No bee is as popular as the honey bee. When we think of a bee, many of us think of this charismatic social bee that lives in large colonies, does the wiggle dance, produces the honey we love, and pollinates many of our crops. Although honey bees can be found all over North America, they only arrived in the 17th century by way of European settlers. Aside from honey bees, in North America, thousands of native bees can be found on the landscape.
We’ve all heard that bees are in decline. As a non-native species, are honey bees the answer to helping us “save the bees”? How do honey bees interact with our native bees on the landscape?
Joining us to help answer these questions is Rich Hatfield. Rich is Xerces Senior Endangered Species Conservation Biologist and Bumble Bee Conservation Lead, and manages all aspects of the Xerces Society’s work on bumble bees. This includes community science projects, as well as understanding the threats to bumble bees and actions we can take to protect them. Rich has studied the factors that impact bumble bees, including the presence of honey bees in our landscapes.
Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.
Welcome to bug banter with the xeri society where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals if you want to support our work go to x.org donate hi I’m Rachel in Missoula Montana and I’m Matthew in Portland Oregon no be
Is as popular as the honeybee when we think of a bee many of us think of this charismatic social bee that lives in large colonies does the wiggle dance produces the honey we love and pollinates many of our crops although honeybees can be found all over North
America they only arrived in the 17th century by way of European sellers aside from honeybees in North America thousands of native bees can be found on the landscape now we’ve all heard that bees are in Decline but as a non-native species are honey bees the answer to
Helping us save the bees how do honey bees interact with our native bees on the landscape joining us to help answer these questions is Rich Hatfield rich is the xerses senior endangered species conservation biologist and Bumblebee conservation lead and manages all aspects of the xeri society’s work on bumblebees this includes Community
Science projects as well as understanding the threats to bumblebees and actions we can take to protect them Rich has studied the factors that impact bumblebees including the presence of honeybees in our Landscapes welcome Rich we’re happy to have you today yeah it’s a pleasure to be here thanks for having
Me let’s jump straight in shall we rich um many people are surprised to learn that the honey bees are not native to the US can you tell us why they were originally brought here uh I can’t tell you why they were brought here but I can speculate and speculate potentially with
Some some evidence um I mean if you if you think about all the way back to the 1600s it’s obviously pre- electricity and ande pre a lot of global trade and a lot of other things that we have now and and honeybees as we all know produce a
Number of products I think normally we think of them as providing honey as being sort of the main source of um product that we would get from from honeybees and so that was certainly important people you know sugar was not an option back then there was not a
Global sugar trade at least that I’m aware of and so honey was a major sweetener that was used for probably all kinds of things it’s also very likely that people were making Mead from that honey so that they could have an alcoholic beverage it was one of the
First alcoholic beverages and goes back as you as you all know thousands of years so likely Meade was an important product that we were consuming um being on a boat for a long time and then being in a new continent was probably came with its struggles and humans as we all
Know like to self-medicate so I’m sure that was part of it um and then addition to to H honey and and the Mead that would come from that honey wax products were also probably quite important um you know there there was an electricity so we didn’t have lights so people were taking
That wax and um and likely making candles and other products from that wax um as well to make their lives you know easier and better um so that’s why we believe they were brought here and you know there’s some evidence of a fairly robust honey and and mostly wax tray
That was happening in those first couple hundred years um so like sort of the mid 1600s to the mid 1800s there’s evidence of a fairly robust like if you look back at trade logs you know there’s a fair bit of wax that that changed hands back
In those days it was a valuable resource yeah no I remember reading once that um at some point in the Medieval Era wax was potentially more valuable than gold and that some people got paid in wax as part of their annual payment so it’s pretty we just don’t think of that being
Such a um such an important resource so but great thanks yeah no but certainly back then it would have been literally the light right so yeah quite clean burning one so that’s that’s nice yeah right yeah so we often use terms native and non-native and I think it’s
