182 - Miranda Jones - The Great Oregon Squash Bee Hunt (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. You, well, that was a very busy spring. As you know, for the past month, we've been very sporadic with releasing episodes. But with this episode today, we're going to be going back to our weekly release of shows. I've got some great shows lined up for June and July.

And today we're going to be talking about something that's a lot of fun, especially if you're in Oregon. So I think many of you know some bees are specialists on squash. This was covered by Dr. Jim Cain a number of episodes ago.

And these bees were never found in Oregon until recently. Today we're going to be talking with Miranda Jones, who is in the Honors College here at Oregon State University. She's getting her major in biology and minoring in entomology. She's going to be launching a project this summer that anyone in Oregon can participate in to try and see how these bees have spread after they were first detected in southern Oregon through the state.

And so in this episode, you're going to hear some of the basic biology of these bees. But more importantly, how you can participate and contribute to this project over the course of the summer. Okay. So without further ado, let's head into the squash zucchini or pumpkin patch with Miranda Jones this week on Pollination. Okay.

Well, welcome to Pollination Miranda. Thank you so much. It's an honor.

Well, the honors are all ours because we're really excited today. We're going to be talking about a topic that's been top of my mind and a lot of people's minds for the last couple of years, these squash bees. Now, squash bees are a recent resident in Oregon. Can you tell us about the long history of these bees journeying to Oregon and what species actually is here in Oregon?

Speaker 2: Sure thing. History goes back pretty far. Starting farther back 10,000 years ago, we had wild cucumber, cucumber species developing in Mexico and some of the southern United States. These wild species were cultivated by humans around 10,000 years ago. And these wild cultivars.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So you said cucumbers. They're cute. There are so many said cucumbers. So they sound the same, but they're different. Just before we get into this history. So what is this? Cure bit.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Good curve. It's our genus that I have a hard time saying. They compose our winter and summer squashes. So typically like pumpkins and gourds that you see around Halloween. Those are winter squashes and then summer squashes are things like yellow squash and zucchini.

Speaker 1: Okay. So wind it back to 10,000 years ago, there were wild plants that in the curbit families were not pumpkins, but something that was wild and there were bees around them. Okay. Pick up the story. I'm sorry for throwing you off track. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So those are our evolutionary ancestors for the plants we have today. Then humans began cultivating these things because first of all, they made amazing containers. So originally there were wild cultivars for contained things like water, acting like water jugs. And the bees followed these wild cultivars as humans migrated around. They took these plants with them and the bees hitched along for a ride. Eventually, agriculture really started developing and we began using these plants for fruit cooking and eating.

And they started to really spread throughout the entire United States. And of course, would be agriculture we have now. We have squash farms just about everywhere. The squash bee population has spread all the way up to California. And until recently we hadn't seen a single species in Oregon. But now since 2016, we have a few official sightings of Pepinapus prunosa. What a great name. Okay. So I was thinking we need a pop filter for this interview just because of all the peasants.

Speaker 1: And we're going to say, we're going to say squash a lot in this episode. We are. Okay. So this bee, and I remember this because it was the Bee Girl organization down in Ashland. They were running a summer camp and they were in a squash patch and they saw something and it looked kind of like a honeybee, but it was flatter and faster. And then that turned out to be the first discovery. I love that kids on a trip to a farm found this thing. It's just the best story ever.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that too. I believe the kid pointed at it and said that the honeybee was squished. And that was how we discovered squash bees in Oregon.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Ms. Prunosa that honeybee is squash. Exactly. Okay. So we've got this bee. Why are you interested in this bee? What do you find most interesting about squash bees? What is it about this bee that fascinates you?

Speaker 2: Well, I think that it interests me from a research perspective just because of the fact that it was only discovered for the first time five years ago. It seems like 2016 was like a minute ago, but five years ago was the first discovery. And I think that provides a really unique opportunity to look at sort of the speed at which flying insects can spread with their host plants, especially agricultural host plants and host plants that people put in their gardens. As an insect itself, I think it's really fascinating that the squash bee depends on the squash plant not only for food like an ordinary monophagous insect mite, but it depends on it for shelter, for finding and locating mates.

