100 – THE Everything-You-wanted-to-know-about-pollinators-but-were-afraid- to-ask SHOW (in English)

Speaker 1

From the Oregon State University Extension Service, this is pollination, a podcast that tells the stories of researchers, land managers, and concerned citizens making bold strides to improve the health of pollinators. I'm your host doctor Adoni Malapropos, assistant professor in pollinator health in the Department of Horticulture. OK, well, I'm really excited. This is the 100th episode of Pollination 100 episodes and we've assembled here a number of faculty who really do a lot of amazing work around pollinators, and I wanted to introduce them before we start the episode. OK, so. Who are all of you?

Speaker 2

Thanks. I'm Jen Holt. I'm the program coordinator for the Oregon Master Beekeeper Program and the Oregon Bee Project and the Oregon Bee.

Speaker 3

Atlas. Hi, I'm Ramesh sigil. I'm a honeybee research and extension faculty here at OSU.

Speaker 1

Alright, Doctor GAIL angelotto.

Speaker 5

Hi there, I coordinate the statewide master gardener program here at OHSU.

Speaker 1

At Doctor Andy Moldenke.

Speaker 6

Hi, I'm Andy. I'm a retired insect ecologist here at Oregon State University.

Speaker 7

Hi, I'm Lincoln Best and I'm the taxonomist for the Oregon Bee Atlas.

Speaker 1

Fantastic, everybody. And joining us on the line is Doctor Sandy Debana, who runs our terrestrial invertebrate ecology lab out in Hermiston, OR at Hermiston Agricultural Research. An extension center also, sadly we are missing doctor Jim Rivers. He is on a boat somewhere in the Pacific looking for mural Etsy. In addition to doing. Forest research with bees. He has a very active program with birds, but he did want you to know that he really wanted to. Join us today. OK, you guys all know, are you here? We've got questions from our listeners. But to kick things off, I've been holding on to some audio from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I was there back in March last year. Sean Rooney from Omsi organized bug week. And we asked some of the participants at bug week what their burning questions were. And just to kick things off, I just want to touch in with Sean and ask him about what bug week was about.

Speaker 8

Yeah, bug week. We just started it. We this year was the first year. Last year we worked with Multnomah County Environmental Services. They contacted me and said, hey, we wanna do an education day about mosquitoes, 'cause they work with mosquitoes and so come around planning this year. In 2018, we were talking about it again, and after brainstorming of ideas, should we invite more partners in? What should that look like? Will it be 1 day or over a week? So we brainstormed for a while. And came up. With bug week and so we started reaching out to multiple partners and trying to get diverse. Individuals, organizations, or projects or groups that work with insects. There can all any kind of arthropods and. Help us realize and understand how important overrule they have in our lives and how we're.

Speaker 1

Connected, so Needless to say, bug week was a huge success. There were thousands of kids that went through in spring break and I asked a few of them some questions. Here's the. First one.

Speaker 9

My name is Allie and my question is why do bees have stripes?

Speaker 1

OK, So what do you guys think? So why do bees have stripes?

Speaker 5

Malaria mimicry is this thing when animals start of well, when organisms kind of converge on the same phenotype or they converge with the same general appearance, because that appearance gives them some sort of protection. So the idea with malaria mimicry is that. You may have insects which have a very distinct color pattern, such as those black and yellow strip. And that if a predator happens upon a a stinging or kind of like a nasty black and yellow stripe thing, that they will learn to avoid all black and yellow stripe things. So I don't know that that's why bees have stripes, but that's one of my guesses. That it's just evolved as a common color pattern because it gives them some benefit of protection from their predators.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's sort of like advertising. You're all kind of like. Watch out for us.

Speaker 5

But false advertising because they may not all be nasty. Well, I don't think any of them are nasty. Let me walk that back. False advertising because not all of them are capable of stinging.

