Pollinator Week with Kelly Bills and Start of Our 6th Year! (S6, E01)

S6, E01 - Banking Queens with Dr. Brandon Hopkins

Dewey Caron: Hello. This is Dr. Dewey Caron, author of Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping. I'm pretty active in getting around to various clubs and writing a bit about bees. I'd like to welcome you to the sixth year of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Can you imagine starting the 6th year? Wow.

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment, presented by Betterbee. I'm Jeff Ott.

Kim Flottum: I'm Kim Flottum.

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Jeff: Thank you, Sherry. A quick shout-out to all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on our website. There, you can read up on all our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 200 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each show, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com.

Hey, thanks, Dewey, for that opening for today's kickoff of our sixth year of the podcast. Dewey has been on the podcast three different times, talking about honeybees and the books he's written about them. I was able to spend some time with Dewey recently while he was in town to talk to our local club on the results of his annual Pacific Northwest Honey Bee Survey. You can find a link to the survey in the show notes. You, too, can open the show just like Dewey did. Just record a greeting from yourself or from a group and send it to us at the podcast. It's easy and fun to do.

Okay. Hey, everybody, thank you for joining. We have a great show lined up for you today, this very first day of Pollinator Week 2023. In just a few minutes, I talk with Kelly Bills, the executive director of Pollinator Partnership, about this week's many different virtual and in-person activities, as well as updates to their many different programs such as bee-friendly farming and bee-friendly gardening.

Pollinator Partnership is a great organization you should be aware of and support. They do great work for all pollinators. Here's a bit of a service announcements for those of you who like to enter honey shows, the Good Food Awards, who you've heard about on this podcast, along with past winner and regional beekeeper, Jay Williams, is accepting entries for this year's competition until the end of June.

The GFA invites food producers from around the US to submit their products, including things such as beer and cheese and coffee and others, but most importantly, to us, honey, to the competition. There is a catch, everything must be produced with the commitment to environmental and social responsibility, supporting local economies and the planet. That sounds like everybody here listening. The tastings are judged by a panel of experts in each category, including our very own Kim Flottum in the honey category. Check out the link in the show notes or go to goodfoodfdn.org for more information.

Let's get to the kickoff of Pollinator Week with Pollinator Partnerships Executive Director Kelly Bills right after this short break.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to The Hive, the regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody. Welcome to our sixth year of Beekeeping Today Podcast. As per tradition, sitting across the virtual table right now is Kelly Bills, executive director of Pollinator Partnership. Kelly, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast. Welcome back.

Kelly Bills: Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here and congrats on six years.

Jeff: Yes, it's pretty exciting. Who would have thunk it? As I stated earlier, Kim won't be able to be here today, but he sends his greeting and misses this kickoff celebration of our sixth season.

Kelly: Yes, we'll miss him too, but happy to be here regardless.

Jeff: Yes. Kelly, for our listeners who are not familiar with Pollinator Partnership, tell us who you are, your role, and then at a high level, who is Pollinator Partnership.

Kelly: Absolutely. Happy to. My role is executive director. My name is Kelly Bills. I have been with the organization for 10 years. Hard to believe, but it's been a wonderful 10 years, holding a lot of different roles at Pollinator Partnership along the way and working with a lot of our different programs. I am based and as is Pollinator Partnership in San Francisco, California.

We are a non-profit organization based in California. However, we work throughout North America to protect all pollinator species. We're working with native pollinators as well as managed pollinators like honey bees. We have a lot of programs, maybe 20 plus programs that work across all different sectors of pollinator conservation.

Jeff: For those who are not aware of the work that you do, it's wonderful work and you're out there, and they may not even know that you are behind the programs they see. I think the top of that list, and we'll come back to it, but the top of that list would be the Bee Friendly Farming and Bee Friendly Gardening. That's a program of Pollinator Plus or P2. This is Pollinator Week. Today is the kickoff of Pollinator Week. Can you tell me and our listeners what is Pollinator Week? How did it start, and what's going on this week?

Kelly: Absolutely, yes. Happy Pollinator Week to everyone. Definitely our favorite time of year at Pollinator Partnership. Pollinator Week is a time to just really celebrate pollinators. It's a time to raise awareness, start conversations about the importance of pollinators, and also how they may be in trouble and may be needing our help and how people can help support pollinators.