The females even use the pollen to feed their young and their nests. So it's really fascinating to me. This like co-evolutionary history is really deep. And the symbiosis is very strong.

Speaker 1: I could just imagine. Super cool. As I could just imagine, just the way that you put that, there's these bees that found a squash patch in Ashland, and now they're sending out their scout. The next generation is like, maybe there's squash over that horizon. And they're kind of looking around the landscape, looking for these patches of pumpkin squash zucchinis. And they're kind of like going up, going north. They're heading north.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. They're going to go crazy when they find a pumpkin patch.

Speaker 1: Well, I guess this is one of the reasons I want to have you on the show. You're doing this really great project. And let's say, you're listening to this episode and you're zucchinis. We were just out at a farm right now and we saw some zucchini flowers. So let's say people wanted to spot these bees in their garden. How do they detect them? How can they see these things?

Speaker 2: So my recommendation, of course, yes, my recommendation as a morning person is to go out at about 10 am, maybe a little bit earlier if you live somewhere pretty arid and hot. And you'll want to go out and start looking at squash flowers. The reason you want to go out early is that when they wake up in the morning, they have to spend a while warming up their bodies so that their flight muscles can work. They'll usually be vibrating in their nests for a little while, it's warming up. And it just so happens that squash bees are pretty efficient at doing this. They'll generally get out and start forging a little earlier than honey bees will. And this is really important because as we talked about with the discovery of the squash bees, they're easy to mix up between the two. So it's really good if you can provide yourself an opportunity to go to your squash flowers at a time when there won't be honey bees because that'll tell you that there's probably a squash bee right there.

Speaker 1: Oh, so if you go early before the honey bees kind of get out, then you know if a bee is there, that's like a good sign that it is a squash bee.

I remember we were talking about this. Recently these bees, don't need much light in fact. They'll start forging very, very early. And I imagine with a squash plant, they want to get to the buffet first.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I think they just really depend on the squash. They don't need sunlight. They don't need anything.

Speaker 1: Well, now we're ready to go. And I always think about anything in that family will then close up. Like the flowers don't stay open all day. So are you after that point, is there no, is your squash bee hunting done?

Speaker 2: Definitely, if you're not a morning person, you don't have to make sure you get to your garden before your squash plant flowers close. You can certainly go out after they've closed. The only negative to that is that you have to open the flowers. It's not very difficult to do. It's quite like opening a banana to be gentle. And squash bees will actually use that flower as shelter to sleep in during the hottest parts of the day and the night.

So, yeah. So these are the male squash bees. The females have nests off-site, but the males will stay in the squash flowers all night long. So this is a great way to see squash bees again because honey bees do not do this.

They're using social. They return to their colonies and their hives. So the only bees you're going to find in a squash flower that's closed that have that similar morphology to honey bees are going to be squash bees.

Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool. So like, the flowers close, and then I guess the males are going to hunker down the females gone back to her nest somewhere in the ground. And so you peel this thing back like a banana. And if you see the bees in there, you're a little buzz. I guess it goes without saying for our listeners who may not know that a male bee doesn't have a stinger. So even if they kind of buzz, you don't have to freak out.

We watched a YouTube video the other day of some person who discovered this. They were like, there's bees in my squash flowers. What's going on? And they buzz and he freaked out because he was holding his iPhone and had a squash plant. And it's like, peel the back of the. But you don't have to freak out.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if anyone's freaking out, it'll be the bees in that situation. You really don't have to worry about it yourself. They're just going to fly away if they fly away at all. Yeah, they're not aggressive. They're just they're tired and they're confused. So feel free to open your squash flowers and see what's in there. It's absolutely a treasure trove, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: Okay, well, so you're really interested in these bees because of this idea, just tracking a bee that's kind of dispersing through a state, trying to figure out the rate of doing that. So you're doing this, you're doing a project this summer to sort of see where the bees are because I think we only have a couple of, we know they're down in southern Oregon.

