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Bee approaching group of flowers

All About Bees: Celebrating Pollinator Week

June 21, 2024

59 Minutes

Guests: Kass Urban-Mead, Rich Hatfield, Mace Vaughan

Tags: Bees, Pollinators, Staff Guests,

Happy Pollinator Week! In celebration, we assembled a panel of bee experts for this special Q&A session on bees, originally recorded live with audience questions.

Guest Information

We are joined by Kass Urban-Mead, Rich Hatfield, and Mace Vaughan. You might recognize Kass and Rich from previous podcast episodes, but they are joined by a new voice, Mace Vaughan. All three of our guests are colleagues of ours at the Xerces Society. Kass is a pollinator conservation specialist & NRCS partner biologist in the Mid-Atlantic; Rich is a senior endangered species conservation biologist & our team's bumble bee conservation lead; and Mace is the pollinator and agriculture biodiversity program director.

Transcript

Matthew: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces 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 xerces.org/donate.

Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Dunham from the Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: Welcome to Bug Banter live! We are joined by not one, not two, but three guests: Kass Urban-Mead, Rich Hatfield, and Mace Vaughan. You might recognize Kass and Rich from previous podcast episodes, but they are joined by a new face, Mace Vaughan. 

Rachel: All three of our guests are colleagues of ours at the Xerces Society. Kass is a pollinator conservation specialist & NRCS partner biologist in the Mid-Atlantic; Rich is a senior endangered species conservation biologist & the bumble bee conservation lead; and Mace is the pollinator and agricultural biodiversity program director.

Rachel: Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kass: Great to be here.

Rich: Thanks for having us.

Matthew: Today is the first day of National Pollinator Week, so no surprise, we’ll be talking about bees. Between them, Kass, Rich, and Mace know a lot of things about bees, both their natural history and conservation. I’d like to ask our guests to briefly describe their work with bees and tell us where you're calling in from. Let’s begin with Kass.

Kass: Sure, it's so great to be here and, really fun to be live with you all today. I am based in the Mid-Atlantic, so I live in Philadelphia, right in the city, and I work all over the region. 

Kass: So I drive to visit farms in New Jersey. I drive to visit big forests in Pennsylvania and I also work right here in Philadelphia across New Jersey and even up into New York City and some other places doing conservation in urban areas too. So it's a really fun and exciting group of wonderful folks to work with.

Matthew: Right. I'll kick it over to Mace now.

Mace: Awesome. Thanks, Matthew. Welcome everybody. It's great to be here. My name is Mace and I oversee our pollinator and ag biodiversity program that Rachel mentioned at the beginning. or Matthew. And I've yeah got a team of 30 amazing specialists who are based all across the country from Maine to California working mostly with farmers and ranchers and increasingly foresters, managing and creating habitat, protecting habitat for pollinators, for other beneficial insects that are important, for pest control or soil health or food for wildlife.

Mace: I mean, pollinators really at the heart of it. And so, yeah, my team are, most of those folks are specialists and they know a ton about native species and diversity out therw. How do we all work? Where the farmers, ranchers, foresters or backyard gardeners to create and protect that habitat.

Mace: So that's a little bit of what I do and I am calling in from Calgary, Alberta, where I currently live with my family, even though most of my work is still down there in the United States.

Matthew: Hey, thanks, Mace. Rich.

Rich: Yeah, hi, thanks. Yeah, I'm based in Portland, Oregon. I work in the Xerces Society mothership office here where there's, you know, maybe 25 of us or so that use this as our home base.

Rich: My on-the-ground work is, based on bumble bee conservation. And I work mostly in like Oregon, Washington, and Idaho is my on-the-ground work. But I also supervise a team of 6 people that are working from coast to coast mostly on these Bumble Bee Atlas projects that we are running.

Rich: So I've got folks in California, in the Great Plains and the Midwest, in the Southeast and newly I've got 2 brand new staff to have that have just started in the Rocky Mountains and those folks are mostly working on our Bumble Bee Atlas projects that are seeking to better understand the distribution and conservation status of bumble bees across United States. 

Rich: And then my work is a bit broader than that and sometimes I work on other issues related to bumble bees. It's not just atlases. We use those status assessments to advocate for protection or other things necessary. And I'm also working with, some of the larger land managers in the United States, the BLM and the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service helping them to learn how to manage lands to benefit bumble bee and other pollinator species.

Matthew: Still such excellent work that 3 of you do and I know it's also very different from—as you say Rich, you're out there helping some of the public lands wildlands managers and Kass you're right there in the dense, some of the most densely developed urban areas helping to, literally, in places scrape the black top and the asphalt away to get green space back in. So it's really cool. 

Matthew: I'm going to throw a question out here and, maybe Mace you can start with this, but I know that we often, assume that all bees kind of live in hives and make honey. You know, we have these images that were brought to us from, Winnie the Pooh and kids books and, you know, TV,  etc, etc. But that's not really a typical way for most bees to live, is it?

Matthew: So could you give us a broad picture of kind of the diversity of bees and how they live?

Mace: Yeah. Oh, I'd love to. So what you just described is really sort of, you know, the quintessential honey bee, right? The queen with tens of thousands of workers and a hive and honeycomb and all that. Which you know is a species brought to North America many many years ago.

Mace: And our native species are all very dramatically different. So we've got about 3,600 species of native of bees in the US. The majority of these rather than being in this large colony inside of a large cavity, the majority of these are solitary species. And the—meaning that you've got a single female bee that will emerge, you know, will emerge from her nest, mate and then go about the task of provisioning her nest and we'll probably talk more about that.

Mace: Most of these solitary bees that do all this work by themselves are ground-nesting. So they live in tunnels underground. And you know, many of these, many of them are also tunnel-nesting in wood or in pithy stems, hollow stems, holes in wood and whatnot.