Pollinator Week started about 17 years ago by Pollinator Partnership in conjunction with the US Forest Service, actually. They had this celebrating Wildflowers Week that Pollinator Week was modeled after. Again, a time to celebrate wildflowers naturally evolved to a time to celebrate pollinators as well. Actually, back then, we got a Senate resolution to support National Pollinator Week. We actually have an official document stating that by the Senate, we got support from the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, the EPA.

Lots of people coming together to acknowledge this time and this week. The third week of June every year, it actually starts the day after Father's Day, and now it begins on Juneteenth holiday. That's now an easy way to remember when this is taking place. Then with all of that support, it's really a nonpartisan issue, really something everyone can take a stake in and participate in.

We then proceeded to get proclamations from the governors of all 50 states in the United States to proclaim National Pollinator Week at the state level. The idea was always to put these pollinator celebrations and activities and ideas and resources in the hands of local communities so that they could have the resources to have fun and celebrate pollinators during this time. We do a lot of different things. Our website, pollinator.org, has tons of ideas of how people can participate, and you can actually post your activity on our website so that others nearby might be able to find that activity and join you. Check out pollinator.org this week if you do want to find a local activity to participate in.

Jeff: It's really cool. I was visiting that website and the activities map that you have and scrolling around the country. I was amazed, honestly, the number of activities and number of communities around the country who are participating in one fashion or another in Pollinator Week. I think, locally, they have a buzz walk or a Bumblebee Buzz walk down here in Olympia. I see back where my family lives in Cleveland, there's another activity and what we haven't mentioned was, there's also, including the activity, lighting events, and I saw that Niagara Falls is going to be lit up with the pollinator colors. Can you talk about that really quick? That's pretty cool.

Kelly: Absolutely. What we started doing a few years ago was requesting that buildings or landmarks that are already lit up in certain colors to celebrate various events or even sports teams, or things like that around North America. If they're already being lit up, we said, "Why don't you change your colors to black and yellow, or sometimes orange and red like a monarch butterfly, orange and black to support Pollinator Week?"

We put in formal requests with those types of landmarks like Niagara Falls. We do it at the city hall here in San Francisco. One year, we even got the Empire State Building, which if you know what that building looks like, it looks like a stinger of a bee in the sky, which was really fun. That's just a way for people to maybe look up or see something lit up and say, "What's that color all about?" Then learn that it's in support of Pollinator Week

Jeff: Who couldn't be happy about Pollinator Week, right? One of the things I enjoy, speaking of pollinators, and I'm wearing one of the Pollinator Week shirts. I think this is last year's shirt, actually, but the number of different pollinators there are-- this is a beekeeping podcast and we all are very honeybee-friendly. When you start looking at who else pollinates, or what else pollinates, it's amazing. Everything from bats to bees, to butterflies to beetles, to-- what's the weirdest one that you can think of off the top of your head?

Kelly: Oh, a lemur. Lemurs in Madagascar. [chuckles]

Jeff: See even a lemur's a pollinator. That's so cool, and you're celebrating it at all.

Kelly: Yes. Speaking of bees and honeybees and all pollinators really, the habitat that they use is also connected. We know that there's generalist pollinators like honeybees, but there's specialist bees that might be a little bit more picky about what they're eating. In general, pollinator habitat is going to be good for all pollinators out there. I always like to start by saying when I'm talking about the magnitude of bees, we have 1,600 species of bees in California. We have about 4,000 species of bees in North America, and then 20,000 species of bees worldwide.

It's just amazing, the beautiful diversity of all the bees out there, and not to mention the other pollinators that you were talking about. Pollinator Week is to recognize the wonder and the amazement that is the pollinator world, and then give people ideas and resources on how to support them. I was talking about habitat.

We have a lot of activities taking place during Pollinator Week to show people and give them ideas about what they can plant in their own home garden or community garden. Maybe they have a farm or maybe they manage a corporate campus or something like that. There's tons of resources out there on our website to help you select different plants to support lots of different types of pollinators.

Jeff: The resources you provide are phenomenal, and I really encourage our listeners, if you're looking to expand your garden or your fields or even your backyard, there's a list there. There's something you can plant to support all the pollinators.

