119 – MR Pollination – Alfalfa leafcutter bees

Speaker 1

From the Oregon State University Extension Service, this is pollination, a podcast that tells the stories of researchers, land managers, and concerned citizens making bold strides to improve the health of pollinators. I'm your host. Doctor Adoni Malapropos, assistant professor in pollinator health in the Department of Horticulture. I always love it when people drop in here at OSU at the main campus in Corvallis and pay me a visit and this week, I'm excited because the visitor is an old friend, Weldon Hobbs, who runs Mr. Pollination Services in Lethbridge, AB. Now I've known Weldon for a number of years, but if you work in Leaf. Adding bees, leaf-cutting bees that. Are used to pollinate alfalfa. You know Weldon. He's a real resource on leaf-cutting bees. His father actually graduated. He got his PhD here at OSU and was a real, real giant in terms of solitary bee management. So, in this episode, you're going to learn about how the leaf-cutting bee business got started. Some glimpses into modern leaf-cutting bee production and some real surprises. Weldon has literally seen it. Everything. But before we start this episode, I do want to remind people that the Orchard Be Association is having its annual meeting on Friday, December 13th, and Saturday, December 14th in Riverside, CA. If you're in Southern California, this is a great opportunity to learn about solitary bee management. To register, go to an orchard. P.org. That's one word. Orchard. B.org, you enjoy the episode. I'm so excited to be. I'm so excited to be with Weldon Hock this week on pollination. Welcome to pollination. I first met you when I was working in Lethbridge at the Lethbridge Agricultural Research Center. The one thing I remember about the leaf-cutting industry in southern Alberta.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Is that it supported a lot of small farms going to Rosemary, Alberta and some farms were not huge inside. They were family-size farms and that seemed to be that the alpha alfalfa production was what was keeping it.

Speaker 2

That way, that had been part of the agendas of the beginning of the industry started in southern Alberta. There there's two different contrary visions of how this industry would work. The industry vision would be that there would be pollinator businesses and farmers. Living alfalfa seed and they would find themselves, in a sense, my father, who had Doctor Gordon Hobbs, who had introduced these first brought him into southern Alberta, the winter 61 and through the summer 62. Had more of a vision after a few years that it would be the smaller farmers that would be. That would, first of all, be able to grow a diverse diversity of crops but mostly introduce self-alpha seed to crop scheme and secondly. That with the possible value of the leaf cutter bee itself would be producing 2 crops per acre. You would have the alfalfa seed that was pollinated to produce seed and surplus leaf cutters would be coming off of the same acres that all the seed was that way. So, you were doing up your income without having to expand the size of your farm.

Speaker 1

Same number of inputs. You're able to get like this. Double value out of the same piece of land.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of times we've covered these weren't that great of a value, or sometimes the alfalfa seat wasn't. But in almost all. Agriculture. There comes a time when you get the perfect storm of good returns and good prices on both commodities, and that was something that made a significant difference to a lot of the small farmers and small farmers. These are guys, some only have 1/4 section but. Normally it was two or three quarters and had a little and this is the other value is that it was a rotational crop. It rusted the soil and helped restructure the soil. And it allowed us to clean up those troublesome weeds that might have been coming out of. The cereal crops.

Speaker 1

So not only are you getting double the value, but you also have a crop that sort of builds soil and allows you to be more productive down in different parts of the rotation.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the things that alfalfa is known for is that with the right root structure and stuff, not only is it putting nitrogen into the soil, but it's also opening up passages in the soil inviting. Different. It's in inviting different insect species in to help rebuild and restore the soil.

Speaker 1

OK. And I think one of the first questions that I wanted to ask you is how the industry got started and you sort of tipped the hand a little bit and we did have an. The previous episode with Doctor Jim Kane. He mentioned originally that the industry was centered in the East and that it had real problems expanding in the West because of the lack of pollinators kind of picked up the story from there.

Speaker 2

Well, yeah, it seemed like in the mid-30s and 40s we were there that had alfalfa in the Dakotas, Kansas, and stuff like that. They also had. A lot of. Natural pollinators so they could produce either forages or if they left the plant for the whole. For the whole season, they'd be able to produce alfalfa seed. It wasn't until inadvertently. Through the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, with livestock feed, the leafcutter bee was accidentally introduced, and one way or another we transported it in goods or whatever across. The US is established in a few different locations. Before that, alfalfa had been brought into places in the West where there was a ground-nesting pollinator. The Alkali B, and subsequently in Western central Wyoming in the central deserts of Utah. Getting over to the Walla Walla district of Washington, parts of Nevada, they were able to bring the crop in where the pollinators were and get tremendous alfalfa seed. Production was eradicated in the late 40s, and early 50s with the advent of DDT being used as a pest control. It accidentally took out the pollinators and then they started looking at areas that were still producing alfalfa seed and what they found. Was that this nesting board where this transient other insect was there in great numbers and was pollinating and there for more they learned what else can we begin to manage this in. It was occurring. Randomly sort of thing and there they began to realize that they could gather them up and get them to start nesting. And it was once known as a soul to straw bee, where they're investing in.

