Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: conserving both. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to learn about one of the most vital
Speaker 1: but commonly overlooked elements of our ecosystem, pollinators. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're sitting there thinking, man, that sounds awful lot like
Speaker 1: a beehive, well then I would say to you, that's
Speaker 1: a keen ear you got there, because it is definitely
Speaker 1: a beehive. And if you're also sitting there thinking it
Speaker 1: sure sounds like that, dude's awful close to it, then
Speaker 1: I would say, well, you might as well be an
Speaker 1: NHL goalie, because nothing's getting past you today. I am
Speaker 1: indeed very close to it. It's a beautiful mid July morning,
Speaker 1: roughly seven thirty am, and I am on a mission
Speaker 1: to learn more about pollinators and their vital role in
Speaker 1: our wild ecosystems. And I thought to myself, what better
Speaker 1: way to do that than get some hands on experience
Speaker 1: with the most widely known pollinator in all the land,
Speaker 1: the honey beee.
Speaker 2: So this is a this is a frame that you
Speaker 2: at hardest okay, because it is one hundred percent cap.
Speaker 1: Luckily for me, I didn't have to look far to
Speaker 1: get this experience. The mother of my wife's lifelong best friend,
Speaker 1: Miss Linda Easterling, has been beekeeping for the better part
Speaker 1: of a decade, and she was nice enough to have
Speaker 1: me over one morning, lend me a beekeeping suit and
Speaker 1: give me a crash course in this unique hobby.
Speaker 2: So when the nectar that they put in the seals
Speaker 2: is ready, they cap.
Speaker 3: It has to be a certain.
Speaker 2: Water content to it.
Speaker 3: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: When that wonderful content drops, then lay it's ready to cap.
Speaker 2: They know somebody's in the hive, so they are starting
Speaker 2: to store. They're loading up on honey in case something
Speaker 2: happens to their house.
Speaker 3: I see, sir, now, I don't know.
Speaker 2: How you can feel it with love hands.
Speaker 1: Miss Linda and I just opened up a beehive and
Speaker 1: now she is showing me a honeysuper that is ready
Speaker 1: to harvest. You'll be able to see this interaction fully
Speaker 1: on the YouTube video, but for my audio only listeners,
Speaker 1: imagine a rectangular box lined across with wooden slats that
Speaker 1: maybe have an inch spacing between each of them. These
Speaker 1: wooden slats are honeysupers. They match the box's length and
Speaker 1: depth and essentially provide framing for the bees to make
Speaker 1: and store honey. We pulled a fully capped super to
Speaker 1: get a closer look. The most shocking thing for me
Speaker 1: holding this in my hands, you know, besides the hundreds
Speaker 1: of bees flying around my head, was the weight of it.
Speaker 1: An empty Honeysuper weighs maybe three to four pounds, but
Speaker 1: this fully capped honeysuper weigh closer to thirty pounds. These
Speaker 1: bees had been busy, pun very much intended.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I would not expect it to be that heavy. Yea.
Speaker 2: So it's here. Isn't that amazing? How that's and since
Speaker 2: I am kind of messed it up a little bit,
Speaker 2: they're on your microphone too, you hear some jim buzzen.
Speaker 3: That's what I was hoping for.
Speaker 1: Can I Can I take this and hold it in
Speaker 1: front of the camera there?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, tostally honey honey production.
Speaker 3: Yea, easier to see the breard and that box.
Speaker 2: Go to that box.
Speaker 1: Once we get through looking at this full honeysuper, Miss
Speaker 1: Linda wants to show me a different, smaller hive that
Speaker 1: will have much less honey production and will allow us
Speaker 1: to see the brood. It was when we went to
Speaker 1: the next time that we had a little bit of excitement.
Speaker 2: That's the part and make people nervous when they're coming
Speaker 2: up with your veil, your kind.
Speaker 3: Of get seeded. One's in my veil.
Speaker 1: This then weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna back up and let her out.
Speaker 1: Yep, you heard that correctly. A single bee has broken
Speaker 1: the force field and is now inside the veil of
Speaker 1: my bee suit. Thankfully, Miss Linda walked me through what
Speaker 1: to do in case this very thing happens. I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to back away from the hive, pull open my veil
Speaker 1: and calmly waft the bee out of there without getting stung.
Speaker 1: Is the key part of all this. Let's see how
Speaker 1: this goes.
