Tag Archives: bees

30 Steve Frank – Healthy Trees, Healthy Pollinators

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Steve Frank on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Dr. Steve Frank is an entomologist who recognizes that urban trees provide a lot of services back to people living in cities. Trees also provide a lot resources to pollinating insects as well. Given the importance of trees to broad ecological systems, Dr. Frank looks for practical and innovative ways to preserving tree health. His lab also studies how the urban heat island effect increases insect pest abundance and damage on urban trees and the congruence between urban and global warming to determine if cities could serve as canaries in the coal mine of climate change to predict pest outbreaks in natural forests.

Listen in to learn about how urban environments affect pollinators, what homeowners and civil planners can do to improve them, and which plants and trees are best for the city.

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“People can even help their own local micro-habitat by shading their driveway and their house and things like that, which saves you energy to boot.“ – Steve Frank

Show Notes:

  • How urbanization affects pollinators and their habitats
  • What you can do to help pollinators in your urban community
  • How cities can design their spaces to better suit their natural landscape and it’s pollinators
  • How Steve uses “habitat complexity” to better urban landscapes
  • Why stressed plants can produce many problems for pollinators
  • Steve’s recommendations on plants for pollinators at your home
  • How Steve finds his favorite books

“You have a master gardener in your neighborhood who’s really driving a community garden or something like that. That comes and goes, but the trees will still be there.“ – Steve Frank

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28 Al Shay – Urban Landscapes for People and Pollinators

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Al Shay on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Al Shay is currently an instructor in the Horticulture Department at Oregon State University. Al holds undergraduate degrees in art as well as horticulture. Additionally Al has a Masters in Agriculture degree from OSU. Al has been in the “Green Industry” for 38 years; 27 of which were spent in the field managing landscapes at such varied venues as; Oregon State University, Eugene Country Club, The Oregon Garden and DeSantis landscapes. In 2007 Al returned to OSU for his graduate degree and was appointed an instructor upon his graduation in 2010.

Find out more about what you can do for pollinators at your own home, and how Al blends aesthetic and functional aspects of landscaping and pollinator habitats.

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“It seemed just a horrible shame to have 500-odd acres of space here on campus and have it all strictly geared toward something you look at as you pass by. We could do a better job than that.“ – Al Shay

Show Notes:

  • How Al’s career led him to his work at Oregon State University
  • The difficulties of bridging the functional and aesthetic sides of urban landscapes
  • The way Al keeps flowering plants year round
  • How homeowners can turn their property into a more sustainable ecosystem
  • Why Al recommends you should start small with your own landscape
  • What you should consider before working on your own urban landscape
  • Al’s best practices for how to plant your seeds
  • What makes a good saw and shear for Al
  • Al’s “pollinator hotels” and how they were developed

“Just start small. Instead of doing 43,560 square feet, do 200 or 400 square feet, and really take a peek at what is going on.“ – Al Shay

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27 Sarah Johnson – Bumble Bee Decline and Recovery

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Sarah Johnson is the lead biologist for Wildlife Preservation Canada’s Native Pollinator Initiative. WPC is a nation-wide organization focusing on hands-on recovery initiatives for critically endangered species, and the pollinator initiative supports Canadian bumble bee recovery through a diverse set of programs. As WPC’s lead pollinator biologist, Sarah has overseen a variety of citizen science training programs, runs multiple field-based research and monitoring projects, and leads the development of a captive breeding program for the at-risk yellow-banded bumble bee. Prior to her current position with WPC, Sarah received a BSc in Natural Sciences from the University of Calgary – during which she published on a project investigating how wing wear affects bumble bee’s weight lifting ability – as well as an MSc in Ecology, examining how clearcut logging impacts bee-pollinated wildflower reproduction in the foothills of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains. Sarah was also involved in the initiation of a long-term research program exploring how the agricultural landscape in southern Alberta affects pollinator diversity. As evidenced through her work, Sarah’s passion lies in the furriest (and most charming) of the pollinators: the bumble bee. However, she is also interested in conservation education, public engagement, and answering broader questions on what factors shape ecological communities.