Speaker 1

A soda straw B.

Speaker 2

Soda straw does this when they are nesting in lacks covered paper straws. The soda straw curtains were cut in half. Placed on in heated in the oven so that the lacs would melt off seal the end that was still end of the straw that was still in contact with the box and then they'll be able to pull them out there, tip them on their sides and the bees would be nesting in the open holes of that. Because they were seen as nesting in other open holes that were, as in fence posts, power posts, and stuff like that. A couple of people began to think about what would happen if you provided boards that had holes in them. And that's where the drill board industry came from. All the management systems that were contrived in the US and the 40s, 1950s, and early '60s were on the basis that you would be providing an environment where they could nest, but you didn't have to worry about handling them and what had happened was that that that.

Speaker 1

OK. Just if I can just stop you there for a second. So, the idea was. It is that you know, you just mimic what people they must have. It must have been an old barn or something. They were kind of going into the knot holes and they just figured it out. Oh, all you needed was a board and you didn't have to do any management. You just needed to provide the holes and you could walk away.

Speaker 2

That was sort of the early management ethos. That was pretty well. They still have them in the collective. Diamond sounds you have to remember that this is a solitary bee, but it prefers to nest and live gregariously. It is like a neighbor's sort of thing. So, this allowed them to be able to be a group.

Speaker 1

OK. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2

And if you were providing the nesting material, pretty soon you could start moving the nesting material to where the crops were, rather than having to move the crops to where the pollinators were, and that made a very big difference in the development of the alfalfa seed. Industry in in the in the western US and later into the Western Canada. So, in Western Canada.

Speaker 1

OK.

Speaker 2

Yeah. My dad was an entomologist working with the County Department of Agriculture.

Speaker 1

Oh, but we. We do need to back up because I learned today that he's a WSU grad. I mean the WSU. What am I saying? Oh, he was a Beaver.

Speaker 2

Yes, he got his PhD at Corvallis here on about back. In the 60s.

Speaker 1

But let's take a little Bunny trail again. We'll come back to South Alber. But your dad also studied with Ned Bohart in Utah. And one thing when we were walking around campus today, you mentioned all the students. That Bohard had and it's like the foundations of biology came out of the Bohart.

Speaker 2

Lab. Well, I wouldn't say all the foundations Ned had. A different technique, or because of his mentorship, most of his successful students, he wouldn't say they were cookie cutters, but they saw nature and they appreciated nature differently than a lot of the others that we met. From different faculties. Sort of thing and you could kind of pick them out of the crowd if they were making presentations, you could definitely pick them out if they were. If they were making their seminars that way, my dad would have been an earlier student of Ed Bohart. I was lucky. Enough in my career to work with one of his last students, doctor Ken Richards, up in up in Lethbridge, Canada, before his retirement and then a little later on when Ken had retired out of the pollination sphere. Sort of thing, but these people basically, you know, they saw things in nature, and they saw things in pollinators just a little bit differently than what we were needing, and they accomplished different things.

Speaker 1

Alright, so you're. Accomplished remarkable things. I think a lot of us still really depend on the knowledge that they built, but so, your dad headed to Lethbridge, and you worked with the Department of Agriculture, there are now what's known as agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Speaker 2

Yeah, he first came out in 1945 as the assignment was. He didn't have a job description. He needed to fully go out the crop pests of forage crops that way. And as we needed to develop forages a lot faster, probably developed forages, more adapted for our Canadian environment. That's where his other expertise kicked in as to trying to find a pollinator specifically for alfalfa, we had a few native ones to add to mostly in bumblebees.

Speaker 1

Ohh that's right.

Speaker 2

But he also was able to identify a few native pollinators. But what we found is that we had to move the sea fields closer to where the pollinators were, rather than being able to manage pollinators. And he was that in the US there had been successful management of this big accounting, this leafcutter be. In the western parts of the US.

Speaker 1

Can I just stop you? For a second, so the original way it sort of worked out when you were looking for native pollinators in that era in Canada when they're trying to expand forage seed, it would, the idea was. Then you could put it next to a forest. Something that limits the number of places you can cultivate. And so, by looking across to the US and seeing, oh, these folks are figuring out how to get the bees anywhere, you could put these really efficiently. OK. So that kind of changed his thinking. It was like, well, maybe this could happen.

Speaker 2

Soda straws and forwards.

Speaker 1

In southern Alberta, well.