Important to Define what that means in our context of what we’re referring to when we talk about honey can you explain what the difference is between a native and non-native species I can try I can certainly give you what my thought is that doesn’t mean that everyone’s necessarily going to
Agree with with my thought on this because humans frankly have been moving animals and plants around this planet for a really really long time um but as a conservation biologist I sort of think of native plants and animals as those that were here without the assistance of humans humans
Didn’t move them here so honeybees as we know them at least for the most part I think we’re talking about the Western honeybee apis mifer um that species was not on this continent until European settlers brought it here which makes it an introduced non-native species as of
The 1600s we could argue about whether it’s become naturalized since then or or what role that has in our current ecosystem but I don’t think there’s any person that would argue that humans brought the Western honeybee to North America they’re introduced here so they’re a non-native species and that’s
How I would Define them at least as it pertains to this conversation yeah another thing that we often read or hear in the media is that honey bees are threatened or endangered is is that true well I think depends on how we use those terms threatened and endangered I think
There’s no there’s no question that honeybees are struggling like if we look at the health of the honeybee industry and if we look at how honey beeke Keepers think about their industry and their hives I think there’s a lot of people that would tell you that honeybees are
Struggling um and and it’s they’re certainly not as healthy as they used to be I think you can talk to Honey beeke Keepers who used to say it was very regular for a hive to live for five seven years without much indication and I think at least my
Understanding is that that’s not true anymore that you know you’re lucky to get a couple years out of a hive but when I think of again as a conservation biologist when I think about something being threatened or endangered that means we’re starting to think about Extinction and and whether that animal
Could potentially disappear from the planet forever right Extinction is forever and in that regard honeybees are not threatened and they are not endangered in fact there are probably more honeybees on the planet now than there have ever been um because they’re they have they still are are thriving or
At least they’re existing throughout all of their historic range which is Africa and most of most of Europe into Western Asia um and then you know they’re also propagating by agriculture I believe on every continent on the planet except for Antarctica where there probably have been honeybees but probably are not
Honey bees all the time um and so you know there are literally millions of hives all over the world probably tens of millions and potentially even hundreds of millions I don’t have the the statistics in front of me but from that perspective you know honeybees are in a situation right now where they’re
Still fairly resilient they’re not going to go through at least in what I can see is the near future although the the the future gets scary when we start thinking too much about it but I don’t anticipate a population crash in that species that would leave
To an Extinction event so I would not Define them as threatened or endangered there are some bees that you would Define in that way yes yes there are I mean unfortunately we don’t have as good of data on insects as I wish we did like when we look at mammals and birds I
Think we have fairly good population numbers that we can track through time and look at Trends we don’t have those same data with insects with with most bees but but with bumblebees we do have a fairly robust data set that goes back to the 1800s and we can look at how
Common species used to be versus how common or rare they are now and the indication we have from the data we have suggests that around a quarter of our Bumblebees are significantly more rare now than they used to be and a few of those are you know potentially on the brink of of
Extinction the rusty patch Bumblebee which lives roughly or Once Upon a Time used to live roughly from North Dakota to Maine Down To Georgia you know used to be one of the top probably five most common bumblebees in in eastern North America and it it’s it’s gone through a
Around let’s just say a 90% population decline it’s disappeared from 90% of its historic range and where we find it it’s much less common than it used to be here in the Western United States the Western bumblebee bombus oxident Talis has gone through a similar um decline maybe not
Quite as steep but it’s disappeared from a significant portion of its range and where we find it it’s not as common as it used to be and then probably the most extreme example at least that that I’m aware of is a bumblebee called Franklin’s Bumblebee which historically
Lived in a pretty small range from Southern Oregon down to Northern California roughly from Mount Ashland to Mount Shasta if you’re familiar with this part of the the world and that species bombas Franklin ey hasn’t been seen since 2006 um both Franklin’s Bumblebee and the rusty patch bumblebee are are