Speaker 6

And again, I have no idea whether it's true or not, but unlike the larger bees that can be mimics of Hornets and that sort of thing. A lot of very tiny bees also have stripes and think of Perdita and things like that, and I suspect there it's not their advertising. OK, it's that they don't want to be seen. They're very, very tiny. They're any kind of predator out there, can eat them very easily. And just like the tiger has stripes that you. Can't see it as it's walking around in the woods because you see black, black, black, red, red, red and you don't see a one. Animal, I think that's probably what the little tiny bees and little tiny Wasps for that matter, are using their stripes. For that, the Predators cannot focus on that as one Organism. They see it as a whole buzz of different things.

Speaker 1

Both of you had caveats in your answers. It's like we don't really know why is it so difficult to say for sure.

Speaker 7

It's really hard to measure these phenomena in

Speaker 3

Nature and it's an evolutionary process, right? So I think any evolutionary process is very hard to document or at least to prove your hypothesis is concepts. So I think that's why there are so many unknowns at this point. Yeah, evolution is such a fascinating one for millions of years, these bees have evolved, so it's hard to really say. And there are so many bees as well. It's not just honey bees or bumble bees. Or, as Andy said, the the ones that are small nesting under the ground. So. So it's hard to with respect to bees in general, but I know they all have different types of stripes. So who knows? Mimicry is the best possible hypothesis you can come up with. But again, these are not something you can really prove.

Speaker 6

It's hard to analyze, but I'm very much fun to just guess.

Speaker 2

OK.

Speaker 1

Well, that leads is since we're on the topic of evolution, I want you guys to hear this question comes from Ellen Waters, who's part of the Oregon Bee Atlas.

Speaker 10

I'm curious, why are all the bees on the east side of the continent? Different species are most of them are different species from the bees on the West side of the continent.

Speaker 6

How you answer that question has to do with whether you live in the eastern United States or the Western United States. In the eastern United States. It's because you have very few species of bees. Diversity is very low, maybe only 700 to 1000, and all of the eastern United States. Most of the, well, not most, but somewhere between 25% and 33% are shared with the West. They live all the way across Southern Canada, southern British Columbia, and northern. Washington, Puget through places like that, on the other hand, western bees are derived primarily from northern Mexico, Dry high areas that have since. Grown evolved into the Great Basin, the Great Plains, and the Pacific Coast. There are enormous numbers of those two to 3000 species in the West, and so very few of those are shared with the East. And it's it's a different story.

Speaker 1

Fantastic. What a great answer. OK, for our next question, we're going to go back to Omsi and we have this question that really reminds me of a previous episode we had with Doctor Long, Gelato about soil nesting bees and the how they're often overlooked in terms of creating habitat and backyards. Here's the question.

Speaker 11

My name is Tanya and my question is what kind of soil conditions are optimal in order to attract and maintain soil-loving bees?

Speaker 1

Fantastic question. OK, so I'm gonna hand this over to Doctor Longo Lotto just to sort of like frame this question up of the considerations that we need to, you know, keep in mind for soil nesting before we're diving into these deeper, deeper questions of soil conditions.

Speaker 5

Sure. So what are some of those things that you can do to invite bees to nest into your soil? I think the first thing to recognize is that you should find a space that you can leave undisturbed in your garden where you don't rake it. You don't leaf blow it, you don't till it just find like a space that you're OK with leaving it. Nature. We actually have been playing around to try to figure out what type of soil types may best attract these into your garden, and I think it's also important to know that just because you create a great space doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to find it in nest in it. That doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. Sometimes it just takes patience. You probably don't want to add a lot of organic matter to the soil if you want these to nest there, because those the organic matter may carry pathogens, it could be harmful to the bees. You definitely don't want to heavily mulch with heavy wood chips, or even any type of synthetic. Mulch. I know that's great for suppressing weeds, but it oftentimes excludes insects, so you may be asking whether or not there's like some special magical soil mixture that you can create and put out there for bees. Bees definitely do prefer some soil types, like in the salty range, according to Jim Caines research. But just because you put it out there doesn't necessarily mean they're going to find it. But those things that you can do which are easy are undisturbed, don't heavily mulch. Leave a part of your garden as natural as possible. If you're OK with it. We've noticed when we've been sampling gardens that those. Those gardeners who maybe have excavated a site to put in a vegetable bed and they leave the soil piled up on the sides of their garden, that bees seem to like that kind of burmy area, that little raised area of soil that raised area of soil, can also get a little bit weedy. You know, don't. Don't project that immediately. That may be fantastic. The habitat and just see what happens.