Speaker 2

And it needed to happen because the other method was really a hopper chance. Essentially what was is that you were planting growths of alfalfa close to the native path. This year and then you were leaving strips closest to that pasture of the alfalfa to produce alfalfa C, which was never really a fully guaranteed method of producing alfalfa seed. So, by having another pollinator available, honeybees can't be used to produce a.

Speaker 1

OK, gotcha. All right.

Speaker 2

Alfalfa seed in Canada because they're more nectar gatherers than they are pollen gatherers, so they'll try to avoid the alfalfa plant. For Paul and cheating to rob the nectar of it, that's where you get your sweet alfalfa nectar flows from them. But they're not providing pollination. Meanwhile, in Northern California and the deserts of Nevada. Treasure Valley and in Idaho they had. They had started to. Change these leaf cutters, but they weren't too sure where they came from. They just proliferated pretty easily in the system, and they were they were doing kind of a solid core management. That was the system that they were using. So basically, you took the whole nesting material. After the season either put it in protected surroundings or just leave it where it was, the bees would be able to live through the winters and hatch out in time. So.

Speaker 1

These are blocks of wood drilled. You take them down, you put them back into the crop at the time.

Speaker 2

You could do that or lots of guys were just leaving them in the protective surroundings that they were the domiciles that way, and in some cases, they try to time the crops so that you would be warm enough for the bees to fly as well as well as the crops would be just coming into bloom at the same time.

Speaker 1

Got you. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2

Now there was one scientist around the wood. Let's say Fresno, CA had looked at this management of the leafcutter bees and said, well, maybe the bees' cells that are being constructed in the soda straws and these drill boards need to be separated from the nesting medium and just stored in bulk. So that we have better off-season storage and protection of the pollinators and then and so that's where the original thoughts for new cell management of leaf cutters came.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 2

He published some papers and then had some actual material out there, but it didn't catch on. It was just it was just too easy and there were no problems with the soda straws and with the drill board. Dad had looked at it and said, well, if you're going to have any kind of populations of this, this is going to take up an awful lot of room. You needed to be able to condense just with the pollinators were, so he started in with the philosophy of a loose cell mechanism where for store storage and protection reason you got to remember in Canada, we have a very adverse.

Speaker 1

Ohh for storage reasons. OK, OK.

Speaker 2

Centers and rather than storing large amounts of material, providing protective storage.

Speaker 1

You're right. With the blocks and all that stuff getting, getting them out of the blocks and loose. OK all right.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of the winter routine that we still do due to this day sort of thing. So, he brought him into Canada as Loose, selling the first B stock that came out of the roadblock area. Our second purchase came out. Closer to Nampa High. The whole kind of thing at the time we were buying them, each little B cell that looks like what that actually looks like in the winter storage like a pellet, you would feed a hamster or rabbit sort of thing. It was worth a nickel each, be it US or Canadian. So, at the time.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

You were buying them, not saying nickel. A 10-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. What was the impression that Dad used upon his whenever we were handling these bees? And if we happen to mishandle it and kill the larvae inside the B cell?

Speaker 1

OK, so they came up. They came up. You got your first batch from these various collections in the US. This was the beginning of the industry in southern Alberta. How did they do that?

Speaker 2

Go well, I actually when we brought them in, they came in, in paper straws. They had done. Determination how many B cells would be in each paper straw, and we had to separate. So, we actually made a little device that had little razor blades on each side of a special hole. You would push each straw through, which would be enough to cut the paper, make an incision on the paper so you could peel the paper off, and then separate it. The loose cells themself. Otherwise, we made our collections for two years like that basically gathering up what would look to be maybe a couple of gallons in the volume of B-cell material. Then we put them in the cold storage. At the beginning of June, they were brought out. We put them in what was that type at that time, a type where we could heat them at 85 degrees for 20-something. We weren't really seeing much in the way of parasites, so there wasn't a big control factor there. We begin to see the first males beginning to emerge. We had a special little lid that would go on there and then they would go out into the fields, into the structures that were manufactured. The first structure is that. The researchers have tried a combination nesting facility as well as a protection release facility. They were known as hive shelters. They were basically 1618 inches tall by 4 feet long, maybe as deep as a. Or so in an eve-like type structure on top. The nesting was the corrugated nesting material that was milled in the bottom part of it. There was a little slaughter space at the top of it where we could out the tooth the bees were emerging out of. It didn't work. This structure was placed on either water, or two fence posts in the field, and after a couple of years, we discovered that we were getting very few bees returning to this. And what it was is that the structure was too small for the bees to be able to orientate from, fly too far in the field, and be able to find its way. Back to its national home.

Speaker 1

The bead needed like. A big structure to see when they're out in these big Prairie landscapes to be able to come back home again.