Federally listed so they’re actually listed as endangered species Under The Endangered Species Act they have Federal Protection so there’s significant effort to look for and to try to protect both of those species that effort has led to a fair bit of additional fines of populations for the rusty patch
Bumblebee so we now we didn’t used to see it at all in Western West Virginia and Virginia and and populations have popped up there with the increased effort looking for that which is which is good it’s still rare it’s still in Decline but but you know the The
Endangered Species Act is working and that it’s finding new population so that we can help them recover those efforts at least as of yet have not turned up any Franklin’s bumblebees so that bumblebee has still not been detected there are some people that would tell you that it may potentially
Be extinct I still have hope that you know our increased efforts to find it in a really remote and wild area of the country will be successful and that we’ll be able to find that needle in a hay stack and help that species recover but um it’s exceedingly rare and yeah I mean
Even if we do find it a single event could Wipe Out the remaining populations right so that’s that’s how we have to think about these things and yet and and that’s just bumblebees there are I’m sure there are other bees species that have rare restricted ranges or that have
Gone through some disease event that that leads to yeah true threat of Extinction um we just have the best data or at least I’m most aware of the data on bumblebees because that’s where my my taxonomic focus is yeah well Rich I’m glad we’re going to have you back in
March to do another podcast specific to bumblebees because I have like a hundred questions that I want to ask you um but since we’re focusing on on honeybees today thank you for kind of giving us that paralleled picture of how our native bees are doing versus these these
Introduced um honeybees so despite the fact that they are an induced species you’ve already kind of hinted to the helpfulness and the you usefulness of the honeybee and that’s you know probably why they originally brought um to the US so in terms of today what is
Their role in the US because they do have an important role here um in terms of crop pollination yeah there’s there’s a lot there Rachel it’s a good good question there’s a lot to that we can talk about um you know when we originally talk about why honey bees were brought here
It was for wax and for honey we didn’t talk about polination services at all um it wasn’t really until quite a bit later probably the the late 1800s I think it was actually may have been the early 1900s I don’t have a my my facts straight here but it wasn’t really until
We we sort of invented ways to to move honeybees around easily in boxes and have removable sort of Hive drawers that we that we started moving honeybees around fairly regularly and then started to understand in much more detail how important they are to pollination Services I think that we’ve known that
Insects are important for pollination probably since the 1700s or something like that it’s been studied and looked at um but I don’t think we necessarily tried to take advantage of honeybees for that until till much later until keeping honeybees and moving them around became much more easy but but
Since then since since the 1800s or 1900s and and the Agricultural and population boom that’s happened throughout our country honeybees have been a part of that story for a very long time and a lot of our agricultural systems are built around honeybee pollination services for the most part um a lot of
Farmers depend on you know renting or or buying or having their own honeybees such that their crops can get pollinated so especially for a crop like almonds um which happens throughout much of California in a fairly early part of the year when most of our native bees
Aren’t even flying yet there’s no real way to get that crop pollinated unless we bring honey bees into the state of California so we are the the Agriculture and the Almond industry literally brings almost every I shouldn’t say almost every but brings a lot of commercial honeybees from all over the country as
Far away as New England all the way to California you know just for the purposes of pollening those almonds so for a couple of weeks you know in February they’re they’re California doing that pollination service and that industry probably wouldn’t exist without honeybees um and then they slowly make
Their way back they go through the Midwest and probably participate in in apple pollination and hit other sources on their way back back home where they would o overwinter um but I think it’s important to just step back if I may and just say like while our current agricultural
System is dependent on honeybees I don’t think it needs to be that way right I mean I think we could create a system that was different if we thought about our farming from a true sustainable perspective there are ways to to grow crops such that there’s enough native
Habitat nearby that we can have our native bees do a vast majority of the pollination Services there’s plenty of studies out there that show that for a lot of crops that if we did a better job of maintaining habitat on the landscape that we could have native bees doing
