209 - Burgett - Working together in the PNW (in English)

[00:00:00] Andony Melathopoulos: One of the things that makes the Pacific Northwest region very unique is the degree of cooperation that takes place at multiple levels around bee health. This is of course happens at the research level, but also to extension the organizations that work for bee health but also just the, beekeepers and be enthusiasts around the region.

[00:00:20] Typically work together. I first became aware of this when I did my master's research under Dr. Mark Winston at Simon Fraser university in British Columbia. And there was already a dense network in place between BC, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, but also California. In this episode, we're going to learn of the origins of that network from Dr.

[00:00:40] Mike Bergen. Now he's an emeritus professor at Oregon state university. He's been on the show a number of times in the past Dr. Bergen was part of the creation of that network. He was in the middle of of it as it came about. And so we're going to go back to the 1980s, a period when.

[00:00:58] Growers didn't really use honeybees for crop pollination, nearly the extent that they do now, there really wasn't an extension network to help beginning beekeepers who are taking up beekeeping as a hobby, but also there was the start of a kind of regional approach to bees and pesticides that only has matured over time.

[00:01:18] So that further ado let's talk to Dr. Mike Birgit this week on pollination.

[00:01:28] All right. I am pleased to welcome back for the third time. The pollination Dr. Mike Birgit.

[00:01:35] Mike Burgett: Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anthony.

[00:01:38] Andony Melathopoulos: The other day, you and I were moving. From Corvallis to the north Willamette research and extension center. And we got talking about the history of cooperative research and extension in the west and the Pacific Northwest, but also.

[00:01:52] Fornia. And I thought this would be a good occasion. As I envisioned, there's a lot of changes happening in the region to revisit what what was here before. And so I guess one of the things that I want to talk about is when you were hired in 1984, what was the situation.

[00:02:09] What did the landscape of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia look like

[00:02:17] Mike Burgett: with my higher in 1974, it had been many years since a dedicated agriculture's was on the. So mine was in essence, a new position. And the state of Washington at Pullman at WSU was Dr. Karl Johanson and Carl had been there since the early 1950s, or if not mid 1950s, but Carlos program concentrated on a hundred.

[00:02:52] Pesticide mortalities as well as working with leafcutter bees. So Carl had a world recognized programming in B toxicology. David's consisted of the B lab with. Three research teaching positions plus a full-time extension. Agriculture's

[00:03:14] Andony Melathopoulos: oh, so the real center, at least before you were hired was Davis.

[00:03:18] Yes. That was where everything was happening.

[00:03:20] Mike Burgett: Okay. But between Oregon, Washington, Idaho, with the extension servers, This realization that because we are in the Pacific Northwest and our geographic and climatic similarities between the three states, we had this joint extension publication system called PMWC, where it was not necessary for the state of Oregon to write a bulletin on how to keep bees in a separate bulletin for Washington and night.

[00:03:56] Andony Melathopoulos: 'cause it w it makes sense that the region is, so why do you need to write a beginning beekeeping manual for three states, whether it be keeping a similar across all three states?

[00:04:05] Mike Burgett: So when I first came here, I connected with Karl Johanson and Carl and I over the years. Series of PNW publications on tree fruit, pollination evaluating bee colonies for pollination any number of things.

[00:04:25] And it was a nice, strong relationship. We had no formal relationship with British Columbia, but. For, we would often have, and Carl started this and he, and I continued that we had what we called it in every other year P and WB school. Ah, and it would S you know, every four years it was at OSU and the next two years, it was at WSU.

[00:04:51] And you look back here and it was, it was a hundred percent extension activity and we would invite. The relevant people from the state of California, Eric Musson for example, is the extension

[00:05:01] Andony Melathopoulos: eight, because he was also hired about the same time as yourself, shortly

[00:05:04] Mike Burgett: thereafter in the mid seventies.

[00:05:06] And we would frequently involve BC people John coroner, Doug McCutcheon. So again, it was in recognition. BC is so similar, that is part of the Pacific Northwest, let's re let's remove that Canadian border and just look at it from an environmental point of view and from a beekeeping point of view.

[00:05:27] So there were informal collaboration. The regulatory and a mother, April culture, people in British

[00:05:34] Andony Melathopoulos: Columbia. Yeah. But let me get this straight, the anchor where these kinds of alternating meetings, these B schools between Washington, ah,

[00:05:41] Mike Burgett: and they were separate from the, the annual Washington and Oregon would occasionally have joint state meetings of their beekeeping.