Listen in as we talk about the bee population of Canada, her new captive breeding project, and how citizen science positively impacts her research.

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“We’re seeing sightings in areas where we didn’t know species extended to, and this is because of submissions by citizen scientists.” – Sarah Johnson

Show Notes:

  • What is happening in the bumblebee populations of Canada
  • How the Bumblebee Recovery Initiative is helping pollinators
  • What their new captive breeding project is hoping to accomplish
  • What qualities Sarah is looking for in the queen bumblebees they are breeding
  • How Wildlife Preservation Canada uses citizen science
  • Why Bumblebee Watch is such an invaluable resource to conservation researchers
  • How one citizen scientist made a breakthrough discovery
  • How Sarah’s organization trains citizen scientists
  • What makes a good bumblebee picture for submission
  • What Sarah recommends to help raise public awareness of pollinators and their involvement

“[Wilson et al.] surveyed a wide variety of people, and the vast majority of them think bees are important but nobody really knows what a bee is versus what a fly is.“ – Sarah Johnson

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26 Skyler Burrows – Bringing Taxonomy to Citizen Scientists

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Skyler Burrows on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Our guest today on PolliNation is Skyler Burrows, a taxonomist working with Utah State University, the USDA Bee Lab, and formerly with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Virginia Working Landscape program. Much of Skyler’s work has been based in the trapping and identification of pollinators with the help of citizen scientists, and monitoring their diversity in a given area. His most recent project has been to create an online guide to aid in the identification of bees that may be invasive to the US, that will include a non-dichotomous key to the Megachilidae genera of the world with high quality images to target an audience without background in taxonomy.

In today’s episode, we will learn about Skyler’s work with pollinators, his projects with citizen scientists, and how you can get started in taxonomy.

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“Things like ‘Bees In Your Backyard’ are really helpful, but until you have the bee in your hand, it’s really difficult to know what you’ve got.“ – Skyler Burrows

Show Notes:

  • What is the Virginia Working Landscape program and how they are contributing to pollinator research
  • How Skyler and his team trap bees
  • Why the team uses a type of antifreeze in their traps, and it’s advantages
  • How the citizen scientists stay involved after their collection
  • The various challenges Skyler has faced in his project
  • How the great diversity of bees in the West can create difficulties for citizen scientists
  • What new citizen scientists should do to get started in taxonomy
  • Why the microscope is Skyler’s favorite tool
  • Why there is still a lot of room for discovery in researching bees and pollinator habitats

“There’s a lot of washing involved, blow drying to fluff up their hairs; there’s a lot of interesting methods [to help in identification], but we’re all just trying to make the bees look nice and pretty.“ – Skyler Burrows

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24 Kristen Healy – Mosquito Abatement and Pollinators

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Kristen Healy on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Kristen Healy is an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology at Louisiana State University. She obtained her B.S. in Zoology and M.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Rhode Island, her Ph.D. in Entomology from Rutgers University, and a MPH in Environmental Health from UMDNJ. A key focus of her research at LSU has been collaborating with the USDA Honey Bee lab in Baton Rouge to evaluate how different stressors impact honey bee health. This has included evaluating the effects of mosquito control adulticides on honey bees. Most of her findings suggests that when done correctly and according to label instructions, there should be minimal impact to honey bees. Dr. Healy is now working with the USDA bee lab to evaluate the impact of other stressors, including mites and deformed wing virus, on honey bee health.

On this episode of PolliNation, Kristen and I will be talking about mosquito abatement techniques, their effect on pollinator health, and the research Kristen’s team has done to keep them safe.