That pollination for free and in some cases even increase the yield coming from those Farm Fields even if some of it taken out of production to to increase habitat for bees so so again there’s a lot here that we could talk about but yes honey bees are very important for our current agricultural
System um I think we need to do a better job of of maintaining those agricultural Landscapes to make them healthier for honeybees such that that whole industry can be healthier there’s a lot of pesticides in modern agriculture that’s not good for honeybees it’s not good for
For Native bees and so um I think we need to to think long and hard about the kind of agricultural systems we’re creating and the insects that’s necessary for them and how we create a better long-term solution to that I don’t I don’t pretend to have the
Answers I’m I’m I don’t work directly in farming I I talk to a lot of farmers but but I think it’s a question we should at least least it should be on the table we should be having the conversation as often as we possibly can which is why I
Try to weave it into this conversation or to the question that you that you asked based on what you’ve said honeybees are livestock essentially so yeah what would their role be in a natural area like a natural park or public land in a place where they’re not their purpose isn’t to pollinate our
Food or our crops this also leads into the the next thought that I had which is you know there are thousands of species of bees native to North America um most places you’ll find dozens you know in your garden maybe hundreds in a in a natural area different species and
Some people think that we’ be okay if we just keep the honeybee you know like the honeybee can do everything but it seems like natural areas for example are an area where we really need all of that diversity of of bees yeah um I mean I think the short
Answer is that our our natural areas here in in North America don’t need honey bees they they for the most part you know that’s where our native bees that’s the last refuge for them that aren’t sprayed with insecticides that still have native flowers that still have the
Habitat that they need like that’s the last refuge for them so we we should probably be trying to keep honey bees out and we can talk more about why that is like what what potential threats that honey bees have to Native bees and then so so that’s why
I think honey bees don’t belong in Native areas because they or natural areas because that’s where our native bees need to be that’s their last refuge for them the question of whether um natural areas or or why why natural areas maybe aren’t so compatible with with honeybees is is a bit different but
The main reason there is that honeybees are sort of I mean there’s 10,000 to 50,000 animals that are living in a hive right and they’re trying to support each other they’re collecting pollen and nectar not for us they’re collecting it for themselves right so they’re trying
To get as much as they possibly can to help their populations grow to reproduce and to have food to eat during the winter time I think a lot of people don’t know that that’s why honeybees make honey it’s so they actually have food to eat during the winter time when
There’s no flowers blooming our native bees all have a different strategy they all hibernate they sleep through the winter so they don’t need honey so that’s that’s what honey bees are trying to do is make as much honey as they possibly can have as much pollen on
Board as they can as a reserve in case things go wrong or it gets cold or for or they need to eat when there aren’t flowers available so because of that honey bees are really good at at exploiting really abundant resources like so think about a crop field you’ve
Got a a field that’s full of flowers that are exactly the same it’s like a it’s a perfect system for a honeybee they can learn how to extract as much pollen and nectar from that one flow and then repeat it literally millions of times as a hive like that is the system
That honeybees thrive on they can become really efficient do it quickly they can tell each other where the flowers are and go back and forth as many times as they possibly can and voila you’ve got a healthy you know 50,000 worker system that’s like thriving a natural area is a
Very different landscape than a farm field there are ideally hundreds of different flowers out there those flowers are in lots of different sizes and shapes some of those shapes are so small that a honeybee can’t even land on it right if it does it’s going to fall
On the ground because the the stock of the flower can’t hold it up but a lot of our native bees are are tiny they’re ant sized right and so they can easily go into those little flowers and um and even you know Bumblebees are obviously using similar flowers to honeybees and
And when there are 10,000 to 50,000 honeybees flying around a natural area visiting all the flowers it changes which flowers our native bees are going to and that alters pollination networks and changes which flowers are successful and it changes how hard native bees um have to work to get their food which