[00:05:51] And I

[00:05:51] Andony Melathopoulos: would hear about these, like at hood river, you would meet

[00:05:55] Mike Burgett: and they were against. From the P and WP school at Carla. And I maintained after a period of time, Carla and I just looked at budgets, we looked a lot of things and we decided, okay, we stopped it. And then WSB and OSBA solid wisdom in it and began having joint meetings.

[00:06:15] There was always. There has always been this collaborative feeling between the two states and three, excuse me, three states. I'd always interesting because at the time, and I think it's probably still a case they possessed the most. The highest number of honey bee colonies. Washington was number two in Oregon was number three, but Idaho never had a dedicated agriculturist at an academic level.

[00:06:43] We would involve people in the department of entomology and receive IO in terms of when we would write these joint bulletins. That's for their input in terms of editing, because I, again, the PNW series is Oregon Washington and I got

[00:07:01] Andony Melathopoulos: all right. So a couple things I just want to pick up on the first one is that the.

[00:07:05] The other, higher of the time is the, my mentor and master supervisor, mark Winston, who showed up in must've been about the same time he was hired at Simon Fraser university was sometime in the eighties. Correct. Had to be. And so there suddenly was a position WSU position at Simon Fraser.

[00:07:27] There was Eric Musson. And your position and it one of the things that you've mentioned to me is one way that this group collaborated was what was newly formed at the time and still exists. The Western AICPA cultural society

[00:07:39] Mike Burgett: meeting. Dr. Norm Gary at UC Davis was if you want to say the father of WOS was, and he, along with Eric our first meeting of WOS was in 78.

[00:07:53] At Davis, the second meeting was 79 was here at OSU on the OSU campus. And then mark Winston's program, Simon Frazier got involved. I'm not exactly sure how many was meetings took place up there, but for quite a lengthy period of time, I was in charge of finding next year's venue. It was distinctly remember going to mark and saying, Hey mark, how about we have WOS?

[00:08:19] It'd be C and Mark's graciously said, absolutely so and put on a great meeting there, but the Western Cape code society. No, I

[00:08:32] covered the Western us, but the largest number of participants would probably be California. And in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, BC was involved. Nevada was involved. It was originally the meetings. Hold on a college campus, but logistics that all came to a place. I remember when California was hosting one year and Eric Munson was the president.

[00:08:59] We actually had it at a private venue, but was great. It was this. For non-commercial beekeepers. And it was a way that brought science, the beekeeping, the extension aspects of beekeeping into a four-day focus every year. And it

[00:09:19] Andony Melathopoulos: was, and I guess one can't underestimate, it's hard to imagine, but I experienced at least the there was the memory of it.

[00:09:25] At least when I came on the scene in the night, Of the seventies, explosion of interest in beekeeping, there was a hobby beekeeping explosion akin to what we experienced over the last decade and the seventh. Yes.

[00:09:39] Mike Burgett: I've been involved with bees now from my God date it from my first day, I walked into grad school at Cornell and in Roger Morris, his program, which is 1969, but I've seen.

[00:09:51] Major pendulum swings in terms of the popularity of ABI beekeeping in certainly the last decade with the definition of colony collapse disorder in a much greater awareness on. When the lay public of the importance of these and food production that they probably beekeeping is exploded. And I think when I came to Oregon, there were perhaps five local bee associations in the state.

[00:10:22] And I think right now, I like 12. So I'm delighted to see that delighted to see that my program, when I first came was initially a hundred percent research and teaching and there was no extension component, but always shoe college of agriculture administration recognized that extension. A vital component.

[00:10:45] So I worked my program for my God. Something like 20 years with a memorandum of understanding that half of my research time has to be dedicated to extension activities.

[00:11:01] Andony Melathopoulos: I suppose this is a bit of a shift. And when it comes to thinking, the changes. And research the reorientation in the eighties.

[00:11:09] I was, I had worked in Alberta where it was primarily at the time of commercial beekeeping industry. And there was, the researchers in extension and I imagined Minnesota as well. Bazell for gala. And some of those figures were dealing with a commercial industry, but I guess what comes up in the eighties is the kind of a split duty for extension.

[00:11:31] There's a large company. Focusing on people who want to get into beekeeping as a hobby. That's a new phenomenon.

[00:11:39] Mike Burgett: Yeah. It's interesting. When you, if we use Oregon as a paradigm, I think something like 75 to 80% of all honeybee colonies are owned by 15 people, the commercial beekeeping cadre, whereas the uncounted hundreds of.