Speaker 2

Yes, we have, we have a very sterile landscape, and a lot of our fields at that time were machine-leveled.

Speaker 1

There was not a lot to Orient. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2

They were featureless, they were flat and featureless, and this structure, 11 by 4 or 1 1/2 by 4 on top of fence post wasn't large enough for it to begin to home in on to return.

Speaker 1

Now you mentioned that what happened subsequently is that people found. That there was a value to this loose cell, that it came to be clear that the trouble of getting these bees out of those blocks was worth it. Can you describe how that how people realized that there was a lot of value in doing this?

Speaker 2

Well, a couple of things began to happen a little bit later in the industry, but probably the biggest value in southern Alberta was being able to protect the, you know, the insect and then to.

Speaker

Right from the.

Speaker 1

Winter, yeah.

Speaker 2

The moment where I, with its development, would coincide with the crop itself.

Speaker 1

Because when they're loose, you have a lot more control over their development. You can. Say ohh the crop is coming on and. You can start to incubate them just.

Speaker 2

Yes, 21 days before bloom.

Speaker 1

I think people to Mason Bees where the bees are almost fully developed. Developed, but this is not like leaf-cutting beef leaf leaf-cutting bees are more typical to some of our native bees. They are in a pre-pupil phase.

Speaker 2

Yes, that was there. They're in the dorm and, you know, we will either call it dormant lava, which it really is, and it is truly dormant. Pre-people storm at 45 to 50 degrees. Easily through six months of winter. I guess the Guinness World Book record on these is 22 months consecutively that way, but that that was trying to store a population of probably 50,000. And finally, the last. This one that was still living succumbed 22 months later after continuous storage at those temperatures.

Speaker 1

OK. Alright, so you've got them in cold storage and they're in this dormant per pupil stage and then you see the crops starting to develop and I guess this advantage of the loose cell is that you can work out how many days if you want bees to just pop out at 5% bloom or something you can work backward in time. Start your incubators get them fully developed and have this really perfect match between crops. Bloom and the beat, OK.

Speaker 2

Yeah, by, by, and in doing that at the same time before the bee arrives at the field in bloom, we've been able to get our equipment assembled into the field in this day and age, of course, we've tried, tried to make sure. We've got the right water on the crop to provide an ongoing bloom. We've taken care of any crop pass that would exist or did exist prior to the pollinators going out. Sort of thing, and in southern Alberta, we've also done a certain amount of Disease Control that way. You know getting equipment prepared or getting the bees out of the nesting material into storage and the equipment the hives prepared.

Speaker 1

OK.

Speaker 2

And next year is all part of the winter cycle. Highway and in the spring what we're doing is we're setting up the domiciles that the hives will go into, getting the hives into them, and then at the same time as that's going on, we have the loose cell developing and incubators manage temperature incubators that they'll be. Emerging about the same time as the alfalfa is coming.

Speaker 1

Well, and you mentioned the, the other thing you mentioned is the other reason for going to Lucelle in addition to this timing and this protection was that in the United States, people started to see a disease start the in the non-blue cell systems start to. Really causes damage.

Speaker 2

In this, in the solid core system, you know the genesis of this disease. I've never fully understood that there was quite a program down here in the late 70s and 80s that they were trying to figure out. When they call it. Aggregate is a case that basically describes a disease that was an amalgamation of two existing fungal diseases and then some other viruses coming all together to create a brand-new species, which manifested itself particularly. On this one pollinator. So, the slang term was chalk was chalkbrood, which made the pre-people look more like a hardened metal. Little coated money. Yeah, but if the greasy part of it was removed, it looked like a chalk cadaver underneath something so that seemed to have first started. Or I was aware of it first being detected? Down the in that same Lovelock area where the growers noticed they weren't getting sea yields, and then they began to realize that was because they were played, and they couldn't figure out what changed so quickly that this would happen. Later, biological studies of the disease would say that each infected cadaver could produce in excess of 100,100 thousand spores, but it would only take somewhere between 25 to 50. The germinating spores those in the stomach of a growing larva to kill that larva.

Speaker 1

So why did loose cell systems have any bearing on this whole disease?

Speaker 2

Well, one of the main reasons is that you were getting random deaths in the solid core system from the, from the disease in that whole tunnel length of B cells there, there would be one or two B's that at first succumb to this disease. And they basically had viable sport. Others attached them to the cadaver and emerging bees would have to chew through this cadaver.

Speaker 1

Oh, because it was in it's in those bees' way.

Speaker 2

Because they're trapped in the same tunnel and basically the bees had to chew their way through this cadaver in order to get out in the first place. Yes, they're sharp.