Ultimately if you increase the cost of getting food right you’re your reproductive rates are going to go down it changes that over time so this hasn’t been the most straightforward a coherent answer to your questions I’ve thrown a lot of things sort of back at you but I
Think you get to understand the gist of where I’m getting at is that honeybees really don’t have a role in natural areas they’re not needed for the pollination services and in fact their presence can be disruptive to both the plant populations and the native animal native bee populations that that exist
There great you gave us a really Broad picture of of what what’s happening out there which normally we we’re just not aware of but I think aside from a natural areas like Matthew had brought up you know if we go in our backyard and we see you know a lot of different types
Of bees including both native and the in the honeybee um do they compete in in urban habitats as well not just in natural areas yes there’s no question I mean like if you if you look at any sort of book or scientific paper or sort of anecdote that looks at B decline habitat
Loss is a major one people are talking about lack of flowers on the landscape if if if there aren’t enough flowers on the landscape to feed bees which I think we all think is true at least at a gross scale it may it varies from place to
Place then putting more honeybees on the landscape with the same number of flowers creates more competition for for limited resources and I think it’s fair to say that there are probably some places and there are probably some situations like different times of the year where it’s less of a concern where there’s probably
Like in the middle of summer in the Pacific Northwest where we just have flowers a lot of places I don’t want to say everywhere because that’s not true but like it’s probably less of a concern there’s probably a lot of resources out there that the system probably isn’t
Pollen limited but you have to remember that honeybees I just told you they overwinter by eating honey and so come springtime there’s 10,000 hungry mouths to feed that you know they’ve depleted their resources maybe if we took their honey and give maybe they’ve been feeding on corn up
For for a while right so like they’re starved as soon as flowers start to Boom those animals are out there on those flowers right away right and that so that’s the times of year where things really get concerning like for our Queen bumblebees that are out there trying to
Feed if there’s already a hive of honeybees out there taking those resources and you’re just making it harder for that Queen bumblebee or that solitary ground nesting bee that’s trying to feed her kids all by herself like if she has to work harder or if they have to work harder to to establish
Their nests it’s just it’s a it’s another added straw to the camel’s back right another thing that we don’t need to be doing to our native bees if we don’t have to and and I think that’s the real take-home rual is like nobody has to have honeybees in their backyard there’s
There’s fine reasons to do it wax as we’ve decided and honey are they’re both really cool and and they’re cool animals like there’s no doubt that honeybees are just beautiful they’re fun to watch they’re amazing to interact with I have friends that are beekeepers like it’s a
Cool experience to be surrounded by them but it’s not conservation like it’s just not conservation I think that’s what people really need to take home it’s like if you want to help getting a honeybee Hive and putting in your backyard is is not helping it’s potentially harming and there are other things that
You can do to help and that you know plant flowers create habitat stop using pesticides buy organic agriculturally produced Foods you know there’s we can vote with our dollars we can put habitat in the ground we can do a lot of other things that’s that’s probably better than
Getting a honey bee hive I have a follow-up question you kind of answered our our next few questions actually which is great um but aside from competition for floral resources are there any other impacts that honeybees have on our native bees and I think another followup question to that is for
Beekeepers who are listening what can they do if they’re already beekeeping if they’re doing it you know for honey or for whatever reason other Farmers is there anything they can do to offset that impact yeah um to answer your first question about other impacts besides competition
The answer is yes um the major other threat that we know that exists is disease transfer um so there are a bunch of diseases in the bee world just like there are in in the human world um and honeybees have been shown to be able to transmit diseases from themselves to our
Native bees so they’re introducing diseases to them but they’re also just amplifying them on the landscape right if you imagine that there’s a flower out there somewhere with a disease on it and a honeybee visits it and then it brings that disease back to the hive and it
Then gives that disease to 10,000 or 50,000 other bees that are flying over the landscape and then all of a sudden you have all these vectors that are moving this disease and putting it on flowers instead of just one flower now it’s on 50,000 flowers in the landscape
