226 - Spendal - Those amazing mason bees (in English)

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:00:00] This episode is devoted to assumptions about the biology of pollinating insects. Oftentimes something comes out in a scientific paper and then you know, someone like me, an extension professional, sees it there and just puts it in their extension publication. Then it gets picked up by the next book and the next, and before you know it, everybody.

This is the way the world works, and this is where today's guest comes in. Ron Spindel is a challenger of assumptions. We've had him on previous episodes, and you probably know him as one of the one of the key resources for Mason b husbandry. In Western Oregon he's an really skilled communicator.

He can speak from anybody from school age kids to adults who are trying to figure out how to manage Mason bees. He's a real resource, but he also makes some of the most meticulous observations on soli solitary bees anywhere in the world. And he recently published a paper. Also pod Pollination podcast guest Jim Kane.

Taking those observations and really thinking [00:01:00] carefully about how many offspring a mason be can have, and how long is their development and how do they perform when you have, like this year, multiple days of cold rain as opposed to the previous year, which. Historically on average, much hotter and drier.

Also, if I could just put in a brief plug before we get into the episode, we are doing the or Oregon Orchard B Health survey again. So if you've got Mason Bees and you're in Oregon, there's going to be a link in the show notes on how to submit samples. We are trying to get a sense of the extent of spread of.

Bees and different disease and parasites in the Mason B supply, but also to track some of the things that Ron was observing this year, which was a very wet year. Anyways, you can find it in the link to the show notes or just simply go to your web browser and go Oregon Mason b health survey and the link will come up with instructions on how to submit your samples, but [00:02:00] returning to our task at hand.

This episode's the Icon Plasm episode. We're gonna break all sorts of myths this week with the great Ron Spindle on pollination.

Welcome Ron to pollination. Welcome back. I should say,

Ron Spendal: It's been a while. I think I was on episode 30 or something like

Andony Melathopoulos: that. You were, but you may have not noticed this, but we snuck in another episode from the the Mason B Day that was at Washington. You're actually in that episode.

We snuck it in. I had up that's true. In no way microphone.

It's really great to come. You have you back and it's wonderful because a re there's a study that just came out with you and Dr. Jim Kane that culminates some of the very careful research that you've been doing for a number of years now with Mason Bees. I was so excited to read it and I'm excited to hear you talk about this work and maybe just to set it.

Can you walk me through the sequence of activities, because this paper really is about watching Mason B's Nest and their [00:03:00] behavior. Can you just to get us all on the same page, can you walk us through the sequence of activities this that's associated with a female mason b building her nest, and how is this different from social bees like sweat bees or or solitary ground nesting bees?

What a mason, the sequence and the kind of problems that a Mason b female encounters unique.

Ron Spendal: Sure. Basically female mason bee when she's trying to find a nest is looking for a a cavity that is easily accessible given her body size and and the research that I've done using multiple size cav.

92% of the time, she will choose a cavity that is basically eight millimeters or five sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and it doesn't seem to make much of a difference to her if that cavity is circular. Or square [00:04:00] or some kind of shape in between. . But basically five sixteenths of an inch seems to be the prime size for her.

So once she has located a nesting cavity she marks that cavity with a pheromone so that she will always be able to identify that cavity as hers and other Mason Ds will also respect that ownership. Given the scent that she has left on at the cavity entrance. Having located her cavity she then, Fly out in front of where that cavity entrance is and do a side to side flight.

Looking back at the cavity entrance where she is essentially memorizing the landmarks around the cavity so that she will be able to recognize the area when she returns from a foraging trip , as to where her nesting site is located. Which is why if you're raising mason bees, it's important not to move nesting trays around or [00:05:00] somehow alter the environment around the nesting station so that

Andony Melathopoulos: she will, Cause she's made a picture in her head when she leaves, and if you move the block, then she'll just not know where anything

Ron Spendal: is.

Yeah. Basically you're throwing her GPS off. Okay. And so it's real important that things stay pretty constant. She then will go off and most often she will go off and collect some mud to build a back wall at the end of the cavity. Which kind of sets the. The whole nesting cycle in process.

She doesn't always build a back wall, like in my nesting trays that are grooved boards. Frequently she will build the back wall out of mud really about 75% of the time. 25% of the time. She will omit that and just use the. Where the cavity stops and the wood's still there. She'll just use that as a back wall and then build a, the first nesting cell from that point.