Kelly: Yes, absolutely. We have actually two resources, which I really love. One, we call the recipe garden card. This is supposed to be a fun, really simple recipe to start a garden. Like you said, you don't even have to have a big yard. Maybe you even just have a balcony or a window box. You can live in an apartment building like myself, and maybe you just have a small space where you can put a few plants for pollinators, and the recipe garden cards are based on the different regions of the US. You can find your area and then get a really simple start and direction of how to do a pollinator garden.

Then we have a more in-depth resource, which is called our ecoregional planting guides. This is going to be a bit of a deeper dive for folks that are up for a challenge. They're based on a ecoregional level, which is a vegetation zone that's pretty specific so that you can make sure you're planting native plants for your particular area. Those are great resources and, actually, those ecoregional guides were coming out the end of this summer with a searchable online tool so that people will be able to find their area, maybe select some characteristics about how much sunlight they get, what's their soil like, and maybe even what pollinator they're trying to support. Like, let's say, hummingbirds, for example. Then they will get an output of a list that they can download and take to the local nursery to get some plants.

Jeff: You said those lists will include native plants. The folks that want to specialize or make sure that they're only introducing native species to their area or their backyard or their balcony or wherever it's a native and it's not going to become an invasive species that others will be concerned about.

Kelly: Yes, that's right. Our view at Pollinator Partnership is that where possible, plant native, but there are some cases where maybe some non-native but non-invasive plants might be appropriate in more like garden or managed settings. There are options there if you feel like native plants are a little bit out of reach for you, there are some good non-native, but make sure they're non-invasive plants that you pick.

Jeff: All right. Well, let's take this opportunity to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

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Jeff: This has all been really fascinating, and you did mention that before the break about the importance of habitat and climate and everything. It made me start thinking. As you may be aware, Kim is doing a blog series on the effects of climate change on the beekeeping industry, or on the world in general, but specifically honeybees. I noticed that climate change and habitat change is a focus for Pollinator Partnership. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Kelly: Yes, absolutely. Really, a theme that we started at the end of last year is trying to emphasize and point out the connection between climate change, overall planetary health, and pollinator health. We like to say that our work supports pollinators, people, and the planet. We came out with a poster earlier this year, which is all about climate change and pollinators. It really points out that climate change is in our hands as humans to do what we can to support pollinators and support planetary health, as a lot of our activities in the past have obviously negatively contributed to climate change.

Really trying to showcase that pollinators are negatively impacted by climate change. Honeybee is being one, but there's other native species that their ranges are shrinking, or maybe their host plants are disappearing, or their phenology, the timing of biology is being disrupted. There's a lot of really serious issues tied to climate change and pollinators. Pests and pathogens are getting worse. I think things like the varroa mites and the trophy mites, all of that is being exacerbated by climate change as well.

It's a really big issue, but the good news is that by supporting pollinators you can support and help mitigate the negative impacts of climate change. Pollinator habitat and the actions of pollinators can help with things like carbon sequestration, with things like erosion control, water filtration, nutrient cycling. All these really great things that we need to keep at a smaller level, our ecosystems healthy, but at a larger level, the planet healthy.

Jeff: You mentioned climate change, and you're there in California. I do remember seeing in an article earlier this year about the climate change and habitat loss connection and its impact on the migrating monarchs. I know you have the Monarch Watch, or was it Monarch Wings Across America program as well. Can you pull that all together for our listeners?

Kelly: Absolutely. Monarch butterflies are a really interesting species. We know that they migrate and travel really long distances, and a lot of their success is tied to a few things. They need milkweed, which is their host plant. A lot of which is starting to disappear or has disappeared, but we're trying to bring it back. They also need nectar plants. They need those really nectar-rich plants that are going to fuel their migration, give them carbohydrates and sugar to keep going and keep flying these great distances, but they're really impacted by weather dramatically. They have a very optimal range of temperatures and conditions that they need to be able to fly.

With extreme weather events increasing due to climate change, like fires out here in the west, have been really detrimental, drought, and then also just increased temperatures. Actually, this past winter, we had some really severe storms that we had not seen for a long time, high winds and lots of rain that really impacted their overwintering sites too. There's, unfortunately, a lot of factors tied to climate change that are harming the monarch butterfly.