Speaker 1

When they get contaminated. Ohh, they're shot and. Then then, then it just spreads like wildfire through the population. Ohh, but if it's loose, then there's nobody's chewing through anybody's cell. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah. Well. No, no. In each area, theoretically, each B cell is emerging out into the open all on its own. Then the other thing that we saw would allow was more effective decontamination. Even though Mination was done by Bleach Bath, and it was iodine, bath, and stuff like that, we now use different gases we've seen.

Speaker 1

Well, that can penetrate in between the cells. Got you.

Speaker 2

Yes. Yeah. We can use gases to almost 100% clean up the any. Viable spores on the cells or the nesting material.

Speaker 1

OK, so all right. Thanks for that explanation. So, we're back to managing these bees. You've got these bees that are almost ready to emerge. They go out of big shelters, and having a big shelter rather than a small shelter really benefits things. And then what? The bees. Then they, I guess. They start to forge on.

Speaker 2

The alfalfa. Yeah, it's a very small insect. So, it prefers to forage very close to where it decides to make its home, usually upon emerging, whether it's a loose cell or however it kind of orientates itself to its surroundings. And then I see what's available for food resources that way. And then this orientation would be a little bit like a gyroscope thing or whatever it kind of knows where it came from. And it can sense its way back now it's got the food resources fairly close to them. It's such a small pollinator. It is usually within about a 400- and 5500-foot radius of where it's nesting. It could fly further than that. Some of them have been told that while we've seen instances where there are probably four and a half miles, being smaller pollinators, they literally fly themselves.

Speaker 1

Really. OK.

Speaker 2

To death, rather than not being able to pollinate as productively as they could have.

Speaker 1

So, it flies out and I guess it starts it must start with putting those leaves. Discs around the base of the cell must be how the IT all gets started.

Speaker 2

Well, actually, when you first emerge, it is orientated. Yeah, it's, its first item of importance is to fly out and get a stomach full of food. That way, in trying to do that, it has a large. Who has a rather large crowd of males waiting to meet with it that way once it's on waited, it only really needs to meet once or twice for the life. I can store the sperm from the meeting for its whole lifetime. So, I think that's where we'll fly back to where it came from, where it orientated. And pick a nesting site once it's marked and figured out its nesting site, that's where we'll go out and start looking for a weak material that it can cut into disc shape pieces and start fashioning a cup shape. Cell in which, as it begins on the on the on the bottom of the cup and then fuses the leaf pieces to the side at a certain length. That's when it decides that it will go out and start collecting pollen and nectar to basically put a food pack in the base of the cell. Which occupies about 1/3 of the length of the cell.

Speaker 1

And I guess it's just like plywood, it's wet and pliable when it goes in and. Then it just gets hard. They.

Speaker 2

Hardens over quite a period of time when it goes into its fresh green leaf material, so it's almost at 100% moisture. As you said it was. It's pliable and can be bent and fashioned the way it needs to be. And then when it dries out, that's when it begins to get its Christmas.

Speaker 1

So, I can't imagine that if I was making one of those things that have like pieces of, I don't know. Printer paper I just imagine it be a mess. Like, imagine everything. You know, making a tube out of little discs. I could just imagine that kind of curling up, and I don't know how they. Do it like it's.

Speaker 2

A pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah, that that's. Why do we use insects to do it? I mean this is. These are there. This is the part of their life cycle that they're not, that they're not by any understanding that we could look at and just say they're trying to determine what they're going to do in life. They're growing a program to produce.

Speaker 1

They're built for it.

Speaker 2

Progeny and provide for its progeny, even though it will never see this progeny, the B cells that they create, the pollen packs that they've placed in them, the egg that they lay on top when the egg hatches and feeds the pollen provisions the mother will never know. They are a progeny because it won't emerge until a year later.

Speaker 1

I like honeybees where the queen and the workers will be overlapping generations. Here you have these generations. One generation dies, the next. There's no overlap between the generations.

Speaker 2

Overlapping sort of thing and that's, you know, another definition of. Solitary bees.

Speaker 1

OK, so they'll use the alfalfa leaf, but you we were talking about earlier. They have some distinct preferences for leaf material.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I mean, alfalfa leaves are good. They're plentiful, and more natural leaves would be, let's say from the buckwheat family, be it wild, vine, Reed team, or buckwheat. Probably to the chagrin of some of the listeners, it does really well with rose petals, rose flower petals, the petals on the leaf that way, Columbine primarily the leaf of the.

Speaker 1

Oh, not the leaf. The petals and the. Leaf, so do.

Speaker 2

Power pedals. It's power pins.

Speaker 1

OK, good to Know. All right, all right, keep going.

Speaker 2

Columbine flowers.

Speaker

Round leaf meal.