Okay. But she will then go out on a, [00:06:00] for once the, she's accepted the back wall or built her own out of mud she will then go out and start for. And go to flowers and pick up nectar and drink or drink the nectar and pick up pollen and come back and then basically spit up the nectar and then turn around and scrape off the pollen.

And while she's in the cavity, she mixes those two together into kind of a pace. Some people call it be. And she will continue to forage for those two resources, nectar and pollen and bring it back and continue to build up a pile of. Nectar and pollen mixture until it reaches the size basically of a small p that she is determined is the correct size for the egg that she will be laying.

She collects more resources, pollen and nectar, and makes a bigger pile if she is planning to lay a female egg. And less of a size of a pile if she's [00:07:00] planning to lay a male egg. Once she de has concluded that the pile's the right size, she will go out and pick up a load of just necked her and come back and spit the nectar up on the pile, turn around and lay a single egg on it.

Which then sticks to the pile because the coloring of nectar is fairly sticky. And then she will go out and pick up more mud and come back and build a cell divider basically another wall, and then start building a new nesting cell after that. But it usually takes her about 10 to 12 mud trips to collect enough mud to build.

A cell dividing wall, and it takes about 20 to 30 trips for her to collect the pollen and nectar resources necessary to build a a pile of be bread. So it, it does take a fair amount of time especially if those resources are quite a ways away. The female can [00:08:00] forage up to about 300 feet from the nesting site.

But if she's having to travel a long distance to get to the pollen, a nectar, or even the mud it takes her more time to do that. And

Andony Melathopoulos: I suppose with other bees, there's a lot of things that other bees do. Build nests, lots of of the solitary, but also many of the social bees have to build nests.

But I guess, if you are nesting in the ground your nest construction doesn't have to take place at the daytime. I suppose that's a difference.

Ron Spendal: And basically because for ground nesting bees with the temperature outside still being fairly warm given the spring or summer temperatures they're able to do nest building activity at night because it doesn't matter to them.

The resources that they need are not really dependent upon light. They're more dependent upon warmth.

Andony Melathopoulos: And I also recall reading in the paper that with social bees, they often have other advantages. With a kind of [00:09:00] having a reproductive division of labor with one individual who doesn't have to forage and do all this, they can just focus on reproduction.

But also the division of labor. I think I re recall reading that sometimes there's a theory that they have smaller eggs, that they're able to put more and more eggs out, that they also don't have this kind of severe time constraint where they have to forage and build nest in the daytime like cavity nesting be does.

Solitary

Ron Spendal: Like in a honeybee hive. Once the population of honeybees built up to, to PortMa hive you have a die off rate that's fairly high. And so the queen has to continue to lay. A large number of eggs just to keep the workforce so to speak at optimal numbers.

So if you're having 800 honeybees die every day because of the size of the population, she has to lay at least 800 eggs a day. To keep the workforce stable. So that's given that number of eggs that she needs to be [00:10:00] laying the eggs would necessarily be smaller in size because she has to basically produce so many of them.

Oh. But not having the need to do her own foraging or her own nest cell building. Her one and only function is egg production. That, that would be more possible.

Andony Melathopoulos: This all brings into focus this time budget that a mason. Faces they have to forge in the day. They have to nest, build their nests in the day.

They have to lay their eggs in a day and I. Before you started your experiment what, and before you made these detail observations, what was the rate at which researchers thought that Mason Bees built their nest at? And, and maybe a little bit how they knew this how did they generally estimate the rate and what was the limitation maybe of their methodologies?

Ron Spendal: Most of the literature would suggest that they were thinking that Mason D's. As well as several other kinds of osm were laying between one and two eggs a [00:11:00] day. It was hard for them to get an accurate count of that. And frequently what happened would be that they were using straws. Or laminate trays stacked one on top of the other, and they would be able to tell the day that Nest building started in that straw.

And then follow it through until the date that they saw the plug built at the entrance of the straw. And then they could open the straw and basically count how many nesting cells they were in the straw, for example. And that happened over what period of time. So if you had he opened the straw and found six nesting cells and you knew that it took That be of basically three days to, to fill that straw.

The mathematics have just work out to, she probably was laying two eggs a day and that was a common methodology at the time to look at the completed project or the completed nesting. Or the completed nesting [00:12:00] straw or trade channel, and then divided by the number of days it took to complete that, and you had come up with a rough average, and that ended up being one to two eggs per day.

So it was difficult to get an accurate actual count.

