Tag Archives: pollinators

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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22 Oregon Flora Project – Making A New Natural Resource

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Linda Hardison is the leader of the Oregon Flora Project, based out of Oregon State University’s Herbarium. The Oregon Flora Project seeks to present scientifically sound information about the vascular plants of Oregon that grow without cultivation in formats that are useful to generalists as well as to scientists. With projects such as their interactive Oregon Plant Atlas, their smartphone app, and their upcoming book “A Flora of Oregon”, they are cultivating an invaluable resource for scientists and hobbyists throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Listen in to learn more about the Oregon Flora Project, the amazing benefits their research and data collection has on pollinators, and what’s in store for the future.

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“The Oregon Flora Project is striving to make information useful and relevant…to a broad sector of the population.“ – Linda Hardison

Show Notes:

  • The mission of the Oregon Flora Project
  • How the Oregon Flora Project benefits pollinators
  • What started the project
  • What benefits have been found in making the OFP database
  • How Linda’s team streamlined the dichotomous key identification process
  • How the Oregon Flora Project is taking advantage of new software and open-source platforms
  • The exciting possibilities for citizen scientists to contribute
  • What’s next for the Linda’s program
  • How gardeners will benefit from a new development of Oregon Flora Project
  • Why Linda’s favorite tool is a plastic bag

“A lot of people aren’t going to go to the effort and expense of making a plant specimen for a herbarium, so by having observations, the data sets are so much richer and so much more than if we had to rely only on specimens.“ – Linda Hardison

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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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19 David Phipps – Golf Courses as Pollinator Habitat

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David Phipps is considered one of the Northwest’s leaders in golf course environmental stewardship and innovation. While working as the superintendent at Stone Creek Golf, he received the GCSAA President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship in 2012, as well as the 2004-2005 Cooperator of the Year by the Clackamas County Soil and Water Conservation District. David received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Oregon State University in Horticulture, Turf and Landscape Management, and currently works for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America as the NW Region Field Staff Representative.

Today we’re talking about pollinator habitats curated within golf courses, how they can best be utilized, and David’s amazing contributions to conservation and the golf industry.

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“I think there’s a place in almost every model of golf course [for pollinators].” – David Phipps

Show Notes:

  • How David became involved in the intersection of golf and conservation
  • Why David’s program became the gold standard for golf courses around the country
  • How courses around the world have contributed to pollinators in different ways
  • The ways David developed the habitat alongside the course
  • What lessons David has learned from the pollinator habitat projects
  • How irrigation and improper preparation can cause habitats to fail
  • The way that pollinators fit into different kinds of courses

“If you’ve got an area that’s not going to see balls landing but you can still benefit from the beautification of the wildflowers, those are areas that can be utilized.” – David Phipps

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11 Laura Taylor – Pollinator Restoration in Soil and Water Conservation Districts

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Laura Taylor works for the West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. In this episode, find what happens when a local government wants to do something to help pollinator health.

As a conservation technician and an educational coordinator, Laura created an innovative program to monitor wild pollinators around restoration sites.

Learn how she got the monitoring program off the ground, what you can do for landowners wanting to help create pollinator habitats, and how they teach people to identify pollinators.

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“What can we do to encourage people to convert their monoculture lawns into something more diverse that will support a myriad of wildlife including pollinators and beneficial insects?” – Laura Taylor

Show Notes:

  • How wild pollinators fit into the mission of the West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District
  • Some of the biggest challenges to pollinators in this area
  • How they work with land owners to set priorities for conservation and pollinator habitat
  • What initially drew her interest in pollinators
  • How they build their Meadowscaping Handbook
  • How their pollinator monitoring program works
  • What the program does to educate landowners
  • How long it takes to teach someone to be able to identify insects and bees
  • What they learned from teaching people about bees in the first year of their program
  • What the future holds for the pollinator monitoring program

“Our pollinator monitoring, citizen science program sounds like a data collection program, but the main inspiration for it was the education benefit it would have for participants.” – Laura Taylor

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04 Dr. David Lowenstein – Wild Pollinators in Urban Areas

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Dr. David Lowenstein is a post-doc researcher at Oregon State University’s Department of Horticulture.

Today we talk about Dr. Lowenstein’s fascinating research on urban pollinators during his time in Chicago.

In this episode we discuss biodiversity in a city, what property owners can do to attract pollinators, and the unique challenges of urban bee research.

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“Think of each homeowner as a land manager. So you’re working with a number of different perspectives.” – Dr. David Lowenstein

Show Notes:

  • Why Dr. Lowenstein starting researching wild pollinators in cities
  • About the biodiversity within a city
  • How pollinator numbers can be enhanced in cities
  • What property owners can do to encourage pollinators
  • The unusual places where bees nest in cities
  • The bee habitat he encountered in Chicago for his research
  • How you take a sample of plant life in a city lot
  • The unique challenges related to urban ecology work
  • How different bee communities can visit different plants in the same location
  • Why many urban bees that are pollinating are not honey bees
  • How vacant lots in cities with population decline effects bees
  • What Dr. Lowenstein has heard from everyday people about bees when doing his highly-visible urban research

“Even if we are producing an environment that is just great for pollinators, there’s a lot of factors that are out of our control.” – Dr. David Lowenstein

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