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“They really wanted to know if what they were doing with mosquito control was killing bees, so they asked if we could help address that topic.” – Kristen Healy

Show Notes:

  • What is the importance of insecticides on mosquitoes
  • What methods are used in mosquito abatement
  • How mosquito abatement programs can mitigate damaging pollinators
  • The two main factors in an adulticide’s potential risk to pollinators
  • Why mosquito control is often performed at night
  • The team that Kristen and LSU assembled to study adulticides on the bee population
  • How Kristen was able to balance her team’s research with stakeholders
  • What results came from Kristen’s team’s study
  • How honeybees can be bred to better withstand pesticides
  • What Kristen sees in the future of mosquito abatement and pollinator health

“I think that the key thing [for the future of mosquito abatement and pollinator health] is both communication and education.” – Kristen Healy

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23 George Hansen – Beekeeper Built Bee Habitat

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George Hansen on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

After a short six-year career as a public school teacher, George and his wife Susan transformed a hobby beekeeping operation into a commercial endeavor. The business started from a few swarms and a collection of retrieved nuisance hives, but now runs 5000 + colonies in three states. Sons Matt and Joe are incrementally taking control of the business, as George moves towards an as yet undefined retirement. Although the name of the company never changed, the focus of the beekeeping is now primarily pollination service, with honey, wax and bee sales making up no more than 30 percent of gross revenues. George is an active member of the beekeeping community, promoting the industry’s interests as past president of the American Beekeeping Federation. For a decade he served as a producer representative on the National Honey Board. He continues to serve as a trustee on the Foundation for the Preservation of the Honey Bee, and on the board of the Bee Informed Partnership. Currently George represents the industry on the national Honey Bee Health Coalition. For twenty years, he has hosted an annual Bee Day workshop and orientation at the Foothills Honey Company home site.

Listen to today’s episode to learn George’s experience as a land manager, good practice in cultivating pollinator habitats, and his work in the advocacy of pollinators.

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“We’re creating in many areas what are virtually pollinator deserts.“ – George Hansen

Show Notes:

  • How George got started in beekeeping
  • What George does to prepare a site for pollinators
  • The challenges land managers face with pollinator habitats
  • Why pollinator habitats have been diminishing among land managers
  • What George sees as a solution
  • How the Bees and Butterfly Habitat Fund has helped protect pollinators

“You can grow almost anything in the Willamette Valley if you have water, the question is whether this kind of forage plot would be worth watering.“ – George Hansen

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21 Dr. Jim Rivers – Seeing The Forest For The Bees

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Dr Jim Rivers on PolliNation

Dr. Jim Rivers is a vertebrate ecologist and leader of the Forest Animal Ecology Lab at Oregon State University. With broad research interests that are focused in the fields of animal behavior and physiological ecology, his research program combines observational, experimental, and comparative approaches to test predictions from theory in empirical settings. He recently lead the Pollinators in Managed Forests workshop, which brought together speakers from Oregon State, Washington State, Montana State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to address a variety of topics, including the influence of wildfire severity, salvage logging, herbicides and practical ways to augment blooms for native bees.

We’re talking today about how pollinator habitats and forests coexist and work with each other, the ways that bees thrive in forested areas, and how he and others in the field have begun researching the behavior of pollinators in forested areas.

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“I’ve been surprised we’ve had bee research at OSU for four or five decades now, but we haven’t had a lot of people looking in forests, and particularly in managed forests, and that’s where a lot of my research has been taking place.“ – Dr. Jim Rivers

Show Notes:

  • Why forests are an important place for pollinators
  • How surrounding landscapes could contribute to pollinator habitats
  • How Jim is possibly creating jet fuel in his forest research
  • What Jim samples to learn about forest bee populations
  • What the effect of herbicides on pollinators could be
  • Why Jim brought together stakeholders to talk about pollinators and managed forests
  • The social shift that has occurred in the importance of pollinators
  • Why Jim recommends getting a digital microscope

“There’s a lot more that we don’t know about bees in managed forests than what we do know.“ – Dr. Jim Rivers

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20 Erin Udal – Bringing Bees To The People

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Erin Udal leads community pollinator conservation projects out of Vancouver, BC and was formerly the Program Manager and Pollinator Specialist with the Environmental Youth Alliance. With her background in conservation biology, she designs bee-friendly gardens and develops citizen science projects, working to help people protect pollinators in our backyards and parks. Erin finds facilitating hands-on outdoor education very rewarding, and always pleased to share the fascinating and diverse world of native bees with anyone who cares to learn.