Jeff: To use an overstated metaphor, they're kind of a canary in the coal mine. If it's impacting the monarch butterflies, then it's going to start impacting everything else that is a little bit more tolerant, but maybe not too far away. I was really sorry to hear that the monarchs were negatively impacted by the, I think it was a cold snap or something like that, and they lost so many different monarchs. That was really sad. What is the Monarchs Across America program doing to help the monarchs?

Kelly: Monarch Wings Across America is Pollinator Partnership's overarching monarch conservation program. All across North America, we're working to really, as rapidly as we can, increase the native plants and native milkweed on the ground to support monarchs. We're trying to fuel their migration both in their central flyway as well as out west where I am for their western population.

What we're doing is we're working with private and public landowners. We work with private landowners like corporations, or farmers, ranchers, and then on the public side, we work with folks through the land trusts or a national wildlife refuge system to provide plant material and also technical assistance to these conservation projects.

We've been able to impact over 100,000 acres. We've trained thousands of volunteers in seed collections so that they can go out on the landscape and collect native seeds so that we can then grow it out into plug plants or clean it and then put it back on the landscape for other conservation projects in need. We're also in the west working a lot with farmers, a lot of people in the almond industry, almond growers to increase pollinator and monarch habitat on either perimeter or inner cropping or adjacent lands, maybe followed lands near agricultural settings too.

Jeff: Does that allow for your programs such as the bee-friendly farming and bee-friendly gardening? Is there an overlap there where you know that, hey, if you can help a farm or better pollinator-friendly their acreage or the unused acreage or between crop rows or whatever, it also helps the monarchs as well as all pollinators?

Kelly: Absolutely, yes. That's a great intersection between our programs is that throughout the US and Canada, primarily we're working on our bee-friendly farming program. That program provides pretty achievable but I'll say a bit rigorous criteria for farmers and ranchers to promote pollinators, not just bees but all pollinators on their landscapes. They have to do things like providing 3% of their land as habitat for pollinators, provide forage throughout the growing season, provide clean water for bees, provide some permanent habitat.

A lot of times, there will be temporary habitats like cover crops, but we would like also more permanent habitat such as hedgerows or tree plantings. That's a certification that they then will achieve once they meet that criteria and they get a logo that they can use, they get access to a lot of other resources through our organization and as well as technical assistance where our staff will go out to their farm and help them come up with a conservation plan and figure out what they need to do to support pollinators. That definitely helps with the Monarch Wings Across America efforts as well.

Then for bee-friendly gardening, that's basically an offshoot of bee-friendly farming, where we're working instead with home gardeners or with community garden managers and different parks to support pollinators in garden settings. The criteria is similar. I'd say a little less focused on things like IPM and, in most cases, it's more geared towards just providing pollinator habitat and more permanent habitat for pollinators, like I said, in garden settings. That's a program of ours that's rapidly growing. We just surpassed 150 members. It's probably even more at this point and we really just relaunched it back in September of 2022. It's been less than a year of us having a dedicated staff member towards it. Sara Wittenberg is the leader of that program, and it's a really exciting program that's really gaining a lot of traction

Jeff: When you look at all the land available and you think of all the unused spaces, especially, and I hate to say this because it's not true. Well, it is true, but when you fly over much of the country and you see the crop circles, and right in the corners of all of those circles, there's unused, untilled land, in many cases. I know there's been an emphasis of trying to get that populated with pollinator-friendly plants and just provide that wildlife edge zone, if you will.

Kelly: Yes, absolutely. There's some great work coming out of Iowa State about just what you've described. These pollinator strips that I think have been happening in some cropping systems, but now we're even looking at doing it in things like corn and soy, which really was unheard of for a while. We understand at Pollinator Partnership what a hard job farming is. These people are providing the food for the country, and it's directly tied to pollinator health, and we have to get creative, I think, in where we can use all those bits of land like you were just describing to see how we can just get the most land dedicated to pollinator habitat, but then it's going to eventually help with our food security

Jeff: Definitely exciting programs that you're working on, and I'm glad our listeners are learning about them. Well, we strayed away from this week's topic, but what else is going on this week that you want to highlight? We do the lighting programs, we have city, local community pollinator events and activities, both of which are shown on your website on a map. What else is happening?