Speaker 3: We're still down there. Yeah, if she hadn't stung me,
Speaker 3: come on, sweet to get out of there.
Speaker 1: She's right there.
Speaker 3: Say her bread.
Speaker 1: Here, I thought.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, you can't relate.
Speaker 1: Despite our best attempts, we just can't seem to get
Speaker 1: this single bee to fly back out. And at that
Speaker 1: point is when we get another little dose of excitement.
Speaker 2: Won't chip almost has another one getting in now that
Speaker 2: one just got eat right right, turgoes wanting, but there
Speaker 2: goes one day.
Speaker 1: Then, unbeknownst to us, a few bees followed me over
Speaker 1: when I backed away from the hive, and when I
Speaker 1: opened the veil of my face mask up to let
Speaker 1: the bee out, more flew in. At one point I
Speaker 1: had three bees inside of my face net at once,
Speaker 1: and I am more than happy to report that I
Speaker 1: managed to get out of this small snaffoo with zero stings.
Speaker 1: The key component to all of this was just staying calm.
Speaker 1: Small side mission of this episode. I will always and
Speaker 1: forever have a soft spot for critters that are often misunderstood.
Speaker 1: And while the main premise of this episode is to
Speaker 1: explain why pollinators are of crucial importance to our landscape,
Speaker 1: I also want to rid the mindset of every bee
Speaker 1: U se is on a mission to sting you. They
Speaker 1: most definitely are not. At one point, one of those
Speaker 1: three bees landing right on top of my ear and
Speaker 1: it's still withheld fire. I think my point proves itself.
Speaker 1: I spent the rest of the time with Miss Linda,
Speaker 1: with no more bees inside my head net and taking
Speaker 1: a look into the rest of the bee hives. That
Speaker 1: she had on her property. And let me tell you,
Speaker 1: if you ever get to experience what I experienced that morning,
Speaker 1: you'll never wonder again where common terms like busy as
Speaker 1: a bee or that person's a regular worker bee comes from.
Speaker 1: These hives are constant work in motion, bees making and capping,
Speaker 1: honey bees constantly flying in and out of the hive.
Speaker 1: One of the coolest parts was watching some of the
Speaker 1: bees fly back into the hive with visible poland that
Speaker 1: they had collected and brought back to work for them.
Speaker 1: Really never stops. Big shout out to Miss Linda Easterling
Speaker 1: for giving me such a cool experience. If any of
Speaker 1: y'all ever get the chance to tag along with the
Speaker 1: bee keeper, I promise you it's worth your time. But
Speaker 1: let's zoom out on all of this. You may be
Speaker 1: sitting there wondering why I'm making such a big deal
Speaker 1: about pollinators and honey bees in particular. You've probably heard
Speaker 1: people mention that pollinators are important, but have you ever
Speaker 1: heard the ants than as to why. I've learned over
Speaker 1: the years that in many areas of wildlife and habitat management,
Speaker 1: the smaller the organism is, the easier it seems to
Speaker 1: be for us to overlook it, regardless of how important
Speaker 1: of a role it plays. So sit back, turn the
Speaker 1: volume up a notch, and listen in because you're about
Speaker 1: to learn how vital these little bugs are to not
Speaker 1: just our wildlife and wild places, but to our own
Speaker 1: health as well. I promised you this. At the very least,
Speaker 1: by the end of this episode, you'll never feel the
Speaker 1: same about going and picking up a jar of honey,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Sarah Dant is an American historian that
Speaker 1: specializes in the environmental history of the American West. She's
Speaker 1: also a distinguished professor and experienced beekeeper, and the author
Speaker 1: of one of my new favorite books, Losing Eden. Truly,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating read. Y'all should check it out. I
Speaker 1: want to open up the conversation with Professor Sarah Dant
Speaker 1: coming right out the gate with the fact about honey
Speaker 1: bees that most people don't know and are very surprised
Speaker 1: to learn.
Speaker 3: Honey bees in particular are unique. There were no native
Speaker 3: colony building bees in the Americas prior to the arrival
Speaker 3: of Europeans. You know, you do have like small groups
Speaker 3: of bumblebees. They tend to live, but only in groups
Speaker 3: of like ten or fifteen. Nothing like the big honey
Speaker 3: producing palm building chives and colonies that you see with
Speaker 3: honey bees. Those are European bees that came over with Europeans.