Andony Melathopoulos: guess it, it assumes that nest construction. Sell completion rate is equal over that time. That's the main assumption, is you take the total amount of cocoons made by the total amount of days and you divide it and you assume that's the rate that took place.

Ron Spendal: Right? And it doesn't account for the fact that maybe one day she laid one egg and the next day she laid three eggs and then she laid one egg and it doesn't account for variation on a day to day basis. It assumes that there's a consistency over time.

Andony Melathopoulos: Now you have a, you had developed a methodology since I got here in 2016.

Even before this time you had working [00:13:00] studiously on this. You have a way of, that gets around this problem of not just looking at when the, when the tube is capped. Describe your methodology. How are you able to get this much more detailed daily level nest construction?

Ron Spendal: Okay. Basically all of the nesting trays that I use are essentially a foot long or 30 centimeters long, and they have about 11 and a half inches of channels grooved into them.

Five channels per board. And a board is a one by six board made out of Poplar five. Five, 16 inch channels routed down the board. And then I use an ac sheet of acrylic that's about an eighth of an inch thick laid on top of it and taped on both sides and across the back. So that when I look at that tray, I can actually see the whole length of the channel through the clear acrylic.

And then I can stack these trays on top of each other [00:14:00] so that each tray is dark. And then the very top tray, I put a board across the top, so it too is dark. But my methodology was that I would go out to the nesting site every day at 11 o'clock in the morning. And basically look at each tray and note what nesting activity had occurred in the previous 24 hours.

So I was able to see exactly what happened, how many nesting cells she had completed and look at how those cells were developing. For example, when the egg was laid. How many days it took for the egg to hatch to a visible larva. And then watch the larva consume the pollen and nectar resources and how long it took for that to occur.

And then when that larva began to spin its cocoon. So I was able to observe each stage wow, of development and record it on data collection sheets day to day. Some of the point in time measurements were a little [00:15:00] difficult you can tell when the egg is ready to hatch because it changes some of its dynamics instead of being opaque and color.

It becomes translucent because the larva inside is actually developed in, it's in its first instar and it stretches the egg and the sack outer lining of the egg a little bit, so it becomes translucent and you can train yourself how to spot that visual. Without the aid of a a hand lens.

Initially I had to use a hand lens to actually make sure that's what was happening. But then within about 24 hours after seeing that stage, the egg will split and you can then visibly see the larva and the segmentation lines on it as it develop.

Andony Melathopoulos: It, it strikes me that you know of many of the measurements that you described, are actually in this paper that you have a treasure [00:16:00] trove.

There's probably. More more papers to come out of the wonderful work that you've done. And I suppose in this paper specifically, it's the rate at which a cell is started and completed, and I guess that's easy. It's not easy, I guess it means getting up every day, grabbing your coffee and going to your nesting stations.

But it would be when the cell is starting because the. Yeah. What's, what, how, what's, how do you assess when a cell is started and when a cell is finished? What was the cutoff voice for

Ron Spendal: that? Basically I say that the cell has finished when she builds a mud wall in, in front of that nesting cell and starts building another cell in front of it.

But the day that I start taking data is the day that I see the egg laid. So I can tell how many days she's worked to build the pollen and nectar resources that she has, but really the date that I really start to clock ticking is the date that the eggs [00:17:00] laid and I measure everything from that point.

Ok. But it's It's the idea that you have to be there every day at basically the same time, regardless of the weather. Most of the nesting activity occurs in the month of April. And this year it was a miserable April . It was very cold and very wet. In 2021 it was a very dry April.

So it was a lot more pleasant. But it drives you to come up with fairly inventive ways to try to protect yourself and your spreadsheets while you're taking this data

Andony Melathopoulos: I can imagine. Okay. And you've been doing this for a long period of time, and one of the, one of the time courses is, 2015. 2021 you have data for 2022 as well. That's extremely wet year. So you've been able to observe this nest construction rate but across several years.

But 2021 is a, the year that you did very careful. Yeah, I get, it's the part, it's the kind of centerpiece of the paper. And I wanted [00:18:00] to ask you What did you expect to see? You had, you had this body of work and you suspected it was incorrect, that it, it is not two cells per day every day.

But what did you think you would see? What did you, what, what would one expect to see when it came to nest? Construction rate? Tell us a little bit about what the expectation.

Ron Spendal: My expectation was that there would be more days of multiple nest cell development because I had noticed that in the past.

