127 – Kirsten Traynor – 2 Million Blossoms (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, Dr. Adoni Melopoulos, assistant professor in pollinator health in the Department of Horticulture. As frequent listeners of the show know, pollinators are a huge slice of life.

There's a lot of different creatures that live in that little term, pollinators, and understanding the variety of life histories they have, but also what can be done to help them in a practical way is complicated and confusing. My next guest is interested in helping you navigate that labyrinth. Kirsten Treanor is the editor of a brand-new journal launched in January of this year called Two Million Blossoms. Many of you may know Kirsten. She is an accomplished bee scientist, but she also is the former editor of two Honeybee magazines, Bee World and American Bee Journal. Two Million Blossoms is a different kind of magazine, although it has that same approachable format where you can read short or long articles geared towards a non-technical audience. It really focuses on the broad range of pollinators.

So, you're going to hear a little bit about this first issue, the kind of philosophy behind the magazine, and also what's coming up in future issues. Also, just a reminder, Bee Vent is coming up. Bee Vent put on by the Lynn County Master Gardeners, March 7th. Tickets are selling briskly. Olivia Messenger Carroll is going to be the keynote speaker. You do not want to miss this Bee Vent.

Anyways, tickets are on sale, and you'll see the link in the show notes or by going to OSU Extension and just typing into the search engine, Bee Vent. Hope you enjoy the episode. Okay, Dr. Trainer, welcome to PolyMation.

Thank you so much for having me. I was so excited to see in January a brand-new publication, Two Million Blossoms being launched. This has got to be no small undertaking. Tell us a little bit about where this idea for launching a brand-new magazine came from.

Speaker 2: Sure, I'd be happy to. So, I had previously edited both Bee World, which is a quarterly magazine published by the International Bee Research Association, and then American Bee Journal. Both of those are previously established publications, and so they came with some built-in restraints on the sort of what their audience was looking for, how they were published as to what kind of materials you could solicit. And I really wanted to create something new and bold, something that you could leave on your coffee table so that when guests visited with zero interest in pollinators, they couldn't help but pick it up and start browsing. So, the magazine is really intended to be a conversation starter, a place where you go to learn about the vast diversity of pollinators. But it's also a place for dialogue and discussion where you can explore the gray areas together.

The media paints so many things as black and white, but often the truth lies in the nuances in between. And so, this was really launched on a whiteboard while I was a fellow in Germany at the Messenschraftskolleg in Berlin. And I started writing up ideas and reaching out to authors. And the first issue came together quite beautifully. So, I've been very pleased with all the article submissions and the responses I'm getting from readers.

Speaker 1: Well, you know, I was just thinking about those two, you know, those two magazines, well, our journals, B World and American Bee Journal. And these are, these are publications that go back to the 19th century. This is a different moment. Correct.

Speaker 2: Yes, they, American Bee Journal is actually the third oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. And B World was started actually in the early 1920s or 30s. I can't remember now off the top of my head. And they have a long history and a lovely tradition, and they are wonderful publications for what they are. I just think that with the diversity of people coming into beekeeping, it has changed quite dramatically. And also, there are a lot of people who want to protect bees, but not necessarily become beekeepers.

And there really is no publication for them. So, the idea was to galvanize that enthusiasm for saving the bees and create something that's informative and inspiring for the next generation coming up.

Speaker 1: Well, I was had the people can go online and they can look at some excerpts from the first, the first issue. And one thing, the guest editorial was penned by Dr. Mark Winston. And he points out that in his own lifetime, you know, he began, he started honeybee research, but, you know, has adopted a more expansive view of pollinators very much in the spirit of the journal. Tell us a little bit about his editorial and how this really sets up the mission for two million blossoms. Sure.

Speaker 2: It's actually quite funny. His editorial fell in my lap. He submitted it completely out of the blue when he learned about the magazine. Really? Yes. I did. I did not reach out to Mark. Mark reached out to me.

And it was just a beautiful contribution that reflects a lot of the points that I wanted to make with this magazine. Often, we're just like in our politics, we've become very divided and unable to talk with one another. The same often happens with beekeepers and native pollinator enthusiasts being pitted against one another. In large part, that is just because we don't have enough habitat. If we still had enough rich floral habitat, we wouldn't be having these conversations because there would be enough for everyone. So, I fully agree that there's a growing movement of pollinator enthusiasts. And if we work together, we can achieve much greater things. Things like protecting our wild places and making our yards and balconies just more hospitable to pollinators in general. A part of what I want to do with this magazine is also raise awareness for our insect diversity and that they're really the foundation of our food chain.