Speaker 1: I'm sure y'all heard that the first time, but just
Speaker 1: in case you didn't, or you need to hear it
Speaker 1: again for the sake of making sure you heard it right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to repeat it for y'all. Honey Bees one
Speaker 1: of the most famous insects in the entire country, one
Speaker 1: of the few bugs that proliferate themselves in American pop
Speaker 1: culture by being mentioned in nursery rhymes, folklore, and song lyrics.
Speaker 1: Are not native to America. So how did they get here?
Speaker 1: Did the European settlers bring them here? On purpose?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? They did, absolutely brought bees. Because you think about it,
Speaker 3: some of the most addictive substances that we know of
Speaker 3: are sugar and salt, and sugar is not naturally occurring
Speaker 3: in any kind of great quantity commodity in the natural world.
Speaker 3: It's one of the reasons we crave it because it's
Speaker 3: such a great source of energy, and we forget that nowadays.
Speaker 3: You know, with high fruit toase, corn syrup and Halloween
Speaker 3: and soda pop and McDonald's, we forget that if you
Speaker 3: think about it, in nature, sugar is really rare. And
Speaker 3: so when people I mean, and we're talking about people
Speaker 3: as far back as Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, they're
Speaker 3: cultivating bees because bees make honey, and honey is delicious,
Speaker 3: and if sugar is a rare commodity, then you want
Speaker 3: to do whatever you can to facilitate your access to it.
Speaker 3: So when Europeans came to the Americas, starting with the Pilgrims,
Speaker 3: are really who we think are one of the first
Speaker 3: groups to bring honey bees with them. Absolutely, they deliberately
Speaker 3: brought them because they wanted to bring with them that wonderful,
Speaker 3: rare source of sugar. But bees being bees, they swarmed
Speaker 3: and moved away from human habitation into the wild. So
Speaker 3: you have both. You have wild bees and you have
Speaker 3: kept domestic bees by colonists, and they're so successful that
Speaker 3: native people actually call them English flies because they absolutely
Speaker 3: associated the presence of honeybees with the arrival of Europeans.
Speaker 1: That really is some wild information we just got there.
Speaker 1: Humans have been colonizing bees for the collection of honey
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, with evidence dating back to the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians. Bees were so successful when they were brought
Speaker 1: to the Americas by the European settlers that native Americans
Speaker 1: referred to them as English flies. And here's one factor
Speaker 1: I want to focus on next. In that last bit,
Speaker 1: you heard Professor Dant use the term swarming. Her exact
Speaker 1: words were they swarmed and moved away from human habitation.
Speaker 1: That fact is very important to the whole point of
Speaker 1: this story. And let's break down the many reasons why
Speaker 1: a swarm of bees is oftentimes brought up in a
Speaker 1: negative connotation, usually associated with people getting attacked, stone and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other horrors, when in fact, bees swarms
Speaker 1: serve a very specific purpose that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with such horrors, and I think we should learn what
Speaker 1: that actually is.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that I think some people
Speaker 3: may be familiar with is a bee swarm and why
Speaker 3: do bees swarm? What does it mean? All of that?
Speaker 3: To me, that's that's really interesting, and it's it's one
Speaker 3: of the for me, it was always one of the
Speaker 3: great teaching moments when I would get a call for
Speaker 3: a swarm, because actually what I did was I gave
Speaker 3: my name and number to a couple of pest control
Speaker 3: companies and the nine one one people, because people would
Speaker 3: either call them and say, oh my god, you're gonna
Speaker 3: come spray these bees, or they would call nine one one,
Speaker 3: oh my god, we were being invaded. And fortunately all
Speaker 3: those groups would say, okay, let me give you somebody
Speaker 3: a call, and so I would I would go out
Speaker 3: and get the swarm. And it was a great opportunity
Speaker 3: to interact with people who were completely freaked out that
Speaker 3: there was this big wad of bees in the tree
Speaker 3: in their yard and here's this girl with no gloves
Speaker 3: on and a veil just kind of walk out there
Speaker 3: in jeans and not freak out at all with efty
Speaker 3: thousand bees buzzing around, and yeah, it sort of makes
Speaker 3: you feel like superhero. So what happens is in a hive,
Speaker 3: they'll get really two crowded. They've been successful, they're too
Speaker 3: many bees in a hive. They need to split up.