Mace: That's probably most of our bees and then you've got a select group that I'll probably let Rich talk about since he is our bumble bee expert, are sort of more classically social bees with a queen and lots of workers around our bumble bees.

Mace: And so this wide variety of species, yeah, quite different from what people usually think of. Some of them can be quite tiny down to you might even think they're just a tiny little fly all the way up to our really big furry bumble bees and big carpenter bees.

Mace: And they come in this amazing range of colors, right? Like you think of the classic bee is like, you know, orange and black or yellow and black stripes, but we've got grey and black stripes and iridescent green and iridescent blue and brown and red and I mean just this tremendous variety of color. 

Mace: Tremendous variety of ways that they sort of nest or dig their nests underground. Yeah. So most of them are solitary and then we've got our bumble bees. And maybe Rich since you are our bumble bee expert, I’ll turn it to chat a little bit about how bumble bees are unique and sort of what their unique life cycle is.

Rich: Sure, yeah, I mean, bumble bees are certainly more closely associated with that sort of queen and hive situation, although still pretty different as well in that, you know one of the reasons that honey bees spend all summer making honey is so they can have food to eat over the wintertime when there aren't any plants blooming and no food really is available on the landscape. So that's their sort of strategy for surviving the winter time. 

Rich: And our native bumble bees, at least those that live in the more northerly and higher elevation areas, have a different strategy and that they hibernate through the winter. So our bumble bees have a one-year annual lifecycle. Whereas we think of honey bees as usually having a perennial or multi-year lifecycle where the queen can live, you know, I think in good scenarios, or at least in old times, 5 to 7 years or something like that and it's less than that now probably if you talk to most honey beekeepers.

Rich: But anyway they have perennial life cycles. Our native of bumble bees have annual left cycles. So queens just live for one year. They emerge in the spring. They find a nest. They start laying eggs. The worker caste comes out, starts bringing resources into the nest, pollen and nectar. The colony gains in size and resources. They start producing the reproductive members of the colony, the new queens and males. Those hopefully find each other and mate on flowers or in the environment commonly at summer, early fall. 

Rich: And then queens will continue to build up their fat reserves. They find the place to overwinter separate from their nest. And then they dig themselves a little hole. They overwinter and the rest of the founder's nest dies off. All the founders queen, all the workers, and all the males die off. And it's only that new queen that's in a new fresh hole in the ground that overwinters to start the cycle anew the following spring.

Rich: Mace did a great job of describing like, you know 3,550 species, but there's all these so many cool stories we could go into about cuckoo bees and, you know, like all kinds of crazy stories like it's so hard to summarize so many different species life histories and a couple of minutes. So there's lots of cool things and many more ways to dive into the interesting life history of these amazing animals.

Rachel: Yeah, definitely. Mace, I love your hand motions when you're describing the bigger bees because your, hands were as big as like a medium sized dog and I just had this in vision of like these giant bumble bees and I think that would be so cool to have giant bumble bees on the landscape.

Rich: Rachel, I was thinking about the same thing when I saw Mace with his hand gestures. I was thinking back to like prehistoric times and the giant dragonflies they used to fly around. That's what I was envisioning as well.

Mace: Probably about right for the giant dragonflies back in the day, actually.

Rachel: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mace. Alright, well we're going to go to the chat with several questions about honey bees. We just talked about our native bees. Someone asked: is protecting the honey bee focus changing? If not, how can community scientists bring attention to native bees and their importance aside from planting native plants?

Mace: It's a great question. I'll take that on if you'd like. I remember like when we first—yeah, I've been working now on pollinator conservation for 20 coming up on 24 or 25 years and actually got my start as a beekeeper back in the day. Like I became fascinated by insects by keeping honey bees and then discovering that these flowers, oh my goodness, look at all these amazing other insects that are out there. Like my eyes—I was blown away by the diversity, bees, butterflies, flies, wasps, beetles. I mean, spiders, just so much out there. 

Mace: And certainly back in 2006 with colony collapse disorder that really helped I think build upon what was already a movement around pollinator conservation going back to the forgotten pollinators campaign going back even earlier than that to Xerces work on butterflies and butterflies that were in decline. 

Mace: But certainly what we started to see in 2006 around colony collapse disorder and beekeepers losing so many hives. That trend for beekeepers to lose hives continues to this day, right? Like it's—beekeeping this really become hard and I really, you know, feel for beekeepers. That's like a It's a really hard industry right now because of such high losses.

Mace: But it's super important—like if people are really concerned about honey bees, for example, if people are really concerned about all these other species of native bees that we're learning more and more about in their declines the bumble bees being really probably the most prominent and well understood, I think it's critically important for people to think about it, understand what might be their motivation. If they want to, for example, do something like beekeeping or if they want to conserve bees. And so, if you want to really conserve and protect and support bees, native bees, honey bees even, right now and really going back, the most important thing that everybody can do is to really create habitat, right?

Mace: Support habitat, plant flowers, you know, protect that habitat from insecticides and other pesticide exposure. Yeah, really like, you know, you don't keep honey bees to help beekeepers out or to conserve bees right? It's super important that if you really want to help pollinators to create and support and protect that habitat. 

Mace: Ideally from Xerces perspective, we really focus in on native plants, native biodiversity, native bees, you know, doesn't mean you can't throw at a few non-natives out there, as long as they're not super weedy species.

Mace: We do think and there is evidence to show that you just get such a bigger increase in overall diversity of pollinators supported if we really focus on native plants. Plus with climate change affecting all these specie, whatever we can be doing to increase the resilience of our landscapes, to have more and stronger populations of native wildflowers, native shrubs, flowering shrubs, native flowering trees that can provide pollen and nectar.