Speaker 1

I know Doctor de Bano, you're out in Hermiston very close to touché. In some of the beds there.

Speaker 4

Yeah, we certainly do. In some places. Yeah, particularly up in. The Walla Walla area and yeah, many places where you've got like large areas of kind of bare soil you can find, for example, sweat. Use it really high abundances too, so we're actually doing a a study up in the Zuma Prairie. Are looking at. Different soil types effects ground nesting bees. So we have a bunch of emergence traps out there. We're actually collecting bees from different soil types. We don't have those results yet, but hopefully, that will give us some more insights.

Speaker 1

So you you're you're you're somehow like sampling the soil and figuring out if their bees emerging from that soil?

Speaker 4

Well, we put out these little emergence traps, which really look like little small tents that are kind of closed systems and then we have a collecting bottle on top. And so we put them out early in the season before any bees presumably emerge and we'll be collecting then once they're emerging from that little area that those traps are sampling.

Speaker 1

A little tense, OK. Oh, so you.

Speaker 4

And we leave. They out the entire.

Speaker 1

So you may be able to address some of the questions that Doctor Longbottom brought up, what kind of soil types. And which kind of bees?

Speaker 4

Yeah, particularly for Eastern Oregon.

Speaker 1

OK. Well, let's take one more question before the break. This question also for Momsy is our last question from the bug week. It comes from one of the adults there. I thought was a really intriguing question. Here it goes.

Speaker 12

I'm. I'm. Hi, I'm Bob. I've got a question for the experts do. Bees have an iron pigment like heme to carry oxygen, or is there so? The pigment that actually carries their oxygen? Or is it simply dissolved oxygen?

Speaker 1

Hmm, So what do you guys think?

Speaker 3

Bees have a unique system of breathing, so they have tracheal tubes where the air passes into their body. So. So basically, hemolymph has no role. Uh, role or like the blood system of uh bees or any insect doesn't have any role. Of exchange of gases like carbon dioxide or oxygen. So basically the oxygen directly enters through these tracheal tubes and by diffusion process it gets into the tissues of the bee and that's how they get. So they don't need uh, they don't have this uh, iron or hemoglobin that we as humans have hemoglobin and has iron for transfer of oxygen. But insects don't so. So it's basically a diffusion process of gaseous exchange.

Speaker 1

So bees don't have red blood.

Speaker 3

Yeah. So they don't have red blood, but they still have blood called hemolymph, so they don't have any red blood cells. So that's why the hemolymph doesn't look, it's pretty clear like either white or yellowish that you.

Speaker 1

Fantastic. OK. So let's take a quick break and we'll come back with. Some more questions from our listeners. OK, we're back and I love this. Next question. I'm really curious how you guys are going to answer it here. Here we go.

Speaker 13

Hi Anthony, this is Mary Jo Mosby. This may sound silly, but I'd like to know if bees dream, especially the bumblebees when they're sleeping in the flowers. You know, the ones that stay outside and sleep in the flowers of any studies done or any, you know, have you videotaped to be sleeping? You know, do they make funny wiggly motion motions, or do their eyes flutter or anything like that, you know, dogs or cats do when they sleep? So I was just curious if these do any dreaming. Thank you. Bye bye.

Speaker 3

So I mean, yeah, this is a very fascinating question and I know with a lower order insect like this, I know people are vastly fascinated whether they can dream or do they have cognition and all those things. So. So I'm just going to talk about some research that was done. I think it was Australian research, I think some research was done here in the US as well. So before you dream, I think you have to sleep right? That's important. So the research is not about dreams, but about sleep.

Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

Whether be sleep or not. So what they did is they had this beautiful observation. Hive studies where they wanted to see what these honeybees are and again very specific to honeybees. It's hard to document those in bumble bees where they're nesting in the ground or somewhere else. So this was a neat study that was done. Uh, with honey bees and observation hives, and they watched some bees that they tagged. And they knew the age group of these bees and what they do during the daytime, whether they were foragers or nurse bees. And So what they documented is they have shown there is significant evidence at this time. So they reduced their metabolism and they just barely hang with their four legs. So it's B is like, literally dangling. From the comp or they are attaching to the other bees, so that is some sort of documentation that they do go into a sleep pattern. Again, there's some evidence. I'm not saying it's very conclusive evidence, but there is some evidence that, yeah, bees do. Uh, take naps in between. So I don't know about the dream part. Maybe I should ask our bees next time. When I go to the hype.

Speaker 2

Ramesh, have you seen this study? Either? I've read a little bit about it where they've done tests. Again it was about sleep. More than dreaming they would give them a sugar reward associated with a thermal stimulus and then they would give them that thermal stimulus when they were in sleep.

Speaker 1

OK.

Speaker 2

That sleep mode and the bees that were given the thermal stimulus while they were sleeping had better memory retention of that stimulus. And so they're thinking that they are retaining and storing these memories during their sleep, which is possibly a precursor to dreaming. Yeah, I like to think that they do.

Speaker 1

Let me get this. Straight so these. So these they had, so Doctor Sigil brought up these bees that were inactive and so they this research kind of goes on that to these inactive bees they had some kind of. They gave them this stimulus and they they kind of remembered it.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's like a reinforcement of their memory and also they measured how much their antennas were moving. And that complete immobility of their antennas was also associated with that dream state that you were talking about. I ironically, I think more research has been done on when people dream about bees and what dreams about bees mean to people. That's if you Google it. That's what comes up.

Speaker 1

I'll be darned.

Speaker 2

More often, so do you tell what?

Speaker 5

Does it mean when people dream about it?

Speaker 2

These oh gosh I've read so many things about that like if you dream of a hive it's supposed to signify wealth and success or stability at home.

Speaker 1

Or you've been working in.

Speaker 2

The yard all day or you or you are a commercial beekeeper. Well, like it's supposed to be bad luck if you dream of killing bees. Bees are supposed to be good fortune in your dreams.

Speaker 1

Quite possibly you've listened to 100 episodes of pollination. Maybe.

Speaker 6

Disregarding Ramesh's cowardice and answering that question, I'd say of course bees dream. There's no question about it. Why do people dream in the 1st place? OK people, the last 10 years, OK. And and sleep research dream research. Etcetera. Have figured out that's what you do when you're asleep and you're dreaming. As you run through everything that's happened to your day, you throw out the irrelevant trash and the stuff that you really need to remember in order to. Live better the next day you've put in your memory and it doesn't matter if you're a bee or a worm. You're a person, you're a cat. That is a basic pattern of the way life works, and so of course bees dream.

Speaker 2

Do you think they remember? Like, really good dance language? Patterns or something like that. Do they relive?

Speaker 1

Only one way to find out. More research. OK, OK. Our next question is a little less speculative and more concrete. This is coming from one of our Oregon Atlas volunteers at the head of the Benton County, Oregon, Atlas team. Jerry Paul, have a listen.

Speaker 6

After you do a site restoration. Of flora. How long does it take the native pollinators to find that site?

Speaker 7

So bees are really well adapted to dispersing into areas that have had heavy disturbance. So after forest fires or floods, it takes 2 to three years. For those populations to recolonize, those impacted areas and to build up really large populations and they do it really quickly and often, you'll see lots of really interesting things come back in just two to three years.

Speaker 5

So I would agree with Lank. The research that's been done out of California with the installation of flowering hedgerows and some of the work that we did in New York City where we added some native flowering plants as well. You'll see these show up right away, but before you can see a measurable significant difference, it's on the order of around 3 plus years.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think I understood the question a different way here. So I thought maybe they're asking if we plant something and when do we expect these to come in. So maybe you know these two are different angles. So I would say it depends on what type of bees you are looking.

Speaker 1

OK.

Speaker 3

Or, if honey bees are everywhere, so if you have honey bees around somewhere nesting in trees, maybe you'll see them immediately as soon as the flowering starts. But again, as uh Lincoln, GAIL said, if you're looking for some specific native bee populations, it depends again on how much you have around your area.