Speaker 3: So the queen that's in the hive will take a
Speaker 3: portion of the bees and they'll fly usually somewhere within
Speaker 3: one hundred yards or so of the hive itself. So
Speaker 3: when you see a big, you know, basketball of bees,
Speaker 3: what you're seeing is solid bees, and in the middle
Speaker 3: is the queen. They're all around her. She's in the middle,
Speaker 3: and they're just hanging out, usually literally in a tree,
Speaker 3: and they've got scouts going out all over the kind
Speaker 3: of side looking for a new home. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: in the hive, they have started the process of making
Speaker 3: a new queen. And you have to feed baby bees
Speaker 3: a certain substance called royal jelly, and if you keep
Speaker 3: feeding it to them, don't grow into queens. You can
Speaker 3: only have one queen in a hive, and so whicheverone
Speaker 3: comes out first, goes through the hive, finds every other
Speaker 3: ges stating queen and kills her. So I'm number one
Speaker 3: and that's it, and then she becomes the new queen.
Speaker 3: But at that point she's infertile. So the swarm is
Speaker 3: up in the tree with the original queen, a lot
Speaker 3: of bees, and at this point they're they're most vulnerable.
Speaker 3: They're also pretty easy to manipulate because they don't have
Speaker 3: anything to lose except the queen. So if you've ever
Speaker 3: seen the thing where somebody does like a beard of bees,
Speaker 3: that's what they're doing. They're messing around with a swarm
Speaker 3: they don't have a hive, they don't have honey, they
Speaker 3: don't have brood, they have nothing that they need to protect.
Speaker 3: So they're up in a tree. They've got scouts going
Speaker 3: out looking for a good place to go. And when
Speaker 3: one of the scouts comes back and says, I found it.
Speaker 3: This is the place. Bring them young, like, this is
Speaker 3: the place we got to go, then they all fly
Speaker 3: and so if you've ever seen a swarm, it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 3: In a tree, they're just kind of up there like
Speaker 3: a basketball. But then when they decide to go, they
Speaker 3: all go, and the din is incredible. It's really loud.
Speaker 3: They're all moving, and then they'll be gone. So the
Speaker 3: moral of that story is if you see a swarm,
Speaker 3: you don't have to panic because they're not gonna stay.
Speaker 3: They're looking for a new place and that the most
Speaker 3: they're gonna be there for two or three days. They
Speaker 3: don't have food, they don't have water. They're sending people
Speaker 3: out to get that, but they don't have that, so
Speaker 3: their motivation is to find a new house.
Speaker 1: Important honey bee fact number one, and it's mainly tied
Speaker 1: to a function bees swarm when they're trying to move
Speaker 1: to a new home or a new hive might be
Speaker 1: a better term. And we heard earlier that bees were
Speaker 1: so successful when brought to the Americas that they swarmed
Speaker 1: and left places of human habitation. And here's why that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Think briefly back to the last episode on Mississippi Black Bears, right,
Speaker 1: Remember the historical record we read from the book by
Speaker 1: James T. McCafferty. It had a documented Delta pioneer making
Speaker 1: use of wild honey in the eighteen hundreds. Think about
Speaker 1: that for a second. I don't know about y'all, but
Speaker 1: that leads me to ask the question, how quickly can
Speaker 1: these tiny bugs spread?
Speaker 3: Probably the Pilgrims bring bees with them. I don't think
Speaker 3: the Spanish conquesitors did, who would have come before that.
Speaker 3: But the first Pilgrims come in Jamestown is in the
Speaker 3: early sixteen hundreds, and we do know that by the
Speaker 3: eighteen fifties their bees in California. So it just does
Speaker 3: not take very long at all for them to move,
Speaker 3: and to move pretty efficiently and quickly across the continent.
Speaker 1: Not only is a swarm the bees function for spreading,
Speaker 1: but it's an incredibly efficient function for spreading By that
Speaker 1: quick math. It means that honey bees managed to cover
Speaker 1: the entire country from east to west in around two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years time. And when you think about
Speaker 1: how tiny those bugs are, that's quite an impressive feat.
Speaker 1: But now we have to address why that's important.
Speaker 3: I think the way we could sort of sum up
Speaker 3: what we're going to talk about here today is like this,
Speaker 3: pollinators need you, and you need pollinators. When we're talking
Speaker 3: about pollinators, we're talking about a really broad group of
Speaker 3: insects and even small mammals, of which bees are certainly
Speaker 3: but you know, bats are pollinators, birds are pollinators, there's bees,
Speaker 3: there's other kinds of insects, all kinds of animals pollinate.