And I think there have been some detections south of Corvallis, but sporadic. How can people, some personal listening to this episode, help us build a picture of where these bees are in the state?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you're an Oregonian and you have any sort of camera, and you've seen a squash plant, you can help. Our goal is just to get a lot of photographic data of possible squash bee sightings.

So if you have your own garden or your own farm, or you have friends who have squash plants in their gardens, just take a look at some squash flowers and take some photos of whatever you've got inside. If they're honey bees, that's okay. If they're bumble bees, that's fine. But we do want to get some squash bee sightings. And we have a survey that you can link right into and just upload those photos. And we can have professional bee taxonomists look at it and identify your bees.

Speaker 1: Okay, that's great. So there's you go through and there's also a training video, I think, where it's going to be up on this page, which is at, I guess, Oregon be Atlas. If you go to Oregon be Atlas.org. At the top, there's a little thing you press called squash bee survey. And in that, you'll find the link to how to upload your images, but also a training video that you just finished.

Speaker 2: Yes, training video out in the hot sun. It was a very fun time.

Speaker 1: Okay, so people are going to do this. And so, you know, let's say, you know, they're people are doing this. So they've got this these bees, they've gone in the morning and they made their cup of coffee and they got out got up early and they see these bees flying in out. Yeah, how do you take a picture of a flying bee? Like, what's what's the best way to do this?

Speaker 2: I would definitely not suggest taking a picture of flying the wait till they settle down. They will be feeding in these flowers for upwards of a minute. Sometimes they'll really be digging in there. There are tons of nectar pooled at the bottom of this large flower.

And they will be just sucking it up. So just if you don't see any pollinators stopping in your flowers, just stop at a flower and wait for a minute. See if anything arrives. And if you've got lots of bugs in your flowers, just go and check out what's in there. There are things that look like bees. Take some pictures. There's no need to stress yourself out trying to chase bees around looking in the flowers will be perfectly sufficient. There should be plenty of things going on in there.

Speaker 1: And I guess in the survey we were the survey, even if you don't know if it's a if it's a squash beer or not, that's totally fine. But I guess you can also. We want you to guess, I suppose, like, is it do you think it's a squash beer or not so you can your level of confidence. I guess you can put in a little little survey.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. On the survey, there's like a question questionnaire where you can sort of write your confidence of whether is this a squash bee or is this not a squash bee. And it's absolutely fine if you just want to take a wild guess and say, yes, I'm pretty sure this is a squash bee. There are tons of pictures online. You can compare your pictures to other people's pictures. But don't worry too much about getting exactly the right bee. We'll be happy to see whatever you have.

Speaker 1: And so at the end of the year, will you accept payment for zucchini?

Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: All right, folks, so grow your zucchinis and keep your eyes on them and your squash and your pumpkin pumpkins. And I guess what the burning question is, like, what happens at the end. So like, how are people you kind of participate in this thing? Like, how are you how are you going to know the answer to where the squash is as well? What's the what's the one will people know how things turned out? And if they have squash bees.

Speaker 2: For sure. I want to let everyone know as soon as possible if we think their squash is truly a squash bee. We want to coordinate with people because the best scientific data for this type of thing is a physical specimen that can be identified.

So if you have some really good squash bee sightings at your plot of squash, we will probably try and coordinate with you via email to have a master melatologist volunteer come out and gather some physical specimens to have our taxonomist look at. Fantastic.

Speaker 1: Well, this sounds really exciting. And I have my little zucchini plant in an in an in Scott, you know, starting to come up. So it's this is timely. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what you find out and maybe we'll have you back on the show in the fall. And you can give us the answer of like where the squash bee is. How far it's traveled.

Speaker 2: I'm so excited to see what's going on in Oregon.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Miranda, and good luck with your research. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. The show is produced by Quinn Sinaniel, who's a student here at OSU in the new media communications program. The show wouldn't even be possible without the support of the Oregon legislature, the foundation for food and agricultural research in Western Sarah show notes with links mentioned on each episode are available on the website, which is at pollinationpodcast. organstate .edu.

I also love hearing from you and there are 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.