Speaker 1

Taking your angle on the question, I know honey bees have their own surveillance system. How long will it take a honeybee colony to find a within a kilometer radius? How long will it take them to find a nice attractive bloom?

Speaker 3

Yeah, because as you all know, honey bees. Larger populations as well. They are sending out scout bees probably very often. As soon as some patch dries up. There are other bees aggressively looking for forage, so I would say honey bees will find your flower patch pretty soon when compared to other native bees that are around you.

Speaker 6

I agree with everybody for a change, but I looked at the question slightly differently. The word interesting was used, OK. And what's an interesting bee? So instead of thinking about what might be a rare bee or a pretty bee or whatnot, I would just think. Of the. The colony of bees right outside the building that link was found last year. OK, and is out there right now and going bananas. OK. It's a little tiny spring bee andrina and its parasite lomata. OK, now it's a tiny little bee. But it's probably never had anywhere in the scientific literature that that parasite. Is it a parasite of that #1 #2? We don't know anything about the biology of that interaction. We can say as we walk down the street outside the building that there are plenty of populations of the little introduced Daisy that do not have either. There are some populations that have just the. Andrina the. And then there are some populations that have both. Of the host and the parasite, so we don't even have the foggiest idea of how they find one another. We don't know whether if one population has been there a longer time the parasite can find it. Or if it's only the bigger populations of the host that the parasite can find. So just about any bee you find in the backyard, we've no practically nothing about the biology of and it just takes looking at it and hopefully. In the B world. Contribute because just about anything that you see is something that nobody else has either seen or certainly nobody else has ever written down. So get out there and use your.

Speaker 1

Eyes so you can hear the pounding on the tables, folks, the, the real, there's a lot of discoveries that you can make on your own. I think we've had a lot of episodes in the past. 3rd Ed. Codes sort of emphasize that point. Fantastic, and Doctor Dibango. Did you want to add anything to this about how long it takes for sort of responsive be communities to restoration?

Speaker 4

Yeah. Well, we found that the landscape context is really important. So if you have a disturbance, I mean, the first thing is how big the disturbance is and how large of an area impacts. And then if you've got colonization of bees coming from other areas, you know what is in the larger landscape, are there different kinds of bees that can move into? A disturbed area. So we find that in agricultural systems a lot, it really depends on what kind of farms you have nearby. When you're doing restoration, for example, of an arid grassland, or do you have some natural habitat where you've got some native species that can come in and and take advantage of the restored area?

Speaker 1

OK. So you're saying that all of these things are true, but if you really have some nice habitat close by it will. It may speed up the process. Up a lot.

Speaker 4

If you have some good source habitat nearby.

Speaker 1

Fantastic. OK. Our next question comes from Amy Johnson. She has Mason be blocks like a lot of people do and she's observing different things in those blocks in the winter. Let's, let's have a listen to our question.

Speaker 14

Hi Donny, thanks for doing the pollination show the winter I was looking in during this winter. I was looking into my Mason Bee house. But you see different things nesting in it and just managed Mason bees and I'm. Is if there could be some description about what types of things you might see nesting in cavities that we provide for bees? So I saw like little pieces of straw. And of course, there's, you know, the the packed dirt. So just curious what kind of bees? It's common to see the nest in the nest during the winter.

Speaker 1

OK, So what would we find inside these Mason bee nests?

Speaker 4

Yeah. And then, yeah, so there's a whole group of bees called mega kyote bees that often nest in these cavities, and they use all kinds of different materials depending on the species, to kind of line those nests with, including, like, flower petals. And so we actually have an extension publication called Mega Pilot Bees in the Pacific Northwest. Show some pictures of that and talk a little bit about that process.

Speaker 1

Ohh. Fantastic. We'll put the we'll link it in our show notes so that people can see it as well. And I was just gonna doctor Siegel and Dr. along Alotta. We also have the Master Gardeners. We have some extension material available for some of the diseases and parasites that you'll see in Mason Bee.