Speaker 3: They are so essential and that basic service that they
Speaker 3: provide accounts for one out of every three bytes of
Speaker 3: food that one of us takes. So you think about
Speaker 3: that the next time you're at a meal and you go, okay,
Speaker 3: one bite of food, two bye of food, third bite,
Speaker 3: you have to say thank you pollinator. Every third byte
Speaker 3: of food you have to be saying, man, thank you pollinator.
Speaker 3: That's how essential they are to the world around us.
Speaker 3: And they're not charismatic megafonn it you know. So if
Speaker 3: you get an elk or a bear or something like that,
Speaker 3: people want to type it this is a bug, and
Speaker 3: it's a bug that stings you sometimes. So it's one
Speaker 3: of those really essential things that people just k a
Speaker 3: take for granted that Well, of course I have fruits
Speaker 3: and vegetables and various cooking oils, and you don't ever
Speaker 3: really stop to think, so what made that possible? And
Speaker 3: the answer is if it came from something that flowers
Speaker 3: or makes seeds, it needed a pollinator to make that happen.
Speaker 3: You need pollinators because without them, suddenly most of the
Speaker 3: food in the world is going to get shut off.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we now know that honeybees and all pollinators
Speaker 1: are important to us, and it truly affects everything facilitating
Speaker 1: plant reproduction, food reproduction, agriculture, biodiversity, wild plant success, and
Speaker 1: ecosystem health. As you can imagine, this affects a whole lot,
Speaker 1: from something as large as row crop yields to something
Speaker 1: as specific as the deer hunting quality on your property.
Speaker 1: And that's no joke. But here's where the story or
Speaker 1: it gets deeper and more nuanced. You already, I hope.
Speaker 1: So because we're diving in. One of the first big
Speaker 1: and interesting facts we learned about honeybees is that they
Speaker 1: were not a native species to North America. And most
Speaker 1: of the time, not always, but most of the time,
Speaker 1: when you hear a story about an exotic species being
Speaker 1: brought to North America, it commonly ends with a negative outcome.
Speaker 1: But that's not the case with honeybees. And why is that.
Speaker 3: Made of pollinators in particular have been suffering for the
Speaker 3: last one hundred years. I would say a lot of
Speaker 3: that has to do with again development, agricultural expansion. You
Speaker 3: used to pesticides and other kinds of poisons. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's really hard when the plants that they evolve to
Speaker 3: pollinate are not there, not there because we we've mowed
Speaker 3: them down, we've plowed over them, we've paved over them,
Speaker 3: or you know, again going back to this idea of
Speaker 3: climate change, as the earth warms up, we're seeing plant
Speaker 3: regimes moving. And when those plant regimes move, the pollinators
Speaker 3: don't necessarily know to go with them. It's it may
Speaker 3: be too far to fly, it may be all of
Speaker 3: those things. And if it's warming, sometimes those plants are
Speaker 3: blooming earlier than they used to before the pollinator has
Speaker 3: typically whatever hatched out or moved into the area. So
Speaker 3: we have these miskined bloom and fertilization issues that are
Speaker 3: the consequence of climate change. And again we don't even
Speaker 3: think about those kinds of things. But several species of
Speaker 3: native bumblebees, for example, have declined in geographic range and
Speaker 3: their numbers in the last twenty years. I think I
Speaker 3: talked about in my book. For Western states now no
Speaker 3: longer have bumblebees. Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon they
Speaker 3: don't have bumblebees. Bumblebees were native to the Americas prior
Speaker 3: to the arrival of Europeans. Now they're gone completely in
Speaker 3: those states, and that matters because the native plants that
Speaker 3: they co evolved with now don't have this fundamentally important
Speaker 3: elevator to go with them. And so honey bees, in particular,
Speaker 3: the number of highs in the America is just, you know,
Speaker 3: to sort of ball park it. Between the nineteen forties
Speaker 3: and now, the number of managed hives has dropped by
Speaker 3: about half. And that's in part because it's really straining
Speaker 3: to be a bee keeper, even a hobby bee keeper.