Mace: For all of these pollinator species, that's the most important thing people can be doing. So if you come at this from a honey bee background and you want to help honey bees, hey plant flowers. If you're super interested, like we are really, in this focus on native biodiversity and native bees, plant native wildflowers. Like get the plants and the pesticide protection out there on the ground.

Rachel: Right, thank you so much, Mace. So Rich, I have a question for you. I've never in all the webinars that we've done together, I've never had this question. I'm really curious and it's from Cynthia is wondering, are there any species of bumble bees that hybridize? We see the with this with birds and other animals. So they're quite curious if this happens among bumble bees.

Rich: I don't know. I don't have any, examples or anecdotes to share with folks. I don't know of any hybridization that has happened. But I mean if you sort of go back and just think about the evolutionary history of the development of different species like it's very likely that genes have been mixing over time and things happen, but I don't have any specific examples, or, you know, areas where I know that two species have hybridized to create, you know, a Frankenstein species or whatever it is.

Rich: So yeah, I wish I had a better answer to that question. It is a good question. I suspect that there's no lack of trying. I bet some males out there are willing to mate with whatever females happen to come near them, but I don't any examples of success or anything. But Kass, or Mace may. I'm not the only person that knows a lot about these animals.

Kass: I don't know of any hybrids. Your example did make me think of all sorts of cool ways that some of the parasitoids and parasites that we were talking about can try to sneak into their host nests.

Kass: I know we were talking about some cool triungulins which are trying to parasitize native solitary bee nests who would actually mimic the—what is it, the male bee?— and crawl up to the very top of the grass leaf and send out kind of a mimic so they'll try to mate with them. And then as soon as the female tries to mate they'll all leap onto her back and crawl over her and get brought back to the nest.

Kass: So it's a it's a really funky cool world out there to be a wild be in and try to avoid all of the things trying to attack you. And so many cool, cool life histories for all these different solitary bees.

Matthew: Yeah. I've come across butterflies with like both male and female markings, like half and half but I, in terms of species, hybridization, I've not encountered that in insects so far. 

Matthew: Kass, I wanted a direct question to you about planting native plants. Or at least about habitat, you know, because we know that, you know, there's a lot about plants out there, a lot of information about plants. But what are the other habitat needs of bees that people can provide for?

Kass: Sure. Yeah, it's all the pieces together, right? So we want to make sure that if we're thinking about our wide diversity of pollinators, right, think about those, you know, getting up towards 4,000 species of bees in the US that Mace was describing in all their different life cycles.

Kass: The first place we start, of course, is going to be with food. And so we think about a wide diversity of different types of flowers, flowers that bloom at different times, flowers that are different shapes and colors, which are kind of the simple way of thinking about different plant families and different nectar chemistries and different pollen nutrition categories, right?

Kass: Bees are trying to make a balanced diet just like us and they're bringing it back to their to their nests to feed to their babies. And bees have a nest just in one particular spot so you want to think about having a wide diversity anywhere that you're providing resources because if you're a little bee, you have to go back and forth and back and forth from your nest all day getting pollen. So you want to make sure that those resources aren't too far away from where you're providing for your brood.

Kass: So that brings me to maybe the next part of that situation, which is maybe what you're getting at Matthew, is also about thinking about their nesting and their overwintering habitats. And if the vast majority of our solitary, which they are. Only a couple really cool ones aren't. I also first fell in love with honey bees before I discovered the wild magical wonderland of native bees.

Kass: And, but the solitary bees, the vast majority of them only fly for a short period of time. And so this is a way that I always like to remind people that we want to think about where those bees are nesting even when we don't see them because all but those six weeks that they're adults, they are not visible to our human eyes. We're not always aware of them.

Kass: And so once we learn where their nesting habitats are, we can do really two important, well, maybe three important things. We can add more if it's not already there. That's the one I just added to my list.

Kass: Once we know how to recognize, then we can protect them. And then another big part of our Xerces team is protecting those types of habitats from pesticide. Whether that's insecticides directly, fungicides, which can synergize with insecticides, or any other toxin that can harm our bees.

Kass: So I love thinking about nesting and overwintering habitats, because they really get you to think from the perspective of a bee. If you're a stem nesting bee—you may have come across our Xerces campaign save the stems. We're in a garden scale. You want to leave your flower's seed heads up all winter for the birds but then in the spring time cut them back so that those strong pithy stems can serve as shelter for bees that second season.

Kass: And then, maybe you heard in, you know, Rich's story where the bumble bee queens need to find somewhere to overwinter. And so those queens, the rest of their colony has died in the annual lifecycle and just that queen is getting ready to hibernate throughout the winter, like a like a black bear who is stocked up on sugars this time and pollen from usually after flowers and is ready to nuzzle into the ground to be protected all winter.

Kass: Well, lots and lots of researchers and Xerces folks are working to figure out where those overwintering sites are and often they'll be near where a bumble bee nested in a new hole and they'll often be somewhere where they're going to be in a little well-drained little duff area.

Kass: Although a brand new paper did just say that a bumble bees, although a brand new paper did just say that a bumble bee can survive inundation if they do accidentally get covered in water for a couple of weeks, which is pretty amazing. 

Kass: But I don't think we want them to have to resort to that unless it happens anyway. So, some bumble bee queens will overwinter in forest floors. Some of them will, overwinter on a little sandy slope, under maybe at the base of a grass tussock or in some soil that they can move.

Kass: So we want to really be thinking about all these messier corners of our yards, all of these areas where there's overgrowth or maybe there's a wood pile. All sorts of kind of easy-to-ignore and overlook places where actually there's lots of nesting and overwintering.

Kass: And lots of these are going to be on edges, like, hedgerows, grassy edges, forests nearby, etc. I've gone long. So does that answer your question, Matthew? 

Matthew: Oh yeah, totally. Thank you.

Kass: There's just always more to say when it comes to our cool friends.