Speaker 3

Blocks. So yeah, there is a publication on Mason Bees which Andon is referring to, I think it's. Basically, managing Mason bees here in the valley, especially S Valley. So yeah, we discuss a lot of pests and diseases that Mason bees have and also how to construct your own nests and tubes. And again, people have this notion that they can just drill some holes or put some sized tubes and bees will come, but then they should understand that these native bees that you're looking for the the nesting bees are different sizes and they come in different forms. So they have to take this into account. So that's a very neat publication if they want to follow on how to manage. Osmia actually. Yeah, I think it's a publication that also deals with uh, other problems like how to clean the cocoons, uh to get rid of mites and other things.

Speaker 1

OK. And finally, I want to go over to this end of the room. So Lincoln and Andy now link, you've done a lot of sampling using these blocks. Tell us about some of the things that people will see inside and we're doing a big one here in Oregon with the Oregon be. Atlas, what do you find inside these blocks?

Speaker 7

Well, you can find all sorts of things if your Mason bee or leaf cutter bee condo has variable-sized nesting galleries, you'll attract really a huge suite of native species. They want to use the free real estate and not just bees. You'll get me some bees and leaf cutter bees and you'll get Mason bees. That cut leaves and leaf cutter bees that use masonry and you'll get little resin bees and big resin bees and you'll get grass carrying Wasps which are. Specialist hunters of arboreal crickets and you'll get Mason Wasps and you'll get all of their different kinds of parasites. You'll get cuckoo, Mason bee. There you'll get cuckoo Wasps. You'll get little tiny micro Wasps. You'll get absolutely all sorts of different things living in there. And so although a lot of people put up these Mason bee or bee hotels to attract Mason bees or leafcutter bees, really by putting up cavity nests, you can just encourage all sorts of biodiversity of things that want to live in a cavity because. Just like with many bird species, cavities are limiting nesting resources in the environment and so. If you build it, they will.

Speaker 6

Come IW would completely support what the link says and also add to it that we don't know very much about the honest-to-good quantitative Natural History of wild bees. We know that there may be dozens and dozens of species of parasites, of totally different things. Beetles, flies, Wasps, name it, other bees, but we don't know how they find the host. We don't know how the host can escape from those. Parasites. We don't know much about the. Diseases that bees have and these hotels are a wonderful way to get some of the fungi bacteria that are associated with bees. That's a whole world we know nothing about. But believe me, it's important to the bees.

Speaker 1

Thank you all for being part of the 100th episode. Really, it's such a great place to work here at OSU. We've got such great B resources and pollinator resources.

Speaker 7

Thanks to Donnie.

Speaker 5

Congratulations on your contract episode.

Speaker 1

Well, 100 episodes we made it. OK, well, I do want to tell you a little story. In conclusion. I remember when I first came up with I said ID. I just hired on here at Oregon State University and I went to Doctor Longo Allata, who's really a mentor of mine, and asked her, do you think it's a good idea to do something like a podcast? And she said definitely. If you really want to do this, you should do it and I really did want to do it. I really thought there were a lot of amazing stories out there. I knew I only knew a 10th of what's going on and this has been amazing for me. I've learned so much from my. Yes, but I also want to say that I've learned a lot from you. I'm the listener of pollination. I'm always running into you. I get emails, which I always delight in getting. I've run into you at conferences at gardening conferences, at trade shows, and I'm always inspired by all the work you're doing. So keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to it. Any suggestions for shows moving forward and onwards and upwards to pollination Episode 101? Alright, thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening. Show notes with information discussed in each episode can be found at pollinationpodcast.oregonstate.edu. We'd also love to hear from you, and there are several ways to connect the one. You can visit our website to post an episode. Specific comments suggest a future guest or to expect or ask a question that can be featured in a future episode. You can also e-mail us at the pollination podcast at oregonstate.edu. Finally, you can tweet questions or comments, or join our Facebook or Instagram communities. Just look us up at OSU Pollinator Health if you like the show, consider letting iTunes know by leaving us a review or rating. And makes us more visible, which helps others discover pollination. See you next week.