And we are losing them at an incredible rate. When you have day to day conversations with people, when I tell them I work with bees, they're always super excited and they want to learn more. And a lot of people would love to change habits in their own private yards.

They just don't know what to do. And so, the idea of this magazine is it's a place to sort of get that information. And it's also for people who engage in a lot of outreaches. So, they have talking points when they bump up against people who want to help, but just don't know how.

Speaker 1: You know, it's really remarkable having sort of been in the bee world since the early nineties, just watching the changes that have taken place. It used to be centered around bee clubs, at least in North America, probably in parts of Europe as well, where you would have people from all walks of life get together and they would really focus on one species. But it seems like the magazine in some ways is responding to a new audience. These are people who have no, you know, might not necessarily be interested in, you know, becoming qualified beekeepers, going through all the wonderful skills that you can learn as a beekeeper, but have, you know, maybe even a broader section of society in some ways is a broader group of people that are kind of interested in bees now. Exactly.

Speaker 2: And that's sort of the audience we're trying to capture with this. I really hope that over time it becomes a publication for gardeners, for people who are just interested in sustainability, for people who have heard that bees and butterflies are in trouble and want to do more that they can help. It's really intended as sort of a coffee table like magazine where you don't have to read it cover to cover.

You can have just whatever catches your eye. That's what you start reading about. So that was the goal. It's too, and even beekeepers themselves, I think, are really broadening their perspective. A lot of them get into beekeeping because it's their first window into a world of pollinators. And once they're in, they then realize that we have this vast diversity of 20,000 bees that they didn't even know existed. So, I think honeybees can be a gateway to open up that whole world for the appreciation of our insect biodiversity.

Speaker 1: You know, the other thing, there's a couple of things that you mentioned. The one was building up skills and people just want to know what to do. But the other thing that you mentioned about the magazine, and it's in your editorial in the first issue, is dialogue. That there is this siloing effect that seems to have taken place in some circumstances where people don't see things as sort of a connected set of issues. Could you talk a little bit more about your experience of that and sort of how you hoped the magazine would enable that discussion to actually happen productively?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, a lot of times we end up in camps. For example, I do a lot of work now on pesticides. And, you know, there are very staunch people who believe neonics are the worst possible things to ever come along. The research results are often much more nuanced.

They seem to impact other bees much more than honeybees. And it's very difficult sometimes to even have those conversations because people are so wedded to their beliefs. So, I want the magazine to be a place where we can talk about the nuanced gray, the shades of gray. For example, in my next issue there is going to be a piece by both Dave Goulson and Kim Floatham, where they talk about advances in technology to replace these with robotic pollination. And one of them has the view that why bother nature? Nature has already perfected it. We need to protect what we have. Whereas the other view is, well, what advances have we made?

And can we ease off some of the burdens that we're putting on our bees and fulfill those through drone pollination, for example? And I think it's when we take the time to listen to both sides, and they're not really even sides. They're just different viewpoints on the same topic. We can learn from one another.

I mean, in this country, we used to pride ourselves on being able to work across the aisle. What I love about beekeeping is that you get people from all political spectrums, all walks of life, all different educational backgrounds. And you come because you all have an interest in this little insect that will sting you if you don't watch out.

Right? And so, it's really, I think in general, beekeepers tend to be open to ideas and be enthusiastic as well. And it's trying to find places where we have commonalities. And even if we don't agree with one another, can we at least listen to one other and hear what that person is saying without automatically tuning it out?

Speaker 1: I love that idea. So that not only when you pick up an issue of two million blossoms, we get some really good ideas on practical things to do, but you'll get a sense of different perspectives, helping you sort of round out to have a better sense of the discussions and maybe points of disagreement, really kind of clarifying them out for you as a responsible bee advocate, I guess. You need both those things. You need to know the terms of the debate, but you also need to know what to do.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I mean, I was an English major who became a scientist, and I think it's really the background of then learning the scientific way of approaching problems and that we build on the work of others and that, you know, things can be correct under certain circumstances, but not others. For example, when I was doing my PhD, I ran trials that were cage trials, right?

And I got a very strong result. And then you go and do the same work in nucleus colonies, and you get a different result because the circumstances that the bees are in have changed, right? And so, it's the nuances of that that I find so fascinating. And that is what the magazine is trying to capture. It's that there are many, many factors influencing our understanding of pollinator health. And the more we can learn and the more we can talk with one another, the more we can help protect the insects that are feeding us.