Matthew: Oh no, we could talk for an hour or more just about that, couldn't we?

Kass: We could. We have. Yeah.

Rachel: Yeah, this is a huge topic to cover. We have so many great questions coming in. So I'm going to jump to Paul's question. They're wondering—and this is perfect because I believe the theme of this pollinator week is more agricultural, pollinator habitat on ag lands. So this is perfect. What about pollinator habitat that is adjacent to agricultural fields possibly functioning in ecological traps, given that neonics and other pesticides often drift, considerable distances from where they are applied?

Rachel: So I don't know who would want to answer that question, but I think It's a good and poignant question to ask today.

Mace: I think I might tackle it, Rachel, just cause it's so much of the work that folks on my team do working on trying to increase agricultural biodiversity or thinking about regenerative agriculture, for example, and this critically important sort of biodiversity component of it.

Mace: And I think what Paul's described is a really important risk. That always has to be taken into account and considered, if we're working to create habitat, you know, pretty close to ag fields. And so one of the things that's really important that our team does when we're working with farmers across the country is when we're thinking about or trying to figure out where to put habitats, pollinator or beneficial insect habitat, into a farm landscape is having just, you know, really frank and honest and straightforward conversation with the landowner.

Mace: Like, great, you're interested in pollinator habitat. We're excited about that. We're going to help as best we can. If you're into that, you know, we want to make sure we're creating habitat that's not serving as a trap. Or a sink, you know, a habitat where you attract a bunch of insects in and then accidentally have some sort of an insecticide drift event or something happened where there could be potential exposure.

Mace: So we really try to work that into the whole planning process so that when we create that habitat, maybe we don't put it immediately adjacent to a farm field, or maybe we look to where we've got a place that has a bit of a buffer, or some space and then some other strategies that are put in the ground to avoid movement of pesticides. Or we, you know, we work more often maybe with folks that are organic or practice other practices that, you know, we reduce pesticide use in that area adjacent to that habitat in order to protect it.

Mace: So basically it's just a critically important part of the planning process and we're making decisions about where do we put habitat in the landscape. And the ideal scenario is we find that spot that's going to be protected from, you know, neonicotinoid runoff and water, getting it or dust off or just, you know, somebody even just spraying pesticides in their field to really try to create habitat that's close enough. 

Mace: If it's an insect-pollinated crop that we're building up bees that could go into the crop or if they’re just trying to create some really valuable wildlife pollinator habitat in their landscape. Maybe they're growing wheat, you know, or they don't need a pollinator, but they're really into supporting biodiversity—gives us a lot of flexibility. So maybe we're not right up against the field. Maybe we're down focusing on stream banks or areas tucked away, maybe there's a little wood lot in between, you know, something like that. 

Mace: But it's just a critically important thing to keep in mind. And if we scale that down to a backyard, same thing applies, right? Like you've gotta be super cautious about any potential insecticides exposure, especially that might, you know, come into any habitat plants you put on the ground.

Rachel: Thank you, Mace.

Matthew: I’ll just put a plug in if I made for Bee Better Certified. Cause I know that pesticide management and protection of pollinators from crop protection products is an essential part of that program and that certification so if people out there see the little black and white bee seal and it says Bee Better Certified you know that that that grower has taken some serious steps towards minimizing impacts of pesticides.

Mace: 100%. 

Rich:  I don't mean to jump in here, but I wonder if we want to bring this home as well and just think about similar to sort of drift in an agricultural field, what about where we source our pollinator plants from and how many of those could be pretreated and how we might educate folks to better choose the plants and the in the habitat that they're that they're creating at home?

Mace: It's certainly important that, you know, it's not uncommon especially, yeah, it's not uncommon to go out there and find plants that have been treated with something like a systemic insecticide, where that insecticide is taken up into the plants. And it's one of our concerns and one of the things we pay very close attention to when our staff are working with landowners to purchase plants to maybe plant a hedgerow or a small pollen or a large pollinator meadow.

Mace: You know, we have pretty frank conversations with our nurseries like, hey, we, yeah, we don't want to put plants on the landscape that are going to potentially be poisonous, have a systemic insecticide taken up in the plant that comes out in the pollen and nectar over the next several days, months or even years if it's too heavily treated.

Mace: So we have that conversation and one of the things we've been working on is, even homeowners, it's something really important to think about. I think it's easier for us because we can work directly with the nursery to say, hey, we want to buy $5,000 worth of plants, can you help us by making sure that you know, they come to us in this condition ready to put in the ground and be safe for pollinators?

Mace: But if you're just going to a local nursery, that can be a lot harder. So it's really valuable when you're going to buy pollinator plants to say, hey, have you talked with your nursery? Do we know that these plants don't have systemic insecticides in them that could still be coming out or have they had even a bit of a rest period if they're treated on the surface with insecticides? Have they been given a chance for something that's not taken up in the plant to at least have some time to break down before coming to the, you know, to the point of sale?

Mace: These are valuable things to think about just to make sure when you, you know, you're trying, you're all out there trying to create a habitat. You don't want to put some, you know, milkweed out there and have it be killing monarch butterflies on you. Making them sick. Anyway, just as the super, yeah, it's a good point, Rich. It's a good thing to think about.

Rich: Thanks, thanks for tackling that, Mace. I appreciate you. It was well, handled. I put you on the spot.

Rachel: Thank you both so much. So, speaking of plants, this is a question from Michelle—and I do want to give a shout out. Michelle is one of our Xerces Ambassadors. We have several on here right now. I just want to thank all of the volunteers, community science volunteers, our members and donors that support us and the work that we do. We just want to thank you all for the amazing work you do in celebration of Pollinator Week. They're all out there advocating for pollinators. 