Speaker 2

While we've modeled them, they won't clip the long leaf model to the point of control, but they will. With that, and then what we noticed about the nature of the bee a little bit later in life when it came to a new technological era, it was actually beginning to clip pieces of plastic and begin to build the B cells on them. Well, of course, the plastic, although pliable. When they're being clipped and brought in and fashioned into a cell, they never have any moisture in it or anything. So of course, it couldn't harden to any extent to protect the cocoon contained within this.

Speaker 1

How frequently do you see a cell with some plastic in it?

Speaker 2

One in. Maybe a million or so. What we notice is that one thing that distinguishes the nesting behavior of the female bee on this is that it sources leaf material. And remembers where that source is and will continue to go back to it until either it exhausts that source, or it starts coming to a point of that source that she no longer prefers it. And this is where we saw them beginning to use dry cleaner garment bags 711. Convenience store bags.

Speaker 1

So, it'll be all kinds of one cell.

Speaker 2

One cell may completely not just one cell need, but basically a cell line made out of this you can see up to five or more cells in in one line. May of this plastic material and in the nesting block.

Speaker 1

Series of them. Till the bank is gone.

Speaker 2

That this be as nested in. You may not encounter another cell. In 2700 holes you'll see the same thing. So, what triggered one female to pick this material? The growers in Walla Walla once had a project a number of years ago where they were hanging out flagging tape because they noticed that. Surveyors tape occasionally was clipped and they would see the odd. Dropped a piece of plastic as a leaf piece, well amongst all the other leaf pieces that were dropped in the domiciles.

Speaker 1

OK, well, that was a fascinating, fascinating, fascinating Side Story. Coming back to our bees, though. So, they that female is going to do. How many of these cells does she make? You know what? Time.

Speaker 2

What's well? The Guinness World Book record once again. So, anything that I ever encountered in there and written numbers was 39 cells. So, this would have probably been done by a female. That may not.

Speaker 1

Holy wow.

Speaker 2

Have had that. Are there any other nesting mates close by? You know, in a long enough structure that would accommodate these open gas lines on internal combustion engines or any other tubes like that could be subject to it and where she had plentiful supply still of both. Three pieces, as well as there's a bountiful continuous polar nectar supply.

Speaker 1

I guess the one thing I'm getting at is when you put up your nest blocks and you've got these this many cocoons, how many of those holes in there are they 6 inches?

Speaker 2

Actually, nowadays the standard in the industry is only three inches.

Speaker 1

OK, so they've got a three-inch hole. How many of these three-inch holes per cocoon per female are you trying to target to make sure that you don't have too many bees?

Speaker 2

Actually, I appreciate that. One of the things that impacts the sex ratio is the length of the tunnel. The shorter tunnels that we are using will normally dictate that maybe 1/3 of all the cells that are made at the base of the.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 2

The tunnel will be females and then everything on top will be males.

Speaker 1

Why do you want so many meals?

Speaker 2

Well, ideally, we don't, but probably because of the light penetration at the front of the tunnel, the female realizes this and starts making male cells to finish up the tunnel.

Speaker 1

Wait a second. If you wanted more females, wouldn't you go for a longer? So why have people got shorter jobs in the industry?

Speaker 2

You have tunnels. OK, the main reason was that we're using the artificial medium expanded upon the plastic. That way it doesn't conduct moisture. So, we're bringing leaf pieces in at 100%. Any of the people ever been involved in hay production, stuff like that, you're always waiting for hay or straw to dry down to a certain amount before you begin to try compressing it.

Speaker 1

So, you'd like it to be longer, but you can't because you won't. The back won't get dry.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, it will happen as the central sales will begin to mold and heat. And then and then they just rot and destroy themselves to both ends.

Speaker 1

Darn. OK, OK. So, if you had a wooden old wooden one.

Speaker 2

Are wooden tunnels wooden tunnels? You are. We used to manufacture them all the way up to 9 inches long. And then there we'd start seeing a female, our larger female population extending into 5055%, almost 60%.

Speaker 1

OK. All right. So, you've got to come back to this question that will back up out of that Gopher hole. Now we've got. So, you're looking at how many, how many cells, how many just if listeners are out there trying to do this themselves, how many?

Speaker 2

In the the three-inch depth total, you're going to end up with anywhere from 6 to in a completed tunnel, you'll end up with six to 8B cells most of the time there might be a ninth one that way, but 6 to 8 would be in the normal range.

Speaker 1

So, you want three of those holes per female then?

Speaker 2

Well, well. That would be ideal. That way in commercial operations, we're usually running too. We have so many bees nesting side by side in such large concentrations, that there's enough interference between the bees and such.

Speaker 1

OK. OK.

Speaker 2

, usually, 22 tunnels might be all that any female might be able to complete in a lifetime.