Speaker 3: Since about two thousand and six, as I wrote about
Speaker 3: in my book, there is this phenomenon that scientists called
Speaker 3: colony collapse disorder or CCD, and they're mystified by it,
Speaker 3: not quite sure what causes it. Is it pathogens, is
Speaker 3: it parasites, Is it pesticides? But and we don't know.
Speaker 3: It could be again this kind of perfect storm of
Speaker 3: all of them coming together. But what it means is
Speaker 3: that every year, on the order of one third to
Speaker 3: one half and sometimes as much as seventy five percent
Speaker 3: of domestic bee hives don't make it every year. And
Speaker 3: it's it just breaks your heart. You know, you go out,
Speaker 3: you work your bees. One week in Likember, the hive
Speaker 3: is thriving. You've got brood, you've got a queen, they've
Speaker 3: got honey. Everything is good. And two weeks later to
Speaker 3: go out to check on your high and there's nothing there.
Speaker 3: They're just gone. And they can't leave in late September,
Speaker 3: that's not when they swarm. They're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to make a hive, gather enough food get themselves
Speaker 3: through the winter. So they're all going to die. But
Speaker 3: they don't die at your hives. They're just they're just gone.
Speaker 1: So why are we so focused in celebrating the success
Speaker 1: of the honeybee, a non native insect, because our native
Speaker 1: pollinators have been severely depleted. Some studies show up to
Speaker 1: one fifth of our North American pollinators and an elevated
Speaker 1: risk of extinction. And honey bees aren't exactly thriving right
Speaker 1: now either. So what are the implications of this? Is
Speaker 1: there anything we can do to combat it? And honestly,
Speaker 1: why isn't it being talked about more? I run into this,
Speaker 1: especially also when we were talking about quail. It does
Speaker 1: seem like, you know, talking about it being you know,
Speaker 1: them not being charismagmatic megafauna. There has to be some
Speaker 1: sort of connection there, because it's like the smaller the object,
Speaker 1: the smaller it seems in like objective life, Like there's
Speaker 1: not people interacting with honey bees or bumble bees every day,
Speaker 1: and so they're easy to forget about because they're so small,
Speaker 1: and it's not it's not all the time in front
Speaker 1: of us how beneficial they are to us in our environment.
Speaker 1: And the thing is like one of the biggest eye
Speaker 1: opening things for me and I even you know, I
Speaker 1: knew what pollinators were. I knew that bees played a
Speaker 1: huge role in our ecosystem, and an ecosystem, health and
Speaker 1: native plans. But I other think for me was being
Speaker 1: able to actually see it right. And the first time
Speaker 1: that I saw it was a place that I get
Speaker 1: to go to just about every year in South Florida,
Speaker 1: in the Mayaka Prairie. And man, it's gonna sound like
Speaker 1: I'm indulging the story a little bit. When you go
Speaker 1: to a place like that, like they like they have bees,
Speaker 1: they produce honey off that's called my Aka Prairie honey.
Speaker 1: My friends at black Beard's Ranch put it out. It's
Speaker 1: it's great stuff, obviously, but it's not just the bees.
Speaker 1: Like that whole area like is permeated and it's just
Speaker 1: teeming with life. The plants. There's gopher tortoises, there's turkeys,
Speaker 1: there's ephemeral wetlands, and there's ducks in there. There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of water birds and it just all like congruently
Speaker 1: works with one another. The instant issue that I see
Speaker 1: there is I'm like, man, I know what this does
Speaker 1: to me when I see it, But you can't how
Speaker 1: do you get everybody to see that? You can't walk
Speaker 1: everybody in the world, and everybody that dwells in the
Speaker 1: cities and everybody that doesn't know this stuff, you can't
Speaker 1: walk them out to a prayer like that and go see.
Speaker 1: I wish you could, but you can't.
Speaker 3: Well, and I think you're onto a really important idea
Speaker 3: and it's something that you know. I certainly see that
Speaker 3: you're doing with this entire podcast, which is people care
Speaker 3: about what they know, but sometimes they don't know what
Speaker 3: to pay attention to and why what they see might matter.
Speaker 3: And so when people can know more about something as
Speaker 3: simple as a honeybee or a pollinator bee, then this
Speaker 3: start looking for it. And once you pay attention, you
Speaker 3: see it. It's like when you learn a new word
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, oh my god, the
Speaker 3: thing is everywhere. It's just that you weren't paying attention before.