Rachel: So Michelle is wondering, she just read that bumble bees have been shown to prefer pollen compositions with a 5 to 1 ratio of protein to lipids. How much is known about pollen composition and their attractions to native bees and how can this help in selecting the best plants for habitat in home gardens and in restoration areas?

Rich: Gosh. We're getting into the weeds here, which is awesome. Thank you.

Kass: But the nutrient rich weeds!

Rich: Yeah, I mean this is a—so, I actually attended a conference in Montana. Gosh, maybe two months ago. It was in Missoula. It was sort of the Montana Pollinator Network that's just getting started. And someone gave a talk about this very same thing. He works for the Forest Service. His name is escaping me right now. Of course I wish I had more time here to look into it for a sec, but sorry. 

Kass: Probably Anthony Vaudo. Is it Anthony Vaudo, Rich?

Rich: Yeah, it was Anthony Valdo about, thank you. So he's done this amazing bit of research where he's looked into the different, you know, nutrient composition of different pollens in the landscape and he did start by evaluating proteins versus lipids.

Rich: And what he found is that different groups of pollinators are indeed self-selecting for these different ratios of proteins to lipids. And indeed, you're right that bumble bees choose sort of more of the protein-heavy side of that spectrum.

Rich: Although bumble bees are generalists, right? Or we normally think about them as generalists. So they sample throughout the entire spectrum of those ratios of lipids to proteins. But they specialize, or they choose more of, the ones that are little bit protein-heavy, which you might expect for a large body bee that's trying to overwinter in cold areas.

Rich: And in terms of, you know, your question about how we apply this to plants selection and putting together plant lists for bees is something that I hope we hear at Xerces start to think and do more of. I remember like literally as soon as I got back from this conference I sent this paper out to the whole Xerces team and I was like I think we need to start thinking about this.

Rich: It's a really neat way to think about, you know, that not all pollen is created equal. And especially, one of my concerns from the very beginning, I think, of sort of these plant lists that we've created is we sort of run the risks of making—I've been concerned about running the risk of making just making common bees more common and not helping some of our more rare bees that have different nutrient needs. And sometimes that's a specialist plant. But sometimes it might also be a specialist ratio of lipids to proteins, right?

Rich: So it's a different way to start thinking about these things and I think, you know, this is in my opinion, this is the one, one of the things that Xerces does so well. We take brand new science that comes out and we think about how to apply it to our work. And then we start working with nurseries to start growing these plants out, making them commercially available and then building them into our plant lists.

Rich: So we're not recommending plants that people can't even go out and buy, right? It's like a whole cycle that we work on behind the scenes that I don't even know that much about, so I should probably be quiet, let Kass and Mace chime in here, but yeah, great questions, super interesting research.

Rich: And yeah, I bet there's even a whole lot more out there besides proteins and lipids that we should be thinking about in terms of pollen and frankly nectar and nutrition that's available on the landscape.

Kass: Can I, can I jump in? I'm also excited about this. Yeah, well, I know I think that maybe one thing that might be cool to think about with our, with the folks who are here is, you know, this idea of generalization and specialization and just dig into that a little bit more.

Kass: Because if I remember one of the other papers by that same group did something that you were suggesting Rich, which is, you know, they looked at bumble bees who had put their colonies in all different habitats with really different floral resources and those bumble bees went out in incredibly different floral landscapes and still came home and provided the same protein lipid ratios to their babies, even though the environment had presented an entirely different floral bouquet. And that's something that just blows my mind when you think about how did the bumble bee know how to do that?

Kass: How did that whole group of bumble bees go out and say, hey guys, our, you know, protein limit ratio is looking like seven to one today. Gotta bump that up to eight, you know? Like we don't know how they do that. That's still science that's coming. 

Kass: And so a generalist bee can really do that. And when you're a bumble bee colony out all summer long or the whole growing season long, I guess I should say, you know, you need to be able to switch and evaluate what those resources are.

Kass: And so when you know when we're working across the huge regions where like okay diversity of native plants is going to be the answer. But then we can drill down into bees with shorter flight periods who don't have to stay as generalist because their flight period might overlap with just the bloom period of one or two plants or maybe just a whole family of plants that they learn to use really, really well. 

Kass: And kind of digging into the interesting bit about this question that this person asked that I love, is not every plant has the same nutrient availability in its pollen or nectar and sometimes they're specialist bees who only fly for a little while and so they say, hey, I've noticed right, in quotes. But they learn over evolutionary time. Hey, this plant's always here while I'm flying. And maybe that plant actually has kind of, you know, defended toxic pollen or really bad protein. 

Kass: But they've figured out how to digest it and that lets them have a reliable resource that not too many other bees are using. So having that type of diversity, whereas lots of other bees will go and use the really delicious protein heavy one that's like more protein than a steak and lots and lots of bees are going to use that one, right? 

Kass: There's numbers that say like, you know, some popular pollens have more protein than a steak, by weight, right? By weight, not total. And, and so that allows for all these different strategies. And so we need just—I totally agree with Rich—to be thinking about that type of diversity so that we can support not just the super foods that both generalists and specialists will use, but also some of those ones on the edge.

Kass: And there's some really cool lists for different regions that I can throw in the chat. For learning some more about the specialist bees in your area and how you can start to recognize, protect, and if your microhabitat is appropriate and you can source that plant safely and ethically, how to enhance those on your property. So I really got in the the weeds again there. Thanks for bearing with it.

Rich: I just want to—thanks so much, Kass. That was awesome. I just want to jump in really quick here because I, we always use this term sort of generalist for bumble bees and a lot of other species as well, frankly. And I just want to—I think that over generalizes our understanding of these animals and I think it actually potentially inhibits the conservation of those animals when we just say oh they're generalists, they can feed on whatever. 