Speaker 1: You're here. Well, let's take a quick break. We'll come back and want to ask you some questions about just how the magazine looks, which is stunning and some of what's in this issue and what's going to be in forthcoming issues. Sure, it sounds good. Okay. Well, we're back and let's dive into that first issue. The first issue came out in January. Tell us about some of the articles in it and how it sort of aligns with this, you know, this grand revision for dialogue and sort of practical engagement.

Speaker 2: So, there's 17 articles in the first issue and it really is a smorgasbord of material. My biggest cue is that I was able to get naturalist Craig Childs to write the magazine.

I absolutely love his books. It's called The Secret Knowledge of Water. And in the very first few pages, he talks about chasing bees into a desert to a secret water source in an area he did not expect to find water.

It's a very short section in the book. And so, I reached out to him. I found him on Facebook of all places, and I asked him if he would be willing to expand on that scene for this new magazine I was launching.

He agreed to my great surprise, and he turned into a beautiful piece. In that piece, he mentions research done by Tom Seely's lab. And so, I decided to reach out to Tom Seely's lab. I sent them the Craig Childs article and I asked them if they would be willing to write a companion piece on the original research on honeybees foraging for water. They put me in touch with the first author, Madeline Oswald, who happens to be at Arizona State University, which is where I currently am. So, we actually met up for coffee and she put together a lovely companion piece. Other articles in the issue include miles of monarchs, which is Sarah Dykman on her migratory. She follows the migratory route of monarchs by bicycle, all 10,200 miles. Really? She makes 10. I'm sorry. Really?

Speaker 1: On bicycle? Yes.

Speaker 2: Always by bicycle. She loaded down a beater of a bike and she was on the bike for months at a time. She started down in Mexico when the monarchs were leaving their winter migration spot, and she lost them right away.

And it really wasn't until she got all the way into Texas that she started spotting them again. It's a beautiful piece. And so that was a lovely find. I had actually read a small article of hers in a Ryan magazine. So, I tracked her down online, reached out to her and we worked and shopped this piece back and forth.

She's actually working on a full-length book now about that bicycle journey. Then I have a lot of gardening articles. One is by Dave Goulton on planting for pollinators where he covers sort of what types of flowers you shouldn't plant in your garden to attract pollinators. Kim Plotum, the former editor of B-Culture, has a on what happens when you don't take care of your pollinator patch and you run into angry homeowner associations. And then I have a lovely piece by Amy Yarger who's a horticulturist on adding structure to pollinator gardens and how we need to think more like our pollinators when we're putting our habitat together. There's a great piece by Kit Prendergast on building bee hotels and what to do if you want to attract native bees to your garden and how a lot of the ones that are sold commercially are not ideally constructed.

There's just a smattering of different pieces. I do have two articles by Rusty Burlou of Honeybee Suite. She's a regular columnist for the magazine. She has one column called Beyond the High where she talks about ethical beekeeping and some of those shades of gray that beekeepers have to face and make decisions about. And it starts out with a wonderful story about a beekeeper drilling holes into a giant bag of clover seed and cycling through cemeteries. So that his bees will have plenty of food. It can have to admire ingenuity and at the same time you sort of wonder does he really has the right to plant on other people's property. So yeah,yeah,it's a great mix of articles.

I think everybody will find something. Some of them are more scientific. A lot of them are written in a very light easy friendly tone. I try to work with authors so that they avoid jargon and that their pieces become something that hooks you right from the start and doesn't let you go until the end.

Speaker 1: Well, you know I would say this is a real trick in an art and I guess as being somebody who is both has a background in English literature I imagine right? Yes. And also, just being a very accomplished bee scientist that you're in a really great position to curate and put together and sort of coach your writers in terms of the sensibility of you know science writing that is that can really attract people pull them in.

Speaker 2: I hope so. I'm never quite sure I will do it well enough. I'm probably in some ways a better editor than a writer but yes, I was an English major with a creative writing emphasis when I was in college as an undergrad and then I won my first hive in a raffle not the bees just the box and so it has changed my career. I ended up earning a PhD then in bee science and I've always straddled both worlds even while I was doing my research on honey bees I would take classes at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism so I could improve science writing and I actually petitioned the National Association of Science Writer that their fellowship for students should be open to scientists and they agreed. So yeah, storytelling humans are storytellers by and far. We remember things via story, we even remember memories that don't make sense, we rewrite them into stories so that they do make sense to us and the best way we can transfer information is when we put it in the framework of a story that really engages us. So, I try to whenever writers pitch me, I say that sounds like a great idea but please transport our readers into the field where you're working let them smell and walk the meadow with you.