Kelly: This week, we have a lot going on. Of course, one of the most exciting things that is taking place this week and actually starting today as well is the Pollinator Power Party. This is something we started three years ago with the Electric Power Research Institute or EPRI. They're a nonprofit that works with electric power companies on a lot of different issues, environmentally related issues, and a lot of research, but they have a wonderful power in pollinators initiative that we teamed up with them to do this huge virtual party. We'd have on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, different virtual speakers and events.

I'm sure you can still sign up if you haven't yet, so check that out it's EPRI and Pollinator Partnership. It's on our pollinator.org website. Today, we're hearing from Dr. David Inouye who's going to be talking about the status of pollinators, which is actually an update on the National Academy of Sciences study that came out in 2006. Right around when colonate collapse disorder and all of these really big pollinator concerns were coming to the fore. That's really exciting. On Wednesday, we're going to be hearing about land management actions that can be taken at the power company level, so utility rights of way solar, things like that, but also at the gardening level. We'll have a bee-friendly gardening emphasis.

Then on Friday, it's going to be really a unique presentation all about basically the mind behind the bees. Looking at do bees feel and do they play. I don't know if you've seen these videos of bumblebees playing with balls in little test scenarios, so it's going to be a little existential, but it's going to be quite interesting, I think. It's going to be a really fun week. That's the power party.

Also, I am in Washington DC this week, and I am attending the Wildlife Habitat Council conference. That's going to have a panel about pollinators, which I'm really excited about. Then we have a meeting at the capitol about monarch butterflies. Then on Friday, we will have the USDA at their farmer's market. They host a pollinator festival, which will be really fun. It's right on the mall, and we'll talk to a lot of people passing by about pollinator.

Jeff: Oh, that sounds really fun. If anybody is in Washington, DC area this week, I really encourage you to go check that out. Talking about pollinators and hearing about pollinators on a national mall, that'd be pretty exciting, actually. That'd be really fun. Any observation hives, any bee beard demonstrations? [laughs]

Kelly: Well, I know that last year, so the USDA, the Beltsville Lab usually brings an observation hive, so that, I know, will be there. Yes, Jay Evans usually comes out and gives some demonstrations, and that's always really fun. Yes, it's a great time.

Jeff: Yes. I encourage our listeners, if you're anywhere in the DC area this week, check it out. Go to Kelly's website, pollinator.org, to look at what activities are happening, when, and where. Visit and be a part of the celebration, the Power Party, you call it, right?

Kelly: [laughs] Yes.

Jeff: Sounds like a rave.

Kelly: Pollinators. You pollinate a rave. Yes, exactly.

Jeff: [laughs] Swarm to the rave. All right. We've covered a lot of different areas, we could go on. I would like to have you back and maybe your director of bee-friendly farming at some point to come back and talk specifically about that program. We had-- I can't remember his name, but we had them on several years ago, and it'd be fun to have them back.

Kelly: Miles Dakin.

Jeff: Yes. Complete brain fades right now. Anyways, Miles was on and talking about that, and it's a great program. I would like our listeners to learn more about it. I haven't asked you, you haven't discussed that you would like our listeners to know about Pollinator Plus or Pollinator Week.

Kelly: I think we covered most of it. I would just put in another plug for checking out our website, pollinator.org. Pollinator Partnership celebrated our 25th-anniversary last year, so we have been here serving the public and serving policymakers and land managers, and anyone we can work within agriculture for 25 years. It's a really exciting time for our organization, and I'm so grateful to be here again with you to kick off your year of the podcast and pollinator week. It's a really fun time for pollinator conservation. I just want to thank everyone for listening, and please join our efforts, pollinator.org. We'll have a lot of resources for you.

Jeff: Thank you, Kelly, for being here. Pollinator Partnership is one of the big organizations I really support. I really believe in the work that you're doing. There's a couple out there that just do a bang-up job and I encourage all beekeepers to check out pollinator.org, Pollinator Partnership, and support the organization as much as you can. Kelly, thank you. Happy 26th. Coming on what, 26th anniversary for you guys, and our 6th, so it's fantastic, and I'm glad to have you back this year.

Kelly: Thank you so much, Jeff. It's my pleasure.

Jeff: Well, that about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to rate us five stars on Apple Podcast, wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review, and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Betterbee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to Blue Sky Bee Supply and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments at leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

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