But in terms of how that was divided up there were annual variations in that meaning that how many times did you see only one egg a day? Being completed as opposed to days where you saw two nesting cells completed, or three or four. And what was driving those differences and some other assumptions that you wanted to test out.

For example, if you saw the female was able to do three eggs in one [00:19:00] day did that really mean That was the day before, a very slow day and was the day following a very slow day because she had. Basically reload her capacity to build more eggs. And then testing out that theory to find out that even in days where she was laying like three or four eggs, or building three or four nesting cells a day those were frequently preceded by high production days, unfollowed by high production days as well.

So it, it shows that given certain consistencies she was able to maintain a very high level of egg production. Oh whoa, whoa.

Andony Melathopoulos: You're jumping the gun . Okay. But the expectation was, so this listeners are getting to see the cars peel back, but the expectation was, One of the expectations, the reasonable expectation is after she's had a heavy, after some bad days, she goes out and lays, her maximum capacity of let's say three, and then then she's depleted and it takes her a couple days [00:20:00] to recover.

That was one of the expectations, the other one I remember you mentioning was when they have very high rates of reproduction or producing males, because this is, the ma the pollen, the man of pollen. Collected would be smaller and they could, in a day get more of that work done.

Ron Spendal: Basically depending on whether she lays a female or a male egg does have a, an effect on her in terms of the size of the pollen pile she needs to build. Which means she expands a great deal, more energy building a pollen pile of the size needed to lay a female egg on that pollen pile.

And as the season goes on you were wondering if, when she makes the ship to lane mail eggs and therefore is only needing to build smaller pollen piles would the were her production rate increase because it takes less time investment to construct a male nest cell versus a female nest cell.[00:21:00]

And that was one of the. Issues that took us some discussion to analyze what was happening in, in the nesting cell activity that I was measuring. Because I was measuring basically the. Beginning of the nesting season. So the females were laying predominantly female eggs at that point in time, cuz they were the inner most nesting cells that were being built.

And because a female can lay between 20 and 30 eggs in her lifetime which is only four to six weeks She can fill up one channel, which would be on average about 15 to 16 nesting cells and still be able to produce more nesting cells after that. But given the circumstances of the nesting environment I was measuring.

Which was 48 trays, each of which had five channels. So you had 240 channels. Frequently those channels were [00:22:00] being worked on then by other females. So at a point in time, which would be later in the season when she's more inclined to want to lay male eggs she would probably have to disperse to go do.

And not necess in the trays that were available because they were all being worked with by other females. There were circumstances outside of my control in terms of, I kept the same number of trays, which was 48 in play all the time, every year. Okay.

Andony Melathopoulos: No, that, that's good Ron. And I think let's take a quick break.

I want to get into the findings. I think we've already spilled over into the findings. So I think what you're mentioning is that there's a way in which the male rate, the male reproductive cells may not have been as maximize as possible cause the cells had filled up and those females. Started making mails elsewhere.

But let's take a quick break. I wanna come back and really get the full scope of their findings, which have been coming out here and there, cuz it's really remarkable the kind of patterns that you've seen in the [00:23:00] reproductive output that Mason be's actually can do when they're in a happy place.

Sure. So let's take a quick break. Okay. Okay. Welcome back. Tell us, So you have this, you had these expectations and led on a little bit what you found, but tell us a little bit some of the key findings that you found about when you had. This capacity to do these fine scale daily nest construction observations.

Like for example, when is self construction? When was it really fast and was it, really fast when they were making males? Did you, and I guess this other question that you hypothesized, af when a female is on one of these, Self construction rampages, Does she slow down to recover for a few

Ron Spendal: days?

Yeah. Basically the rate of egg production on the female. Really didn't seem to be affected. It was affected by a number of issues. The availability of pollen and [00:24:00] nectar resources and the distance that those were from the nesting site as well as the mud resource. The environment that These experiments took place was essentially a pretty natural environment.

It occurred at Jackson Bottom Wetlands, which is a wildlife preserve. So it's an environment where there were no pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides or any kind of chemicals used in the area. . There were native plants and trees in the area that provided the resources. There was a pond and some other.

Waterways that were fairly close by that provided mud resources. But they were all fairly close to the nesting site so that the amount of time that the female had to devote into flight activity to get to the resources and bring them back to the nesting site were pretty nominal. So she wasn't really a away from the nesting site very long, which could account for why there was very little parasite activity going [00:25:00] on because she was never really.