Speaker 3: And so the great thing about pollinators and honey bees
Speaker 3: in particulars you can see them anywhere. You can see
Speaker 3: them out on a prairie, you can see him right
Speaker 3: in downtown where you are, and if you don't see them,
Speaker 3: that ought to be a good indicator that something's off here.
Speaker 3: Bees and pollinators in general are really good ecosystem indicators.
Speaker 3: They're the ones who tell you this is working or
Speaker 3: it's not working, And I'll add my little anecdote to
Speaker 3: your story. I got to go to Central Park in
Speaker 3: New York City a few years ago, and it was
Speaker 3: in the spring, and I mean the park was just
Speaker 3: erupting in bloom, and the host that we were with
Speaker 3: was just exclaiming about, Oh, this is so wonderful and
Speaker 3: it's nature in the city and da da da da da.
Speaker 3: So I was under a crab apple tree and it
Speaker 3: was a it must have been one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: years old. It was huge into the air, the branches
Speaker 3: draped all the way to the ground, and I was
Speaker 3: surrounded by pink. The air was pink because of all
Speaker 3: the blooms, and there was not a bee to be heard.
Speaker 3: There was not and that thing should have just been humming.
Speaker 3: So I'm at our place in Phoenix right now, and
Speaker 3: in the backyard is an alverti tree that was just blooming,
Speaker 3: covered in yellow flowers, and I mean, there's a din
Speaker 3: from the bees up in that tree. It should have
Speaker 3: been like that, but it was in the middle of
Speaker 3: Central Park, and so I thought, yeah, it looks like nature,
Speaker 3: but it's not complete nature, because you're missing this really
Speaker 3: essential player. And so when people start to pay attention,
Speaker 3: just like you're talking to When you pay attention, you realize, man,
Speaker 3: that is so cool, look at this one. And then
Speaker 3: when you pay attention you realize, Okay, there's six different
Speaker 3: kinds of things working on these flowers. It isn't all
Speaker 3: just a bee. It's lots of different things. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd love to encourage people to pay attention because when
Speaker 3: you do, you learn, and when you learn, you care.
Speaker 1: If you haven't caught on yet, one thing that I
Speaker 1: really like to do when someone drops some seriously good
Speaker 1: information on us is to key in on one or
Speaker 1: two phrases that stick with me. Professor Dant said, people
Speaker 1: care about what they know, and to pay attention because
Speaker 1: when you do, you learn, and when you learn, you care.
Speaker 1: I can tell you from a quick personal anecdote. When
Speaker 1: my wife Lacy and I bought the home that we
Speaker 1: currently reside in, it, like many other homes, consisted of
Speaker 1: a front and back laan made up of completely exotic
Speaker 1: plants that offered little to no value you to any
Speaker 1: sort of wildlife, and in the springtime, when all of
Speaker 1: it was in bloom, it was void of any bugs, birds,
Speaker 1: or really anything living besides the plants themselves. In the
Speaker 1: past few years, I've gotten rid of many of those
Speaker 1: exotics and planted some native pollinator plants like butterfly weed,
Speaker 1: blazing star, eastern cone flower, prairie flocks, and partridge peas.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you something, it's borderline silly how
Speaker 1: happy I get when I walk outside or look through
Speaker 1: the window and see a beer moth buzzing around those plants.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to appreciate and love something when
Speaker 1: you understand it. I want to round this episode off
Speaker 1: by letting Professor Dant give us her opinion on the
Speaker 1: future of pollinators here in the US, as well as
Speaker 1: things that we can all do to help preserve them.
Speaker 1: And if it's all right with y'all, I then want
Speaker 1: to go back to the beehives with Miss Linda.
