, and it's been really hot this summer.

So possibly she wanted make sure it stayed alive and so she watered it a little bit more.

And the plant either, you know, just developed some spots, some disease spots on it, leaf spots.

- And she probably did water it pretty well because this tree was planted just this year.

You know, so it's a pretty young tree.

- So she's probably trying to keep it alive.

- Right, and it was flowering and, you know, doing well, you know, up until June.

- Yes.

- Right?

- But look, like I said, it's the end of the season.

There are already buds, fuzzy buds formed at the end.

She's got them for next year, - Got it for next year.

- I wouldn't worry about the leaf spots at the end of the year.

It's okay.

- It's just a cosmetic issue, you know, at this point in the year, right?

- Yeah.

- Just natural senescing.

you know, just aging - Very good.

- Of the foliage is what that is.

All right, Gloria, yeah.

So we think you'd be fine.

Yeah, thank you for that question and the picture.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"How do I save elephant ear and caladium bulbs for next year?"

And this is Kitty in St. Louis, Missouri.

And I hope my pop is paying attention to this 'cause he always asks me this question.

[laughs] - Well, you know, when you buy them, they are dried bulbs, correct?

- Yeah, right.

- So that's what I would replicate.

- Right, right.

- I would let them dry out, take them out of the ground or the pot that they're in, and let 'em dry out.

Cut off the tops, and I would just leave the roots.

- So you let 'em dry out naturally?

- Just let 'em dry naturally, and then put them in a cool, dry place that does not freeze.

In fact, they're tropical.

So I would be careful not to get anything below 50 degrees.

- Good, okay, okay.

- Yeah, 'cause you know, 50 degrees is about the limit of tropical plants.

- Right.

- And I'm sure big, huge bulb companies have certain controlled, you know, temperatures that they keep all of their bulbs at.

So just try to replicate that.

- Okay, so when can you replant those bulbs?

When would you put 'em in the ground?

- In the spring after danger of frost.

- Right, so after frost.

- Because they like warm.

- Right, right.

- The ground has to be around 70 degrees - Wow, yeah.

- For them to sprout and grow.

- Okay, and that should do it.

- Mm-hmm.

- Right.

So naturally let 'em dry, store 'em cool.

- Cool, dry, dark.

- Dry.

- Dark, and it just needs to be in the dark too.

- Okay, sounds good, Kitty, yeah.

Thank you for that question.

We appreciate that.

All right, Joellen, that was fun as always.

- It was good.

- Thank you much.

- You're welcome.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com.

And the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee 38016, or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

For more information on taking care of houseplants, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

We also have lots more answers to common garden questions.

Be sure to join us next week for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]