All of a sudden the potential for a native bee to transmit or or to get that disease is is higher and and some of these and so that’s what we’re seeing happening is both that honeybees are are moving and also like as we take a honeybee on a truck from California back
To Vermont right we’re moving diseases long distances and potentially taking different variants to different parts of the country and introducing potentially novel pathogens you know all over the country um and I think that’s the major concern is is disease transfer and transmission and it’s a fairly unregulated industry like you can move
Honeybees across state line and they’ll often look for macro diseases like mites and other things that you can see but most of these diseases I’m talking about are like RNA viruses or or small bacteria or small fungal um you know pathogens that aren’t detectable by by looking at a hive they’re just they’re
Just in there um and and so that’s another major concern um is that you know these honey bees are are moving diseases around and I I think I I don’t I don’t want to overstate my knowledge um and so for forgive me um but my understanding is also that I believe
Some commercial beekeepers because of the disease issue are becoming increasingly concerned about backyard beekeeping because a lot of backyard beekeepers don’t do quite as good a job at managing these sort of diseases and the honeybee world and so some of these backyard honeybees are actually more diseased in some ways than the
Commercial bees and again I I’m not 100% sure about this but I’ve heard and read anecdotal reports about this so I you know I think even the honeybee world has some concerns about disease transfer in this regard I’m sure it’s on their radar and that they’re thinking about it but
It’s it’s definitely a concern when we talk about transmission to our native bees as well and then you had another question so many questions yeah I can’t remember it what was it beekeepers what can they do to offset that impact for Native bees yeah I mean I think I was getting
At it at the end there I think people can really educate themselves and find the best way to keep the healthiest Hive that they possibly can um I don’t I I’m not the right source for that and I don’t think xeres in general is the right source for that I think there are
Beekeeping associations you know all over the country that can help you do this really well but I think if you’re G to do it you ought to take it really seriously and do the best possible job that you can to to keep your animals healthy and to make sure that you’re
Therefore keeping the pollinator Community healthy where you have your hive um and then you know like I wouldn’t move it around you know like there’s no reason to set it up to into the forest in the summer or anything like try to keep it in one spot would be
Another best practice as far as I’m concerned um and then plant flowers like I think it’s somewhere between a half acre and a full acre of habitat is how much a honeybee needs or a honeybee Colony needs to be successful that’s larger than any Urban lot that I know of
That’s a lot yeah so so you know people ought to be planting flowers uh in as many as they can like if you’ve got honeybees and green grass you should probably convert that green grass to Habitat and plant you know or at least have a lot of clover grow growing within
That green grass um and I think those are you know really the best things that that that you can do um I guess I would also just encourage that people talk to their neighbors about these issues right I mean it’s what one honeybee in one backyard is different than like 15
People living adjacent to each other that all have honey bee hives in their backyard right that all of a sudden increases the competitive impact of those species dramatically and so trying to spread that out would be good and you know just I just think we need to be having these
Conversations as communities and really thinking about the best ways to move forward um and it it makes me think of not to overly promote Zer programs but it makes me think of our our um our B cities and our B campuses how they’re just great networks for policy development around this about
How can we really create a system that’s supportive of those people that do want to be backyard beekeepers which is I think it’s okay as long as you’re doing it for the right reason like how do we create a system that works for them that also works for our native bees and our
Native pollinators that I don’t if anybody’s against having healthy pollinator communities they’ve got you know they’ve got issues so I think we can all be on board to try to work together to find the best ways to do this and I think we just need to have those open conversations with each other
And not be you know I don’t think beekeepers need to be shamed because they’re beekeepers like it’s fine to be a beekeeper people have dogs right dogs have negative environmental impacts cats cats kill millions of birds a year right so like we can all coexist there’s re