How do we get it so that we sense exactly what you're sensing? The more alive the pieces the more interesting it becomes, and you can work a lot of science and detail and information into a good story, and we will remember it better.

Speaker 1: That's fantastic and I will also say that the magazine itself looks stunning so you it really does have a sensibility to it has a look and aesthetic tell us a little bit about what an issue looks like.

Speaker 2: Sure, it's really like a crossover between a book a book and a magazine it's printed on heavy stock because I wanted it to have a bit of weight in people's hand and look some like something that's valuable and collectible so that subscribers would leave it out on their coffee table just as a conversation starter. I was recently called the Vanity Fair of Pollinator magazine in a review. I have to admit I may end up getting that printed on a T-shirt because I like it.

That's great. So, it is printed on sustainably sourced paper in a printing bioprinting company that's in Missouri that uses wind power biodegradable inks. I've created it as sustainably as possible but as a person who grew up loving books and the tactile touch in my hand it was very important for me to do a print issue as well as the digital. It's designed to look and catch your eyes so that when you're browsing through it some image will spark some interest and you'll start reading. It's not really intended to be read cover to cover, it's sort of whatever appeals to you in that moment where you sit down. It's a combination of both short form and long form articles and that again is on purpose so that you know if you just have a couple of coffee in the morning and you want five minutes of reading there's a short piece in there somewhere that'll work and then I also feature photographs very large in part because evolutionary adaptations of our pollinators are amazing they're stunning when we see them up close and so there's a big focus on high quality photography and also on custom artwork so I worked with an artist both to design the first cover and some of the custom artwork that is for my regular columnist.

Speaker 1: Right the cover has its illustrated. This is correct.

Speaker 2: It's a deity in globe Cicero with a bumblebee on the front yes, the next issue my next issue will have a photograph on it but it's an absolutely beautiful image that was shot in a cloud forest in Costa Rica.

Speaker 1: Well, I guess tell us a little bit about this next issue and what we have in store for us this issue and coming up this year.

Speaker 2: It's yes it'll be out in April it's still a work in progress I'm still editing the articles that are going into it but we're going to have a piece on meat eating vulture bees which I didn't know existed and just the idea of those words all phrased together just makes me tingle a little queasy but I'm super excited.

Speaker 1: Wait wait you can't just drop meat eating vulture bee where are these things in Costa Rica.

Speaker 2: Really so yes and then there'll be a small companion piece to the cover on I don't want to give the cover away yet but on a pollinator in Costa Rica in the cloud forest and then I have a Rusty Burlew for Beyond the Hive her column she talks about all the different ways bees carry pollen. I learned a lot reading it more terminology than I would normally stick in my head, but she did a lovely job of making it very interesting and that diversity she relates it back to humans as well as she always does so that readers can relate love quite beautifully. As I mentioned before Dave Bulletin and Kim Flotem have two companion pieces in robotics for pollination and then we'll also have a piece on hoverflies.

I did not know that hoverflies can swarm and up to four million individuals have been tracked using radar technology so it's again part of the joy of this magazine is I come from honeybee research and its opening my eyes to all the other pollinator diversity and I learned something with every issue I put together as I hope the readers will too.

Speaker 1: Alright so how do you get one? How do you get two million blossoms? So, there's a website and we'll link that in the show notes.

Speaker 2: Yes, you can subscribe right online through twomillionblossoms.com within the United States the print edition its quarterly magazine is $35, and the digital edition is $20. We also have international for international mailing it's the same magazine it's just more expensive to ship internationally. The very first issue I'm also offering as a one-off if people just want to see that first issue is jam-packed with an amazing lineup of authors. The website does give you an option to browse the table of contents and both my editorial and Mark Winston's to sort of give your insight into the issue.

Speaker 1: I have to say I've got a stack of magazines I love, B magazines in particular. Mike Berget has bequeathed me his decades of B magazines and I have them here and I just as you described a B magazine is way nicer than looking on your tablet.

You're sitting for lunch you can pop it out and you can read this crazy little art. Actually, I remember there was the Hasn't Bee worlds here with articles by you in it as well. But the other thing I love about magazines I remember when I was up at the Beaver Lodge research farm there were the magazines that go all the way back to the 20s and so having a collection of magazines just is this great way of kind of like peering back in time and getting these diverse stories. I'm really looking forward to holding one of these magazines in my hand. I'll be getting my subscription here pretty soon.