[00:11:59] Who are the hobby or non-commercial people? The noncommercial beekeeping audience tends to envelop often 80% of an extension person's time. Interesting. Another also in Oregon. It's a commercial versus hobby. Beekeeping is often geographically delineated by the fact that not so much the case now, but it used to be that the majority of commercial beekeepers were east of the cascade Ridge.

[00:12:36] And the same would be true in the state of Washington also. So the majority of your home. Keepers or on the west, as we determine the west side. And that's where most of the extension activities took place in terms of interacting with local bee associations, interacting with the state B associations

[00:12:57] for a number of years, I jokingly said that the Oregon say be it association could actually be called the Willamette valley beekeepers association. The concentration of the population, hence the beekeepers on the west

[00:13:09] Andony Melathopoulos: side. Yeah. And I, I guess with the emergence of WASC as a kind of onary an area for people that growing constituency to get information and to network.

[00:13:18] And the focus of the new focus of extension and being able to provide resources, some basic resources on how to be keep is one dimension of how this collaborative work in the region developed. And I suppose, the other areas. It would have been the commonality of the crops.

[00:13:36] So as you've pointed out for, we have a previous episode way back where talked about the long standing, really a precedented rental rate survey that you launched. For a crop pollination and demonstrating that now, unlike in the past 75% of the income, or probably more now comes from for commercial beekeeping comes from elevation combination rentals.

[00:14:01] And so there's this growing, the, that period really witnesses a transformation in the. We're using in agriculture, that bees were always used in pollination, but there is a ratcheting up of pollination and the needs of growers to be able to figure out how to effectively use bees and pollination.

[00:14:23] Yes.

[00:14:23] Mike Burgett: If we had a small projects, 1983, that was funded by the Wasco county fruit league, where we looked at Callie strengths on the ground during sweet cherry pollination. And I was impressed time at that, that growers were largely unaware of what a good calling of honey bee should be. And that was the incentive that led to the P and L.

[00:14:52] Publication on evaluating a honey bee colony for pollination, which when I look back on it is, was quote, the best seller I ever wrote. In the sense of it had a targeted off audience of growers, but also if there were a number of people in the bee industry that were really unaware of. Some of the particulars of what makes up a biological units it's effective in pollinating.

[00:15:17] So that publication was revised by our new, I shouldn't say to Remesh had been here quite awhile, remission to Gillies saw the wisdom in revising this because it's been an important publication. It helps the growing company. And understanding again just what the hell goes on inside a beehive and w what are the aspects of a bee colony for them to maximize pollination benefit?

[00:15:47] I always thought that an extension agriculture is, has really a couple of target audiences. He has commercial beekeepers, he had hobby beekeepers, but in extension it's also had. Growers of the dependent crops and easily a third of my activity when I was on the payroll was working with grower groups and discussing ways to where growers could maximize.

[00:16:19] But they're putting in, I always called renting bees is the cheapest crop insurance you ever get and tried to make growers realize that you're not writing bees to guarantee a crop that year you're renting bees to guarantee against the crop failure. And when you looked at it years ago and almonds have become an exception to this, but a grower would offer.

[00:16:45] She look at farm gate return on an acre of crop. The amount of money, if a grower was spending to rent bees was usually less than 1% of the farm gate value of that crop. So that's why it was called cheap crop insurance.

[00:17:01] Andony Melathopoulos: I suppose that's something that we take for granted. Now you don't growers, you don't have to convince growers of the need for bees.

[00:17:09] Now in, in sometimes you have to hold growers back from overstocking with colonies because they've taken, this cheap crop insurance to heart, but at the time you almost had to make the case for it. I, I think about the McGregor book or the John B free book in that, in the eighties coming out as a way to.

[00:17:28] make the case for pollination agriculture,

[00:17:30] Mike Burgett: McGregor's book. I, to me is a classic. It's wonderful. Just, I just, I reiterate what you just stated. It w it was very helpful to the academic community as, as well as to commercial agricultural production.

[00:17:48] Andony Melathopoulos: So I guess the other big areas.

[00:17:50] Of cooperative work is pesticides, which as you started at the beginning of the episode, mentioning predates you that we had bill Stevens who did wonderful work on native bee biology, but also very practical work on alfalfa pollination and Karl Johanson at WSU. And then Dan Mayer, eventually at WSU, there was a.