Away that long to where parasitic wasps for other problems would enter the nesting channel.

Andony Melathopoulos: So ok, this is great because it does set the situation, you do this study in the best possible context. This is probably in some ways measuring as reproductive, optimal for a female as.

Correct study. So you put the, you put your cocoons out and when, how long after the cocoons go out, did you see this? Cuz it isn't even, I guess that's the one thing that you were mentioning before the break. It isn't this e even two cells per day, it's actually quite punctuated. When do you start to see the spike?

How many days after you put the cocoons out did you start to see. Very high levels of cell construction.

Ron Spendal: Fairly quickly after you set the cocoons out. Basically, I refrigerate my cocoons over the winter, so I hold [00:26:00] them back until I see the natural resources develop for pollen and nectar until I see like Oregon grape or flowering currents starting to bloom.

And then I set the cocoons out in about 24 hours. Everything's the ambient temperature I set the first wave of cocoons out and then start measuring them as soon as I see nesting activity beginning. And then two weeks after I set the first wave out, I set out the second wave of cocoons.

I have some control over that, but nesting activity really starts almost 24 to 48 hours after I set the cocoons out. And it starts. To increase the egg productions increases almost within three to four days which is probably the period of time it's taking the female to assess where the resources are located.

Her flight plan and getting back and all of those other. Factors start getting nailed down, so to speak. Then egg production really starts picking into to gear. Beyond [00:27:00] that, weather has a lot to do with it as well. If it's warm and dry. Egg production increases fairly rapidly and maintains itself at a high rate.

And

Andony Melathopoulos: It struck me in 2021, you had a couple of cold days, but there was a, in 2021, it was around mid April that you had the most of the females seemed to be start, I guess it starts off, a few females are making some nests and then more females are making nests, and there's like this peak activity of females making nests.

Around the mid part of that month. And then you start, the weather warms up and you see this explosion in your 2021 data set of females that are not only making one or two cells per day.

Ron Spendal: The weather warms up, everything becomes pretty optimal. The number of hours of light increases to where you're getting 12 hours of daylight now a day in mid to late April.

All of those things are building up an optimal environment for them to be working in, and that's when [00:28:00] productivity is in fact at its highest.

Andony Melathopoulos: So two cell I'm looking at some of the figures and we'll have a link to the paper on our show notes. But the, the, what people had thought of, two cells per days was shattered as soon as you entered this period that you started to see a lot of females doing three cells per day, four cells per day.

And there is, on one date five cell per day.

Ron Spendal: In both 2021 and 2022, I had one instance each year of a female able to produce five eggs in one day. Which that's incredible to me. Yeah, that is incredible. I had to double count to make sure I was seeing right. The the only time when things have gotten to where, In the literature there were a couple of recordings, I think by Tokyo and in a greenhouse environment where basically the resources the mud and nectar and pollen resources were available to the female within a few feet of the [00:29:00] nesting site.

Where he was able to. A few females to reproduce at four or five nesting cells a day in a very contrived environment. But it was optimal.

Andony Melathopoulos: I was al I guess I was also amazed at, where in 2021, where the bulk of the cocoons were built, It seems like really a seven to 10 day period.

They're just going furiously in this year, just packing away cocoons. I, I guess I was surprised. I thought it was drawn over a longer period. But were you surprised by this? Is this, and is this typical of the many years you've been watching Cocoon building?

Ron Spendal: There, there's a real peak to.

Nesting cell development for sure. And it's surprising at times how well that's able to be maintained. But the overall number of days which would constitute the nesting season has stayed fairly constant. And it's usually in the, the low eighties, it would be like 82 days for the length of time from the [00:30:00] first egg that was ever laid.

And my nesting. Site to the end date of when the last cocoon was made. Probably averaged for the first five or six years of the, of my studies to be about 82 days. So the nesting season stayed the same, although production definitely peaked at a certain point in time. But in 2022, for example, which again was a very cool and wet April the nesting season was 105 days.

So it, it extended the nesting season quite a bit because activity was slow.

Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. That was, that's Ima let's get into that right now. I guess it. You did see a lot of variability you have amongst your years in terms of overall productivity the environmental conditions. Anywhere from, a thousand cocoons produced per year to 2021 when it was a, four, almost four times that amount.

It seems as though, even though the period may be. Always [00:31:00] predictably the same than the, what they do on those, when they're at, I guess at peak activity varies from year to year. And I suppose within year, you pointed out even in 2021, this banner year of cocoon production, you had some days where it just came to a grinding.