Rich: Anthony Vaudo’s paper suggests that's actually not true, right? There's a particular suite, especially when we started looking at a species-by-species basis, like there are some plants that are really important for those animals.

Rich: And I think if we just say, oh, they're generalists, they're fine. Let's just put flowers out there. I think that oversimplifies things and we may potentially be doing harm. So I'm trying to get away from using that language. I don't know what the right language to use is yet, but I'm trying to think about it.

Kass: No, that's really helpful. Thanks for that perspective. I, yeah, you're right. It's like a way that I explain generalists more broadly because they have to switch, but then within that range, we were just talking about their choices. Clearly they're making very careful choices and are going to have better resources that are really support. Is that getting more towards your point? That's awesome. I love that.

Rich: That's exactly right. You know, I'm, I'm not saying you shouldn't be using that term. I just feel like, especially when we're talking about imperiled species, like just saying, oh, they're generalist—I think that's oversimplifying. And I wasn't being critical of your language at all. I'm just saying when I'm talking about and writing reviews or things about particular species, I'm trying to get a little bit away from using that language.

Rich: Sorry, everybody. Having a side conversation here.

Matthew: No, I mean, this is the real kind of, the kind of gritty detail that we need to be getting into. And Pollinator Week discussion seems like the perfect time to do it. I know, certainly for the work that I do, people often coming to me and they're saying I need to know the top five flowers, ten flowers and I'm like, no, no, no we can't do that, you know. 

Matthew: And people are always saying you've got these plant lists and they're so long, and I said yes. And they always want me to shorten them and we're like like nope. Because we can't just come back to this really narrow, homogenized range of plants that will just be better than nothing in our landscape but still really limiting. Anyway, sorry.

Kass: It always make me think of something I think Emily May on our pesticide team always says, which is “right plant, right place.” You know, think about the history of your site. Think about your soils. Think about your slopes. Think about, you know, what a future community might look like in the context of what the history of that site is. And then, and then help think about the native species that makes sense there accordingly. And yeah.

Mace: Before going on to the next question. One quick thing, too, for everybody is, is Xerces, we recently, in the last few months, updated our pollinator plant lists to better account for specialist species and those that are with, you know, unique connections to bumble bees, for example, the specialist bees. And expanded the list of options we're suggesting. 

Mace: So if you go to Xerces' website, to our pollinator plant lists, they've all been updated in the last just several months to really take a lot of what we've just been talking about into account and to make it a little clearer, easier for folks at home to be able to think about, recognize some of these key plant species, whether they're for bumble bees or specialists, but specialists, other specialist native bees or other animals. So just something to go look for, I think.

Matthew: I want to shift away from plants a little bit now. I would like you to talk a little bit about bee houses. We had a couple of questions around this, one of which is: are bee houses really worthwhile?

Matthew: And the other one says please address the urge to build native bee hotels for large aggregations and how best to temper the enthusiasm. And I thought this was a great description: Pinterest pretty yard art that does not have the best health of the native bees first. So, I don't know who's feeling brave enough to jump in on that one.

Mace: I'm always one to take on a controversial question. Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting one because it's one we've struggled with a lot over the years, because there's really something to be said for putting out some hollow stems, some bamboo cut at the node and put them on the back porch and being able to show your kids like look at these mason bees or leaf cutter bees or other animals, like other bees, or frankly even some of the wasps and other little things that will come and use those because they're solitary, you know. 

Mace: These animals tend—like they don't want to sting, in fact a lot of them can't sting. You can come bring them really close to you, and it's just this way to have nature, to have native bees, to have pollinators right there in front of you.

Mace: So on the one hand, there's this amazing educational opportunity. And it's fun, right? Put these out and if the size of the tunnel is right, and you can find that information online, you know, you usually can be pretty successful over the course of a year. But the challenge, which I think it being alluded to, is if create a large aggregation of nests and it's really doing a good job and it's bringing in lots of bees. There are little parasites that attack our native bees. There are diseases that get into those nests. 

Mace: Just a whole suite of things that, you know, can make it kind of challenging. And so, you know, there are techniques for actively managing this. In fact, here, I'll put a link to a document that one of our now former staff, sadly, former staff, was a part of back in the day. It really requires, almost like beekeeping, a certain amount of management to keep those pests down, to keep those diseases from being spread. 

Mace: And you know, but there's also that educational side and sort of exciting people. I will say most of those big giant fancy garden art pieces have got so much going on and the holes tend to be, I don't know, they look nice and they tend not to attract a lot of bees unless you make them really well.

Mace: So I swear like, at least in the States, they, I don't know, so they tend—they don't always work unless you really do it right. And they create so many different little nooks and crannies that it's probably great for spiders and little wasps and different things to hide out. It's probably fine. 

Mace: But I would recommend if you're really into it, only putting out small bundles of straws, leaving them dispersed around, making them materials that just break down over time so that maybe they're only active and working for a year or two and then because you use the natural material, you let it sort of break down and fall apart over time and becomes, you know, less attractive and just, I don't know, trying to have a few bees out there.

Mace: That's my opinion. It's the easiest way to try to have your cake and eat it too. If you don't want to go so far as trying to really actively manage to prevent the buildup of pests and diseases in what, yeah, if you've got a lot of these straws, a lot of these tunnels in one place really can, I mean, I frankly, I'm somebody who's just watched it happen and watch the Houdini flies or the random parasitic wasps come and start burrowing tunnels from the outside. 

Mace: So, I still like it because of that opportunity to really see an animal and engage in nature, but only having a few tunnels. Using natural materials, the stem nesting guide that, we were talking about earlier, where you've got maybe some plants in your garden, raspberry canes or native wild flowers that are big and sturdy where we leave some stem behind. Those tend to break down after a year. And so they tend to if they get used, by say small carpenter bees, these tiny little carpenter bees that might crawl into them, for example, they don't tend to have the buildup of diseases because they're kind of coming and going in the landscape over time.