Speaker 1

OK. OK. All right. So, we're at the end of the season, the tunnels, everything is full up with these cocoons. And I guess unlike Mason bees, where? We don't. We never really give consideration to the drying of the mud. Here you've got a big job drying out this leaf material. How's that done?

Speaker 2

Well, some of it's already occurred out in the field because of the length of the tunnel, the base end of the tunnel is usually on a fibrous product of quilt, batting, or whatever, and then we'll have a plywood or something else like that to get there. So, at the base, it'll look away. Well, anticipate looking away to a certain extent through the middle and the end of the tunnel. It will dissipate at a rate of well. Enough that we won't. We won't see mold and disintegration within the cell line that way. To get them to drive better for later in the season. Operation there. We're separating the cell lines. The B cells from the nesting medium. Normally we'll strip off the backs and let everything stand. To harden and dry for anywhere from 4 to 10 weeks. That way, and then when we're ready to punch because we have such a larger population of male cells at the front end of the tunnels and us.

Speaker 1

You punch from the front.

Speaker 2

On the floor. OK. We will see some extraction or cell damage to the mail account, but most of the females will be OK though they'll slip out faster and easily.

Speaker 1

OK. Thanks, brother. OK. So, you talked about punching and so this is something I think for Mason to beat people, they don't quite understand this. Scale of how the extraction takes place. Describe to us how these big Styrofoam blocks are like they're not. We're used to what you called corrugated in Mason Bees where you take the block. You separate the pieces, and you go in with a screwdriver and do one channel at a time. Scraping them. This is not how it works. First of all, I guess they're not corrugated. It's one solid block with the front and the.

Speaker 2

Back. Yeah, we, are a number of years ago we transitioned from having corrugated panels forming together to form 30 holes per roll to styrene blocks. That would still be 30 per roll. Now we have punching machines that are basically pinned machines that will push the B cell lines out from the front to the back with the backs. Food. They'll do 30 to 90 holes or one to three rows at a time.

Speaker 1

Wow, so you've got a bunch of them.

Speaker 2

When you're fortunate.

Speaker 1

These fingers just. Put this stuff has dried. It's been kind of separated a little. And then you put, you just take these fingers and they just, like, push through the holes and just push everything. Out everything gets. The way may get a little hurt.

Speaker 2

And you know, basics, you could say each finger. Maybe we'll do a saline per second. A little bit faster.

Speaker 1

Wow, OK.

Speaker 2

So, they move fairly fast. You know that? See, that seems to be the efficiency level of the machinery. Try. Try trying to preserve as many live B cells as possible.

Speaker 1

OK. And then I guess those cocoons go into cold storage and you sanitize the blocks and the whole thing just continues after that.

Speaker 2

That's part of part that's part of the winter to early spring mid-spring. That way, and then you've left the B cells in bulk in the storage and the in-temperature control at 45 to 50 degrees when it's set. When it's time to coordinate it with crop development. Take the many containers for your storage and then put them into these incubation structures trays. To start warming them up and start the pupation. Unlike the solitary bees, the Mason bees that you deal with are 21 days on average at 18 to 21 days from being ready to emerge and fly as adults.

Speaker 1

As opposed to Mason Bee, which is like ready to go as soon as you bring it. It went up to temperature.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

OK. Well, let's break and we'll come back. And I have got two additional questions I want to ask you. And we're back. OK. So, I just want to be real. Quick about this I. Know you guys, I want you guys to get out of here before then. The football game starts. I wanted to ask you.

Speaker 2

Well, we have nothing against football. We, we are, we are Canadians, we like NFL football.

Speaker 1

No, no, I know. And we have our football. OK, I meant more for navigating out of here, but so leaf-cutting bees. We've talked about alfalfa, but they are not just bees that can be used for pollinating alfalfa. They are what I remember when I did my PhD work in Nova Scotia. There was a producer out there that was using them on blueberries, lowbush blueberry tells us a little bit about some of the crops that alfalfa leaf-cutting bees can use to pollinate.

Speaker 2

That they are going to be can go to other crops, but it was an insect that basically evolved along with alfalfa in Eurasia back in the early or late BC or whatever the developer of health. That way, it moved wherever the alfalfa was moved. But when we brought it to North America, we were able to start experimenting or noticing it was on different crops. So. And the only year as mentioned that. You have seen them on the blueberries in Western Canada. We have been using them to pollinate hybrid canola seed for and crossing of the generations too. Produce a commercial. For sale, we also, suspect that we will be able to use them on cranberries. Coriander. We've seen them on coriander, and we're suspecting that, well, they've been sold. We used to pollinate both from early breed crossing of onions, not so successfully, but garlic also.

Speaker 1

Well, and I.

Speaker 2

That way, and a couple of our different clovers.