Speaker 2: Oh, very cool. Yeah, people so far seem to have loved it. They are shipped with a sticker on the front with your mailing address because I didn't want to wrap it in plastic. However, that sticker is removable so you can pull it off. Oh good. So, it doesn't tarnish your front cover.

Speaker 1: Fantastic. Well let's take another break and then I got three questions to ask all my guests. I'm going to subject you to these questions now. Well very cool in a minute. Here we go. Okay we're back. So, the very first question I'm really curious about your answer because I have a sense that you are a real connoisseur for writing about pollinators. Is there a book that you'd like to recommend to our listeners?

Speaker 2: I am but I'm going to cheat. There's two instead of just one.

Speaker 1: Not the first one to do that.

Speaker 2: Yeah so, the book that I would say early on when I was first getting into beekeeping that just touched a nerve is A Book of Bees by Sue Hubble. It's just a wonderful adventure of her time in the Adirondacks after she left her husband and was running 400 colonies commercially on her own. And it has that perfect blend of humor, scientific information and just an appreciation of nature. I wish all my authors wrote like her. It's just a stunning honesty. And the other one who does that extraordinarily well too is Dave Goulson and A Sting in the Tale. It gave me a newfound appreciation for bumblebees. It has that trademark British wit that they have a way of describing things that is just so on point. Those are my two favorites.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great book as well. I have not read the Sue Hubble book and I but now I'm going to, but I remember reading Dr. Goulson's book, and it was just great. It had images of his childhood, had lots of historical anecdotes. It was a real kind of but written in a great style.

Speaker 2: I fully concur. I'm a little jealous of this childhood. I can't imagine by growing up in the English countryside like that, but it sounds like a laugh.

Speaker 1: Okay our next question is do you have a go-to tool for the kind of work you do, or which sounds like a lot of different things that you do.

Speaker 2: So yes, as an editor for a magazine my go-to tool is actually social media. It's where I find potential stories and new authors and incredible photographers, and I will just on a regular basis try to make a point of reaching out to one or two every week so that I'm constantly getting new. I get a chance to work with new people. It's a great excuse also to start a conversation with somebody where I just want to learn more about what they what they're doing.

Speaker 1: Well, it really bears out you really do have a wide range of people. It's quite remarkable the depth in this first issue of people. Not only are they not all scientists, but they're also not all peers. There you've got a range of people right across the spectrum.

Speaker 2: Yes, and that's part of the point right. We all, I mean Sarah Dykeman, just wanted to learn more about monarchs and decided to follow the entire route by bicycle. She has no background in cycling or in monarchs but she's now become a huge advocate for them and so yes I love those kinds of stories and the serendipity of who you bump into and then you learn something new and we ended up working together and I came up with a title Miles of Monarchs which she may end up using for her book so it's just been fun.

Speaker 1: Okay the last question is do you have a pollinator species? It must be hard to ask the editor of Two Million Blossoms if there is a pollinator species that you have a particular affection for, but I can I have to ask you anyways.

Speaker 2: So yeah, I was I it's tough. I mean the one I know best is of course Apis Malipra and I do love working in a colony of bees. That's because when you're working a hive of stinging insects bare-handed you have to forget your ever-growing never-ending to-do list and just focus on the task at hand but if I were to pick one favorite pollinator it's actually one, I've never seen. I would love to. It's Bombus Dalbumi known as the flying mouse. It's the world's largest bumblebee and its near extinction most likely due to globalization and us importing other bombas species into South America and I really hope I get to see it before it wings out of existence.

Speaker 1: Let me do that too. That's a great bumblebee to highlight. Thank you so much for taking the time. We're really looking forward to the issue in April and good luck with everything. Good luck with this venture.

Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a blast.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. The show is produced by Quinn Sinanil who's a student here at OSU in the New Media Communications Program and the show wouldn't even be possible without the support of the Oregon Legislature, the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research in Western Sarra. Show notes with links mentioned on each episode are available on the website which is at pollinationpodcast.oregonstate.edu.

I also love hearing from you and there's several ways to connect with me. The first one is you can visit the website and leave an episode specific comment. You can suggest a future guest or topic or ask a question that could be featured in a future episode, but you can do the same things on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook by visiting the Oregon Bee Project. Thanks so much for listening and see you next week.