Mace: I don't know. Those are just a few thoughts because it's a real, it's a bit of a conundrum to be able to have these animals so close and to see them, but also to be recognizing that as soon as you concentrate a lot of one thing, one species in one place, you know, they're easy to find. Easier to find for those, the pests that want to attack them.

Rich: Can I just chime in with one quick thought? I agree with everything you said, Mace. I think it was well presented. I think the one thing I just want to say on top of that is there are opportunities to buy mason bees or these tunnel nesting bees, and I, at least personally, would strongly discourage people from buying bees. For a number of different reasons. We don't want to be moving non-native species around. We don't want to be moving diseases around. We don't want to threaten sort of our local native bees. It's just like the honey bee issue like that people are talking about.

Mace: So again the Xerces approach here, as Mace was saying, like we provide the habitat, we provide the nesting habitat, which is great. The bees will come if they're there, but introducing bees to your yard is something I would discourage almost anybody from doing unless we're talking about some really unique, maybe agricultural, commercial pollination service that was needed and then we could have a separate conversation about that. But for your home, there's absolutely no reason to be buying and moving these around the planet, as far as I'm concerned.

Rachel: I think that was really good note. And a lot of people do actually ask about that. So thank you for adding that. Alright, time for just a couple more questions. Nicole had a question.

Rachel: Thoughts on differences in provisioning bee habitat in urban versus agricultural areas, if any? For example, incorporating flowering plant species that support natural enemies of agricultural pests in more rural or agricultural areas and including more soil nesting areas and urban areas where cavity nesting bees are often overrepresented.

Kass: Yeah, I think it's a great question. I mean, I think what I hear this person getting at is, you know, when you have different landscapes with different impacts, different changes to which habitat elements are gone, you're going to filter, you know, the community that might have been there and you'll be left with a different subset of those organisms.

Kass: Like we do see that a lot of our cavity nesting bees, which is, the group that we were talking about the mason bees that can use those tunnels. We think of those as being, you know, part of that type of like tunnel cavity. I've seen them nesting in between the bricks in the city. You know, they'll be in a in the row homes in a dense urban neighborhood, which is really cool. Whereas, you know, some of the soil nesting bees, I don't see more of the spring ephemeral forest specialists, you know, in downtown Philadelphia. I sometimes see some of the teeny weeny little sweat bees using, maybe like a 5-gallon pot on the side of a road that has, you know, enough soil in it. 

Kass: You know, that said, lots of urban areas do have lots of green space tucked in them. I think sometimes, and I live in a pretty dense part of the city, you know, you think of kind of a concrete jungle, but as soon as you get into any park area, you get into bioswales, you get into urban parks, you get into, you know, even just around the edges of the city. Sometimes there's a two-acre farm, sometimes there's a quarter-acre vegetable plot. There's insides of city blocks full of vegetables and people's gardens. And so I think that you're going to end up probably with a different community of bees, depending on your landscape context. Well, we know that for sure. 

Kass: And you're going to have different species that thrive. But, you can conserve—many of our native bees can really live happily and highly disturbed areas, although we certainly want to be keeping a habitat as intact as possible. It's amazing the number of pollinators that I'll see visiting, you know, the Linden tree down my block or, you know, the butterflies, that will show up and start laying eggs on the vegetables on just a small urban patio within three days of planting your dill, you'll get the swallow tail and you're like, how did you find me?

Kass: And so with that in mind, you know, there's, there's the strong conservation element that we work on hard, especially with our programs like habitat kits where we're trying to put habitat as connected as possible throughout an urban area so that wherever it bee puts its neighborhood—I'm sorry—puts its nest in your neighborhood, there's more likely to be somewhere it can fly nearby to go get those resources to complete its life cycle.

Kass: And then just like in any other habitat, rural also, but I think it tends to be top of mind in urban areas is thinking about the food security implications for that. There's so many people growing food in urban farms and gardens. Growing culturally appropriate foods, growing foods in food apartheid neighborhoods or places where grocery store access may not be very, you know, easy to come by and doing that work to increase the resilience of a pollinator community, whether it looks exactly like your reference community in a rural area nearby or not, it may not be the point, but it's really if I plant a tomato is there going to be somebody there to turn that flower into a tomato, right? You need that pollinator there to help you get that food.

Kass: And I think that you can really make a huge difference with even small patches of flowers, especially when you communicate with your neighbors while you're doing it, maybe put up a sign, keep a little fence around it, a little mowed border, share your seed, teach somebody at the next community garden on the next block while you're doing it and what it means and hopefully year after year you'll see those species build up and build up. And then, you know, then you can, and from this get go or later on in that journey, I'm kind of trying to come back to this person's more detailed question, you can think about what the particular gaps are in your pollinator community and try to do specific interventions to support them.

Kass: But sometimes starting with just a couple native flowers that are going to bloom really well that are going to thrive that you can put a little sign and start that education is a is a huge part of the journey.

Mace: One thing I quickly add to that is if you're thinking about trying to assess those resources, what Kass said just got me thinking about the different habitat assessment guides we've got including one for yards, gardens and parks, that you can find at this link here. And that yard, garden, and parks guide helps you think about in your local landscape and your little neighborhood, maybe you do actually have a fair amount of bare ground in some places where ground-nesting bees are going to be happy. And so it helps you kind of think about doing an assessment to look for those different habitat elements that are native bees need.

Rachel: And for all of those of you on our podcast listening to this, all of these links will be in the show notes on our website. We have had so many great questions. I want to thank you all so much for joining us today and we are going to end with one final question in the few minutes we have left for our guests. It's one of our favorites.