Ron Spendal: Yes, and more often than not that seemed to be attached to a weather event more than anything. Either a day was unexpectedly cold or unexpectedly wet. And so little nesting activity occurred until the weather event passed, and then it picked back up.

Andony Melathopoulos: How bad was 2022 in the, your data set going back to 2015, how, you know if coming up on 4,000 cocoons in your experimental setup?

Ron Spendal: Yeah. In 2021 the number cocoons produced were 3,630. In 2022. That dropped to [00:32:00] twenty three hundred and sixty six, so about 25% or maybe a little higher than that dropped off.

Andony Melathopoulos: But not your worst year though.

Ron Spendal: No, by definitely not my worst year. But it did have a real shift in egg productivity, for example in 2021.

Only 19% of the eggs laid were laid where it was one egg laid per day, and in 2022 69% of the eggs were laid at a rate of one egg per day. So a huge difference in that. So cold wet weather meant that they were only really capable then of building one egg per day. And a difference would be that in 2021 the rainfall in our area was 0.39.

For that month of April, and in 2022, that April, it was 5.37 inches of rain. [00:33:00] I remember it. .

Andony Melathopoulos: Yeah. So

Ron Spendal: do I was out there in it. And so given the terrible weather conditions in 2022 that really impacted the egg production Quite a bit.

Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. Just a couple quick things that before I, I wanna kind come to what this means for everybody, but two things that I thought were really remarkable and what you did observe when they were going hard on these really phenomenal years.

Having a great, a great few days did not preclude them. They didn't slow down. It wasn't like, We're at capacity. If they were doing a three egg day, they could pull off another three egg day as I understood it. Correct. And I Correct. I suppose the other thing that was surprising that sort of, defies expectations is that when they were having these highly productive days, it wasn't because they were making lots of males.

Ron Spendal: That, that's true. Basically The measurement period that I was doing [00:34:00] for this study. Again the females can lay, 20 to 30 eggs in their short lifetime. But the nesting tray length of basically a channel that's 11 and a half inches long would only hold about 15 to 16 nesting cells.

So she could complete one channel and still be able to produce more eggs, but those eggs, which would be later in the nesting season and at a point in time where physically she would have more signs of wear and tear because her wings would be more tattered and. It would be harder for her to carry the pull on and nectar loads and mud loads back to the nesting site.

Where you think that she would be transitioning then into more mail, egg production. She wouldn't have a nesting set channel available for her to do that. And she would probably disperse out of my nesting area. . So my nesting environ. Really focused in on a point in time in production where the females working those nests would be most likely producing female eggs as [00:35:00] opposed to male eggs.

Andony Melathopoulos: I think that's fascinating. Maybe if you had if you, I can understand the kind of design you don't want to add. It's very difficult to get at this, but it's I think it still brings the focus in that they can have exceptionally beyond what people thought previously.

Cocoon production and female production. When conditions are ideal. And I suppose this raises the question that I want to end on in terms of what are, and you are not only, a researcher, but you're also somebody who works closely with master guard. You are the master gardener, be person in, in Washington County and training a lot of people.

What kind of What kind of management implications come out of this? What, how does this information help people who are interested in Mesa B culture?

Ron Spendal: I think it provides them a context that they can look at and see if they can replicate it or try different things that, that maybe would enhance it.

And I emphasize that the environment in which my study [00:36:00] takes. Is a fairly natural environment. It's got very it's chemical free. Basically. There's no insecticides, pesticides, herbicides being used in the area. And those are things that, that most people have some control over in their own yards, for example.

So it, it stresses to people in the classes that I teach as best they can stay away from using chemicals in their yard because they can be harmful to the bees or the resources that the bees draw. I stress the fact that this is an environment where there's a lot of native plants in use because it is a natural environment.

So there's Oregon grape and flowering currents. There's big leaf maple trees, there's lots of different kinds of willow trees in the environment. And people. Oh

Andony Melathopoulos: yeah. And there's a little bit of pollen analysis in this study. And I remember Willow and I've, this has come up repeatedly when people have looked at pollen provisions, Willow was very high on that list.

Ron Spendal: Right, and frequently people who are, looking at trying to [00:37:00] raise Mason bees or work with mason bees in their yard aren't even aware that mason bees will use the pollen from trees. They need to look at what's in the environment and maybe not their yard, but their neighboring yard the yards that are around them whether or not they've got big leaf maples or willow trees of some sort.