Speaker 3: So, now that we know there's a problem, how do
Speaker 3: we address it? And a good place to start is
Speaker 3: with paying attention, where we actually consciously look for the
Speaker 3: pollinators that are all around us, and we think about
Speaker 3: what can I do to make a difference. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people get really frustrated because they think,
Speaker 3: oh my god, all these problems are so huge, and
Speaker 3: I don't know how to solve them. And it's like, look,
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a get out of jail
Speaker 3: free card. You do not have to solve climate change
Speaker 3: the loss of pollinators. You didn't single handedly cause them,
Speaker 3: so therefore you don't have to solve them. But the
Speaker 3: idea is each of us does our part. It's what
Speaker 3: I like to call the triumph of the commons, because
Speaker 3: when we each do our part, then collectively we make
Speaker 3: a real difference. And so it starts with paying attention
Speaker 3: and caring about what you know. Pollinator Week is sponsored
Speaker 3: by pollinator dot org and so you can go to
Speaker 3: their website and they have all kinds of different resources
Speaker 3: for people who are interested in pollinators, just you know,
Speaker 3: a little bit or maybe a lot, and they're very
Speaker 3: committed to this idea of providing information for people whose
Speaker 3: livelihoods depend on the land. So if you're a farmer
Speaker 3: or you're a rancher, this is not, oh, you guys
Speaker 3: are the bad guys. Far from it. It's how do
Speaker 3: we integrate pollinator planning into healthy agriculture, sustainable ranching, farming,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. And they also have just planting
Speaker 3: for pollinators coming up with what are the native plants
Speaker 3: that are from this region. And if you don't know,
Speaker 3: this website has maps and ecozones that can tell you
Speaker 3: about that. But you can plant for pollinators. You can
Speaker 3: reduce or even eliminate your use of past the sides
Speaker 3: and herbicides. But I would say another thing that a
Speaker 3: lot of people don't think about is supporting your local beekeepers.
Speaker 3: I mean, most of us live in places where there's
Speaker 3: a farmer's market, and most of us have people who
Speaker 3: show up with a farmer's market who are selling honey. Man,
Speaker 3: if you have never had local honey, you're in for
Speaker 3: a real treat. And it depends on the time of
Speaker 3: year that you buy it. The honey that I would
Speaker 3: collect in the spring would be this really light, thin,
Speaker 3: I realize this sounds redundant, but very sweet honey because
Speaker 3: it was all of the fruit trees that were blooming.
Speaker 3: But then in the late summer when I would collect
Speaker 3: and the bees were on the rabbit brush, the chinisa,
Speaker 3: the sage brush that is like a dark amber beer,
Speaker 3: is really almost spicy, is delicious and added bonus if
Speaker 3: you suffer from allergies from any of the things that
Speaker 3: are blooming in your area. If you get local honey
Speaker 3: that was harvested roughly at the time that whatever makes
Speaker 3: you sneeze was blooming, it acts as kind of a
Speaker 3: natural antihistamine and helps you not sneeze. And we so
Speaker 3: much I like to tell people to do their best
Speaker 3: to buy local, support local farmers, local ranchers, people who
Speaker 3: are doing good, honest, sustainable work on the land itself.
Speaker 3: Those are the kinds of people who deserve our support.
Speaker 1: Plant a few cone flowers in your flower bed, buy
Speaker 1: local honey from the farmer's market, and just pay a
Speaker 1: little more attention to the world around us. That little
Speaker 1: bit of effort from each of us could really make
Speaker 1: a difference. And just to heads up some of the
Speaker 1: most beneficial and popular land management practices like prescribe burning
Speaker 1: helps promote native plants that help pollinators as well. To
Speaker 1: wrap this up, like I mentioned earlier, I want to
Speaker 1: go back to the bee hives with Miss Linda as
Speaker 1: we watched honey bees come and go from the hive
Speaker 1: carrying in new pollen to make honey. That's crazy to
Speaker 1: me that that little bit'd bee will range out.
Speaker 2: Three miles two to three miles.
Speaker 3: That's wild.
Speaker 2: Hangding on what they're after. So they're out working something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we may be able to see them bringing.
Speaker 1: Pollen in.
Speaker 2: Thought that one Randon had some, so something is blaming
Speaker 2: and that's one of the things that you look at
Speaker 2: in the springtime to make sure they're bringing in honey,
Speaker 2: I mean or pollen.
Speaker 3: That one right there, they just went in there, had
Speaker 3: yellow all over him.
Speaker 2: Like a bright yellow, and just fascinating little little creatures.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 1: Fascinating little creatures indeed indispensable ones as well. I want
Speaker 1: to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University
Speaker 1: as well as Bear Grease in this country life. And
Speaker 1: I want to give a big shout out to onex
Speaker 1: Hunt for making this podcast possible. If you like this episode,
Speaker 1: share it with the buddy or even a family member
Speaker 1: that you don't like that much. They probably could benefit
Speaker 1: from a good podcast episode anyway, and stick around because
Speaker 1: if this podcast was a beehive, the honey is only
Speaker 1: gonna get sweeter. We'll see y'all next time.