Rachel: What has been your most memorable experience with an invertebrate? And since it is National Pollinator Week and you want to pick a pollinator, you can. We won't make you, but any invertebrate will do and we're going to kick off with Mace since this is the first time he's been asked one of our final special questions.

Mace: Oh, you know, I will say, probably my most—and it's interesting, I actually, I alluded to this at the beginning and I'm going to stick with it. Going back to like the early mid-1990s and not growing up as somebody who was fascinated by insects, like not even really noticing them, and starting to keep those honey bees. And I was like, oh, this is cool. I was really into it for the honey and all that. It was super fun for that. 

Mace: But then I was like, all right, where are they getting all this honey? Where's this all coming from? And to go to the flowers, this was in upstate New York going into an old meadow, an old field that was full of all sorts of different wildflowers and to suddenly see that diversity of animals that was out there on the milkweed. There was, you know, bee balm and there was Joe Pye weed nearby. Oh my God, the animals, just to see hundreds of these different insects. The bumble bee. Like there was that variety. And for me that was a moment that kind of changed the whole trajectory of my life really, right?

Mace: Like to see these ambush bugs and these spiders and these bumble bees and these weird bright green bees on these flowers. Yeah, all of a sudden see that and then as I then continue to go through life to see these things that open my eyes to these animals being kind of everywhere and to always be looking for them and learning their stories that for me that's the memory that totally ties directly into pollinators and all these flower visitors and just that taking what was a one-dimensional landscape, but adding this whole new element. Yeah, completely. And adding this whole new element, yeah, completely changed my life. And so it was fascinating, just fascinating. I'll leave it at that.

Rachel: My cheeks hurt from smiling so much, Mace. That was really sweet and inspiring. I love that. Alright, Kass.

Kass: Well, while we're in upstate New York adding dimensions to our understanding of pollinators, I guess I have to talk about some of my time in grad school where I was learning how to climb trees to catch bees and I guess listeners of the podcast will have heard this before so I will—anyway. 

Kass: I was really interested in what was going on in forest patches nearby orchards where they kept finding all these bees were carrying tree pollen and were really abundant in the early spring.

Kass: I was like, what are they doing there? So I took a tree climbing class and got to be up in the canopy, throughout a whole spring and once you get used to kind of the way the tree sways and settle in. And there were some on kind of slopes going down. If you've been up in the Finger Lakes in New York State where you can see the lake from the top of the sugar maple tree. 

Kass: You're holding your insect net, but it's like waving a little bit. And then the wind just stops and as soon as the tree settles down, all the bees who hadn't been visiting while the wind was blowing come and land on the flowers.

Kass: And some of them you can just see their silhouettes. So I'm like practicing my silhouette based ID because they're out of reach. And you're like, that's definitely a carpenter bee. Okay, that's a bumble bee. Oh, I see a hoverfly! 

Kass: And you're like, huh, all these little black bees. Are they Andrena? Are they Colletes? Are they Halictids? Shoot, I wish I knew. And it's just absolutely magical to be up there. And, I even found some shining green bees nesting in some branches and, it was pretty cool to get to add that dimension.

Kass: So, Yeah, I'm a little more risk averse than I was five, six years ago. And so I'm like, when am I going to get back up there? But I think the payoff is worth it. So thanks for the opportunity to share. It's been well. It's been awesome.

Rachel: Yeah, of course. And if you haven't heard Kass's bees and trees podcast, I highly recommend it. It's really interesting to hear about your experiences. So thank you again for sharing that. And last but not least, Rich.

Rich: You know, this pressure to share a upstate slash Western New York story having grown up in Rochester, I feel like I should be able to do that. But, I was like Mace. I wasn't one of those kids that grew up like fascinated with bugs.

Rich: It just wasn't a childhood story for me and I haven't lived back there in quite some time. So my story is not going to be about Western New York but I found a way to weave it into the story so that's good.

Rich: I'm going to share a recent observation, that I've had, mostly because I've shared a lot of the foundational stories already with the podcast listeners. So I'll go back just a few months ago. I had a landmark birthday this year.

Rich: I won't share the number, but I, as a treat to myself, my wife and I went to South America, we went to Chile and Argentina and part of the impetus for this trip was to go try to see Bombus dahlbomii which is the largest bumble bee in the world.

Rich: So I was on a—yeah, it's this big, it's like the one Mace was talking about. They call it the flying mouse down there. That's the sort of nickname for it. The fairy in the forest. Lots of different cool nicknames for this bee.

Rich: But yeah, I was down in Patagonia looking for this bee and just every day like being afraid I wasn't going to see it while was down there. I mean how many times you get to the southern tip of the world and how long is this bee going to be around to see? And I just yeah I had this one experience about halfway through our trip where I saw this bee, you know sometimes bees will come and fly around you and I have this huge giant queen Bombus dahlbomii like fly right up to my face and then like circle my head and then take off. 

Rich: And I you know of course I didn't have a net with me and I didn't get a photo but I was like yes I saw it and that was that was going to be good enough for me but then just a couple days later I went down to Glacier National Park in Argentina and we went on this trip way into the back country actually with a guide and found fields of forest and I saw handfuls of Bombus dahlbomii foraging on all the native plants down there and it was awesome. 

Rich: It was amazing. I've written papers about that bee and I'd helped do the IUCN assessment for it. But I'd never seen it before. So it was really, really special for me to have a experience with that beautiful animal and I just hope it's around for lots more people to see in the years to come. It’s a beautiful animal.

Rachel: Wow, I feel so inspired. Thank you for sharing that. I knew you had gone on that trip and that you found the bee, but I had yet to hear the story. It's totally worth the wait. 

Rachel: Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you for the participants and your great questions. Happy Pollinator Week everyone. I hope you all have a great day.

Rachel: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-based nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates – the life that sustains us. 

Rachel: If you’re already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast and for show notes go to xerces.org/bugbanter.