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“Using the scientific process is one of our greatest tools, and in order to get people back to that trust, we have to give them opportunities and tools to engage with it.“ – Erin Udal

Show Notes:

  • Why Erin’s first couple years of data collection didn’t go so well
  • How Erin goes about preparing citizen scientists
  • The reason that there isn’t better communication between scientists and the public
  • The way that Erin hopes to move scientific literacy forward
  • Why Eric uses the bottom-up approach to leadership
  • The movement towards making science accessible to a broader audience
  • How an artist can bring science a different narrative
  • What Erin means by “Stewardship with a capital S”

“I think it was Carl Sagan that said, ’Science is not so much a body of information, but a way of thinking’, and so I want people to feel like they are part of that way of thinking.“ – Erin Udal

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18 Lynn Royce – Bees in The Trees

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Lynn A. Royce, Ph.D. did her doctoral research on tracheal mites of honey bees and has studied pollinators for over 30 years.

She is a passionate scientist who cares deeply about implementing research in practical applications to improve honey bee health.

In this episode, we talk about her organization Tree Hive Bees, and how you can perform “bee-lining” to trace wild bees back to their colonies in trees.

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“There’s a lot of things we don’t know about how bees perceive stuff and why they would look at one tree over another.” – Lynn Royce

Show Notes:

  • Where honey bees used to live in the wild
  • How the honey bee would find a big enough cavity in a tree
  • How a bee colony looks like when they don’t have a man-made bee hive
  • How bee-lining works
  • How to catch bees in order to trace them back to their wild home
  • Why she started Tree Hive Bees
  • What we can learn from the bees’ natural habitat

“Maybe we need to go back to the bee tree and see what we’ve changed that we might be able to get back to the bees that might help them.” – Lynn Royce

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17 Ellie Andrews – The Sociology of Pollinator Health

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Ellie Andrews is a PhD student in Development/Rural Sociology at Cornell University. As honey bees across the US face a range of challenges, keeping bees healthy and productive requires ever more skill and investment. Her research seeks to understand the sociological dimensions of these educational imperatives: how are new beekeepers learning to keep bees and how are experienced ones adapting to new challenges?

Ellie is interested in how people evaluate and use different sources of information about beekeeping, how the motivation to “save the bees” informs beekeepers’ management decisions and colony survival, and how individuals’ approach to “sustainable beekeeping” may change as they gain experience and expertise. Her research is based on interviewing beekeepers across New York State and beyond, observing beekeeping clubs and classes (including serving as an officer in her own club), helping put together Cornell’s new and improved Master Beekeeping program, and going into the archives to research the origins of beekeeping extension programs and the professionalization of beekeeping over the last century.

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“In 2008, people started answering the survey saying they were keeping bees in order to save them.” – Ellie Andrews

Show Notes:

  • How Ellie became interested in the intersection of bee keeping and sociology
  • What rural resilience means
  • How bee keeping as a social activity can become more robust
  • Why more people are doing bee keeping now in order to “save the bees”
  • What sustainable bee keeping means for different people
  • How people are learning about bee keeping
  • The role of bee clubs and how they are doing
  • Why lots of bee clubs are experiencing a revitalization
  • The enormous surge in bee keeping around WWI and WWII and what that can teach us

“There’s no consensus on what sustainability means for bees, for agriculture more broadly, and natural resource management beyond that.” – Ellie Andrews

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