There’s good reasons to have dogs and cats and honeybees and I think we just need to like have open conversations about it and find best practices together yeah well um this is this has been great rich and um my next question was going to be you know if someone
Doesn’t have a backyard Hive you know don’t want to be a beekeeper what can they do to help bees um and I know you’ve touched on to some of that already but is there more or you know more detail you wanted to add to what you’d already said about you know
Someone wants to quote save the bees without introducing a non-native species what can they do I mean habitat is the number one answer answer Matthew if you if you own land or you rent property that has land that has space that you can interact with create messy messy flowery Landscapes as much
As you possibly can is what I would say you know like grow a bunch of have fun growing a bunch of native plants and grow the weirdest ones you can and and just have fun with it and you know you can do that in your backyard and have your front
Yard look nice and tidy for for those neighbors that walk past or however you want to do it but yeah just have fun creating habitat um is is that like the best thing that you can probably do is just be messy and have fun with it um
And document who comes like it’s a build it in they will come scenario which I think is one of the coolest things about it like you’ve got a wildlife safari just waiting for you in your backyard um and and create the template to watch and make
That happen I know I recognize that a lot of people don’t have don’t have the luxury of of managing habitat and can’t grow a field of flowers um and those people I I guess I would encourage to to think about how they’re spending every resource that they possibly send
You know like are you where are you buying honey you know like try to buy your honey from from a beekeeper you know go to a farmers market to find your honey you know like have a relationship with a person you’re getting honey with um they’ll feel better about it you can
Feel better about it and have a conversation about what that’s like and what that’s like for them likewise with all of your food like you know what kind of agricultural system are we as a society G to promote and I know a lot of people are
Struggling right now to pay the bills I know that grocery prices have gone up and I know it’s not easy for for everybody I know that people are struggling but I think that we as a society need to disp decide where we want to spend our dollars and I think
Spending dollars on sustainably produced food is one of the best investments that you can possibly make it’s more important than the next widget that’s going to come out from Acme company you know like I think we need to to really think about those resources and how we
As a community want to spend them and if you have the resources or or want to think about spending them on sustainable agricultural practices that’s the best possible thing that we could all be doing is really investing heavily in a sustainable future to feed ourselves in
My opinion no no that’s great um thank you Rich it’s been a great conversation um I really enjoy tapping into your depth of knowledge about conservation the Insight you gave us into the complexity of this issue and also so many aspects of it I mean this
Was great um for our listen one more thing Matthew no no no go for it just that we’ve had kind of a broad conversation and most of it has been related to honeybees um I know that a lot of people also invest in Mason bees as a thing and like I guess I
Would just say as a general practice from my perspective like Mason bees are great too they’re super fun and you can have a ton of fun with them but there’s no reason to ever as far as I’m concerned there’s no reason to be buying any bee in moving it around right
There’s opportunities to create habitat which would promote the opportunity for Mason bees to nest in your yard but you don’t need to buy mason bees to do that you know you put out the habitat again let’s create the habitat and and let the Safari come to us rather than trying to
Create the Safari by moving animals around um and I just think since we’re having a conversation that’s kind of related I think the issues around Mason bees are probably less well known but potentially equally is problematic but it’s worth at least just mentioning so I appreciate the opportunity you let me to
To step back on my soap box for a second no no no of course I mean that that that’s what this this podcast is all about is giving people you know that that soapbox moment where they can share great knowledge great ideas so thank you
Um and I know for many of our listeners who might want to learn more you know we can always recommend people go to the x.org website where there’s advice ging ofice plant lists more reading about honeybees etc etc I mean I Know Rich you mentioned um B City B campus and you
Were concerned that maybe it’s self-promotion but we’re all for Shameless self-promotion here it’s all right um and we we do have one more question for you and I hand over to Rachel it’s her favorite question she asks everybody it is my favorite question but I also wanted to toot both of your horns