Speaker 1

I guess the thing about this bee is that in some ways when we think about solitary bees for some of us who've only worked with Mason bees, you know, it's a bee that you can't really. Get it in. Numbers are relatively expensive, but this is not the case. Leaf-cutting beans you can get in very large numbers at a very affordable cost.

Speaker 2

You know, you know, our industries have seen ups and downs right now right now, probably because of the primary crop that it's used on, the alfalfa seed. There's a, there's a glut of inventory of alfalfa seed. And so, where it's not required to replace pollinator numbers in the US, there's so much in Canada per se. That's one thing we should distinguish is that in Canada, we are still producing 2 crops per acre on a lot of our alfalfa seed. Fields the alpha the leaf cutter sometimes be a silver lining for the income that we can expect for the lack of demand for the pollinator. We've seen it drop off in value quite considerably. Just three. Years ago, the value on a per BB basis was anywhere from 1.1 to 1 1/2 cents per cocoa. And these days it's probably more in line to say .15 to .8 quarter cent per cocoon.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 1

So, tell us what kind of crop? So, this seems like a great opportunity for Oregon. We have 220 different crops in the state. There are a lot of different crops that could be used by leaf-cutting bees. What kind of crop is well suited? And what kind of crop is not well suited to these bees? I imagine early spring crops. This bee probably is not the.

Speaker 2

Best, but we've got to be all beat as long as it's spent in North America and then where it came across in the northern or the northern Mediterranean countries, it's still an insect that's. Temperature dependent it's start up working. The temperature is between 68 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So, a lot of spring earlier spring blooming crops aren't going to work for it, and that's where we've seen even with alfalfa seed management, we've had to wait until later, May, June in the US before they are able to release them to start them on alfalfa seed. So, if you use alternative seeds, it would be better at the end of June. Well, when you know you have consistency. Flying temperatures. A number of consistent flying temperatures above 70, well preferably 75 to 80 degrees with nights. Maybe not much cooler than 60 degrees. Then. Then you'll get your highest activity. That's your highest minimum.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 2

Activity startup on leafcutter bees will remain active pollinators all the way up to about 105 degrees Fahrenheit in direct sunlight. That way, after that, maybe like honeybees, they'll seek shelter and I'll wait for a little bit cooler temperature.

Speaker 1

Oh, uh-huh. OK, that's great. And I met. For us, a lot of our vegetable seeds, this is going to. This can be real. The hybrid vegetable seed production seems to be the same kind of temperature that seems like a good fit for these kinds of industries. And the last question I have. For you before rush you out the door. It just tells us a little bit about some of the trends in the alfalfa industry. Told us that recently, alfalfa seed has come down in price quite a bit. What's driving these trends? Just give us a little snapshot of what's probably. Seems from all the all the time I've dealt with alfalfa seed; that it's always been in some kind of cycle, and it goes up and down.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. For right now, we're on the down cycle. We're at the bottom of the trough. Some of that's impacted by what has been happening generally across North America in weather cycles when people are planting alfalfa. Seed in the Midwest to going east, they want to know that they got the right conditions to get in. We missed a large planting window this year because it was too wet for too long in the east, and when the farmers finally could get on their fields, their greatest fear was that it was too late in the season that it could get dry too quickly. But the alfalfa wouldn't be able to establish itself, so they just didn't buy as much seed. That way we can produce seed pretty consistently on a per acre or on the 10s of thousands of acres that are producing seed in the western north. America. But the planting of it and the value of the seed that is being planted and the amount the grower, the growers want to know that they're that activities are occurring at a time when their investment is safest so. We have been overproducing alfalfa seed. We've been missing planting windows. We have a large, we have an abundance of alfalfa seed in North America, greater than two years' supply at this point. And it's been that way for about this has. Been the third. Here is that that we've just gone through. So, the companies are basically cutting down their production acres. Most of the performance seed that is available in the market goes through the seed production companies and processor distributors. Sort of thing. So, it's a little bit higher valued seed. They're looking at it, saying they're carrying inventories. They want to try getting the production of the seed so that we're not producing just a little bit less than what's being sold for the next couple of years and until we can get more of an alignment of production to demand.

Speaker 1

Great. Well, thanks for that little. A snapshot of the industry I do want to get you guys on your way. Thanks for dropping in here to Corvallis and thanks for being a guest on pollination.

Speaker 2

It was great. Being here was great seeing the facilities at. Corvallis and it was enlightening to hear about the program and the dedication that the people of Oregon are putting into looking at all pollinators.

Speaker 1

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. The show is produced by Quinn Sin and Neil, who's a student here at OSU. In the new media communications program. And the show wouldn't. It would even be possible without the support of the Oregon legislature, the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, and Western. There show notes with links mentioned on each episode are available on the website [email protected]. I also love hearing from you, and there's several ways to connect with me. 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 the 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 seeing. You next week.