[00:18:19] And yourself, there is a kind of hub of research on pesticides and bees that at the time was the cutting

[00:18:26] Mike Burgett: edge in the world. Absolutely. When I came to OSU in 74, if you were to survey the commercial. And say to a commercial beekeeper, what's the biggest problem you have a 99% of them would say pesticide kill.

[00:18:45] So really well. Yes, really? Absolutely. Number one. Okay. Which is why Carl's work was so important and Bill's work too. I remember bill Steven did a classic paper on looking at sub lethal doses of on the honeybee dance and found that sub lethal doses were indeed interfering. Communication within a beehive, but especially Carl's work led to publications like an extension publications on the hazards of pesticides, grouping, grouping, various pesticides, relative to be hazard.

[00:19:24] Which gave growers and spray applicators a guide by which they could attempt to reduce colony losses.

[00:19:33] Andony Melathopoulos: Wait a second. This is because I have been I've been working. On the revision of this, of what this publication is for. Since I got here, I saw that. Got it out. But the if I get this straight, this was this whole, these publication that was targeted at growers, providing education, giving them.

[00:19:50] Idea of like different pesticide options and their toxicity that stems from the seventies,

[00:19:59] at least the eighties, of course, but

[00:20:03] Mike Burgett: I'd say I, I don't know what the date, the original date of publication of that was, but it was,

[00:20:12] Andony Melathopoulos: but it comes out of, it comes out of that.

[00:20:16] Mike Burgett: Initially. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And I don't know if you were to ask him commercial beekeepers today, what are your number one problems? I think pesticide losses would probably might not even make them the big 10.

[00:20:30] No, they wouldn't. I've asked them. And then another thing that came about was, and this was very interesting. There were a number of cases of beekeepers suing applicators and. I was involved in as an expert witness in four cases that I can remember now. And it, in each instance to beekeeper one that the spraying of pesticides in that particular, in those particular cases were agregious and it was obvious.

[00:21:01] And. Pesticide applicators began paying attention. Once the legal system was saying, Hey, do it right. And then the original publication on pesticides, it was very helpful to over time. Pesticide calling you losses. I've really become minimalized. And I don't say they don't exist, but it's certainly nothing like it was 40 years ago.

[00:21:27] Andony Melathopoulos: We've covered those two topics. So there is the, these three concerns that emerged in the eighties, the new hobby beekeepers and providing information to them there. Focus on shepherding the egg sector into seeing the value of honeybee pollination. And then there's this third focus on a concerted push, which seems to have been quite successful in educating growers and applicators on product selection and reducing these pesticides pesticide incidences.

[00:21:58] What do you see as the legacy of these kinds of programs in the present? Clearly things have, we've intimated this at some level. They look the same. We still have hobby beekeepers. We still have pesticides. We still have crop pollination, but also things seem to have changed a lot since that time.

[00:22:15] So how do you assess the legacy of that early regional cooperative approach to dealing with these problems?

[00:22:25] Mike Burgett: One of the, one of the places I've seen it is that the quality of calling is coming from the commercial beekeeping sector has really increased with pesticide losses and then the arrival of the parasitic mites. It took shoddy operators out of business. You had to have. Learning curve. If you were going to maintain a healthy colony, especially after the mites arrived and that emphasized the importance of pollination income, rental and rental prices began a steady increase.

[00:23:03] Nowhere more highlighted in the almond industry. All other crops, shirt tailed it. So in the survey work I was doing, and I ran this pollination survey for 25 years. The average price of a colony rental continued to increase. Though I never met. But you could see that commercial beekeeper operators had to meet more business savvy.

[00:23:29] They had to put pencil to paper to look at cost benefit analysis on X. Number of calling is going to X number of. But this time of year, and they really began doing a better job on that. They became better businessmen and business women. So again, from when I first came to today, that commercial, the commercial beekeeper is more savvy, more aware of.

[00:23:57] Better businessperson and providing a better product. I E the individual honeybee colony is the state of Oregon for years, and we were had. Oregon department of agriculture, we had mandatory colony standards or pollination strength. And these went a long way in, in helping commercial beekeepers.

[00:24:30] Realize what type of product they had to put out and conversely, it helped growers and understand what kind of products should I be receiving. So you had more savvy growers in terms of what they wanted from a hive of bees. They were running from you and there were, and they were paying a better price.

[00:24:50] And you pointed out as my survey showed that over the years ends. Where I, commercial beekeeper was deriving 75% of their income from pollination rental. And this is true in our region. It's the best documented. But if you look at, when I was teaching the introductory beekeeping class here at OSU, one of the things I always pointed out to the students was that what's the value of that.