But it really stresses to people the fact that if you can. The more natural you make your environment, the better it will be for the bees. Is something that, that gets stressed over and over. And most people catch on to that fairly quickly.

Andony Melathopoulos: Cause I imagine even when you have bad weather conditions when you do have that good day, you they have to make the most of it.

And it, I guess your research shows that bees have, the mason, bees have the capacity to capitalize. On good conditions when they arrive, and if you don't have anything there, you're just not gonna have any returns.

Ron Spendal: And it, ev even down to the simple point of where do you orient the nesting station in terms of your own yard have it facing somewhere between the south and the east.

And [00:38:00] the reason for that is so that it catches early morning sun so that you're basically providing an environment where there's the most light and. For them to work in trying to attach all these little components together so that people can assemble a plan that will work for them and the environment that they have available.

Andony Melathopoulos: One quick I guess I, that was not a false last, I forgot. There's one last question I did want to ask you. You've been doing these kinds of observations. Have one of the richest data sets that I know of anywhere in the world. On Mason b nesting, and there's a lot more detail, as you've mentioned in this episode that, still hasn't seen publication.

But one of the key things that you've mentioned is having a really, and I, since I've known you've had a strong collaboration with your co-author Jim Kane, and I just wanted to, maybe conclude with, How somebody who's, working on the ground collecting data and their collaboration with someone like Jim, what's that look like?

And tell us a little about that collaboration.

Ron Spendal: The collaboration is what really made this paper possible. I'm basically a [00:39:00] citizen scientist and I know how to collect data and I know how to construct experiments. But the context that then can fit. Is something that, that Jim Kane provided extremely efficiently.

His knowledge base is beyond compare. Where I might have an idea and say what do you think if he can quote me, , five different research studies that have looked at similar kinds of things and what their findings were and where they were done. And it's having a walking, breathing laptop available to you so that you can go through and do it.

It's, your own personal Alexa. But the fact that Jim has such an extensive knowledge base and is able to quickly know how the information you're gathering fits into that context, or what the context may suggest you want to look at in a different life is just really helpful.

That and the fact that putting together the paper he was able to. Work on constructing the information in a way [00:40:00] that he knew would be receptive to publishers so that once you send it out, that they would be willing to accept the paper and work with you on edits and then publish it where I would be fumbling in the dark on that one.

He's extremely knowledgeable about it. Which is really helpful. And I guess the other thing is just receptivity. Jim's probably the most unassuming individual, Oh yes. I've ever met. So it was really easy to sit down with him. And go through what I was doing, why I was doing it, and what I was thinking of changing or what areas I was wanting to look at next, and him being able to put it into a a more scientifically.

Contoured environment for me was really helpful and not, I at no time felt like he was the PhD etymologist talking down to the citizen scientist kind of thing. He was just really helpful in all aspects of it, how this came to be. And [00:41:00] hopefully we'll be looking at, some other data to put together a few more papers.

And work on some other ideas. And he, lives in an environment where he has access to a lot of other extremely open and knowledgeable minds. There pitting and Vince Temped Bernardino and some others. Just being in an environment where you can bounce ideas off your colleagues to come up with insights is really helpful.

Being in Washington County and working with the Master Gardeners there, there are not a great many local colleagues. I have to try to bounce ideas off of. Which, is why I'm thankful for the internet, so I can have direct contact with Jim Kane. And it's also real helpful that, Jim was invited to be a keynote speaker at one of your events at Hood River.

So on his way up to Hood River to do that. He stopped by Hillsborough for a couple of days and we were able to go out and hang out In the rain together. Yeah. Hang out in the downpours. But he saw the environment I was [00:42:00] working with and how it was set up and the data sheets I was using, and going through all of that.

And it was even at that point in time that he took the The pollen samples from a number of trays. And then researched that to figure out that because of a bad snow event that we had this year that really knocked down a lot of the native plant blossoms that bees were using pollen from big leaf nap trees and the willow trees.

His access to that and being able to be on site was really helpful.

Andony Melathopoulos: It turned out in a wonderful paper. Thank you so much for your time. And I'm looking for I really re recommend this paper. We'll have it in the show notes to everybody to read. It, the figures are fascinating.

And thanks again for your time and your dedication to Mason Be's. You're quite well

Ron Spendal: welcome. It's been a, an interesting journey.