Because you both put out a honeybee publication that talks about why saving the bees like getting to Hive won’t save the bees and I think it’s a great publication and if people have you know friends that they want to talk to this have this conversation with um you know
Go to our website and and look it up and it’s a great a great resource with a lot of great information um so yeah my favorite question and Rich I have to be honest I ask this question because of you because I asked you this a long time
Ago and I still remember your answer and it stuck with me so I was like I’m going to ask everyone this question so I’ll have to come up with a different question question for you in March when you come back but if you could tell our audience your inspiring story about what
Made you want to study bees when did you get hooked into studying bees gosh I I hope I give the same answer I was thinking the same highly embarrassing no one else will know if it’s feels like a lot of pressure oh no it was inspiring I was really
Inspired I appreciate that I it’s probably the same I’ll probably give you the same answer um yeah no I um when I I didn’t like grow up being a kid that chased bugs around my backyard it wasn’t like my it wasn’t my upbringing science was kind of something I discovered later
In life and um I I really just wanted to make the world a better place and I was trying to figure out how to do that and my early degree was actually in political science so I I’ve thought a lot about influence um and how do we talk to to lawmakers
And policy makers in ways that they’ll listen and economics was a was a major player there I recognized that it probably was and so I became interested in in bees because of um generally speaking because of pollination services and that we could put an economic value on their presence
In the world and that was kind of my interest originally um but I um I was super young and bright eyed and bushy tailed and I just kind of I walked into the center for conservation biology at Stanford University and and just said I want to
Volunteer I want someone to take me on and and I want to help in in whatever way I can and um Dr Clare kreman um took me and and said sure you can help me and I spent you know like a winter typing some old reference material into an Excel
Spreadsheet so she could do some analyses and then she hired me on to um to be on her field crew um which was in at UC Davis um in the K Valley looking at watermelon pollination it was one of the early studies that um sort of looked at the pollination Services of native
Bees and and tried to address that question like if we have enough habitat can can native bees actually provide pollination Services instead of honey bees um and my first I think it was my first day out in the field I was walking with Dr Robin Thorp who God bless his soul
One of the the most wonderful men I’ve ever had the opportunity to interact with he passed away a couple years ago but was a you know 25 year mentor of mine um he we were just walking through this watermelon field um squash field and he
Uh he said come here come here and he like pulled me over and he bent over and he picked up this squash flow which they’re open very early in the morning and then they close and they’re closed for the rest of the day he picked this
Flower up and he he just put it right in my face and he just opened it up and about 15 squash bees male squash bees in the genus peponapis just like came flying out of this flower like right into my face and I it was like just one
Of the coolest experiences I have ever had and I yeah I think it was literally that moment that I fell I didn’t just see the Practical aspect of studying bees but I fell in love with the animal and um and yeah it’s been a pretty great ride ever
Since then yeah that was the story maybe you can ask me again in March and people have forgotten and I’ll tell different no I was going to say rich I I I’ve worked with you for quite a few years now but I didn’t know that was
Your origin I knew you had a really close relationship with Robin but didn’t know that was your first meeting and I mean I know that research that was published from that study in the waterm and it was kind of foundational to so much that’s come since and there you
Were out in the field yeah yeah I collected a lot of that data it was that’s amazing study that came out at the time kind of open the door to a lot of what’s happened and I I owe a lot of uh where I am to to Robin and Claire two
Just wonderful people and wonderful scientists and and wonderful mentors they were both great to me I feel really lucky to have knocked on that door that day yeah yeah that that is amazing wow yeah well thank you so much Rich for your time today I’m really looking
Forward to having you back again in March to talk about bumblebees and we hope that our listeners enjoyed this podcast and that we all have you back on for the next one thank you again rich thanks for the opportunity it was really fun thank you bug benter is brought to
You by the xeri society a donor supported nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates the life that sustains us if you already a donor thank you so much if you want to support our work go to x.org donate for information about this podcast and show notes go to x.org buug
Banton