[00:25:13] And human society. And by far and away, it's the pollination aspect. The fact that our food production systems are reliant on a pollinator that's available. People talk about alternative pollinators, but if you're going 50, Sweet cherries. You don't call up 10 people who are playing with orchard, Mason bees divided to provide those bees to your orchard.

[00:25:44] You call on a competent commercial beekeeper to provide those. So the pollination. The importance of the pollination industry has always been near the fiscal reward, just what's improved over the years. And I'm delighted to see it,

[00:26:04] Andony Melathopoulos: maybe to conclude one thing that seems new is that, there's a renewed interest in native bees and certainly.

[00:26:13] Myself as an AICPA culture person who now spends 80% of his time on wild bees is, I would not have anticipated this being somebody who was educated at the 1990s, but I guess what's often forgotten is in the region, especially here. There was a strong focus going back to the fifties or even before Herman Skullen, the AICPA culture position here at OSU also had a, there's many specimens that he collected in the Oregon state arthropod collection that our volunteers are only now starting to rediscover.

[00:26:52] And w how have you regarded this kind seemingly this renewed interest in native bees and maybe the ways in which this work at OSU and the region is in some ways forgotten or maybe,

[00:27:05] and

[00:27:05] Mike Burgett: it shouldn't be forgotten. It was fascinating to me coming to the Pacific Northwest to see, to be in a region where there were three commercial beach bases, your bees alfalfa leaf, cutting bees, and.

[00:27:18] And both the leaf cutter bee and the alkaline gate target a single crop alfalfa seed, but their development was through the research efforts at WSU. OSU was especially with bill Stephen and. Entire industry developed from this work. So to come here where there's a, I remember going to an alfalfa or it was in Fort seat or?

[00:27:46] Yeah, it was an alfalfa seed growers convention over in Ontario is God. Probably 1975 or 1976. I was very new here and there were 500 people at that meeting and I was astounded to see such an interest in the pollination aspect of the crop they were growing. And here were here were two solitary bees species being made.

[00:28:15] To pollinate this one crop. And this has

[00:28:18] Andony Melathopoulos: been really surprising because you probably had heard a little bit of kicking the tires on alfalfa leaf, cutting bees in the literature, or you'd heard about some small experiments, but you go there and then a room full of growers just shows up and is taking scribbling notes.

[00:28:33] Furiously. Something had really caught on. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:38] Mike Burgett: And the development of those two species is was absolutely focused from research work at WSU and OSU and to a lesser degree at university of Nevada, Reno and also Davis with Robin Thorpe's work, but set to see commercial. Non honeybee species for just an absolute fascination for me.

[00:29:02] Now there's a re the recent resurgence. Again, comes back to the fact that pooch it of colony collapse disorder has made delay public aware of how important a non APHIS pollination can be. In fact, in the eighties as Susan , who was a USDA researcher back east, she wrote an article in scientific American where she estimated that if we took honey bees out of the picture, if we eliminated all honeybees in north America, what would crop production look like?

[00:29:36] And she made the statement that would probably reduce crop production by 50%, meaning 50% of Poland. Activities are being done by non AICPA's honeybees or excuse me, non-hypers bees. So the importance of solitary bee species has been underappreciated and now it's more appreciated. The difficulty is in trying to commercialize these various species.

[00:30:05] But we have the success story here in the Pacific Northwest of the alkali B and they all fell off a leaf cutting pig, which

[00:30:12] Andony Melathopoulos: Mushroom came out of the ground that have nowhere

[00:30:14] Mike Burgett: out of nowhere. And as a result of some good basic research, Part of entomologists at our land grant institutions.

[00:30:20] I remember

[00:30:21] Andony Melathopoulos: we had an interview with Jim Cain from USDA and he pointed out that the origins, there was people who would bring in establish it, but that in the west people would notice where they have. Barns and the bees just nested in the board, Steve was suddenly get good pollination.

[00:30:37] It was just like this. Yeah. But also just a concerted investment in the, by USDA, after the fifties and developing this industry and researchers in the region made it happen. This is great. I want it to. Capture this moment. I, I always think this possibility the master Mela tologist program recently we've expanded through the region and just keeping in mind that there is this tradition of reciprocal cooperation between the states and British Columbia in the region.

[00:31:08] That goes back a ways.

[00:31:10] Mike Burgett: Indeed. It does. Thank you so much. My pleasure and any, thank you.