Extension Service Site Publications

• (2023) How do I source bees for a new beehive box?
• (2023) 243 - Bee Friendly Gardening
• (2023) Why are bees swarming my hummingbird feeder?
• (2023) Are my pesticides harmful to pollinators?
• (2023) How to encourage mason bees?
• (2023) 236 - Vanderpool - (Very) wet start to PNW beekeeping Harry Vanderpool has been a beekeeper for 25 years in the south hills of Salem, Oregon. Vanderpool Farms is now a family operation providing pollination services and farm direct honey. Harry has served as Vice President and President of the Willamette Valley Beekeepers Association and Vice President and President of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association, and enjoys working with stakeholders and sometimes conflicting agricultural sectors in a balanced manner to find solutions that will offer meaningful pollinator protection strategies.
• (2023) 235 - Kulhanek - Washington's new Pollinator Health Research and Extension Program! Dr. Kelly Kulhanek joined the WSU Bee Program as a postdoctoral researcher in 2020 and recently began a new role as Assistant Professor of Pollinator Research and Extension. She is building a program based on regular communication with stakeholders to address needs such as locally specific best practices for bee management and crop pollination, and is developing extension programs that will put the latest research into the hands of stakeholders.
• (2023) Shrubs and Trees for Bees Habitat loss is a factor in the decline of native bees. Planting key plants in yards and gardens may be one way to improve habitat and help these species recover.
• (2023) 234 - Goldstein - Colony strength and blueberry pollination Lauren Goldstein is an M.S. student at the Michigan State University Department of Entomology. Supervised by Dr. Rufus Isaacs, she studies blueberry pollination by honey bees. Specifically, she is exploring the relationship between blueberry yield outcomes and honey bee hive stocking density and strength. There is a large extension focus to her work, and she is aiming for her graduate research to improve the businesses of keeping bees and growing fruit.
  
  
• (2023) 233 - Hill - The Latest Buzz Elizabeth (Izzy) Hill is the Pollinator Coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, housed within the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). In this role, she promotes collaboration and communication across USDA agencies, the managed pollinator industry, and USDA grant recipients on issues related to pollinator health.
  
• (2023) 232 - Shannon - Do adjuvants influence bee health? Brandon is a master's student researcher in the Environmental Sciences Graduate Program at TheOhio State University. He is originally from Jacksonville, Florida, and received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Central Florida in 2018. After spending three years monitoring industrial air pollution as an environmental chemist, he decided to follow his passion of honey bee research where he joined Dr. Reed Johnson at Ohio State. His research focuses on the toxicity of pesticide-adjuvant tank mixtures to honey bees and using bee-safe adjuvants to improve varroa control. After completing a PhD at Ohio State, he hopes to further my career in academia doing research, teaching, and extension.
• (2023) 231 - Dean - Georgia bee license plate Gail Dean is the co-chair of the Georgia Beekeepers Association Legislative Committee. She is the past president of the mighty Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association and owner of Mountain Lake Honey (which makes the most delicious sourwood honey).
• (2023) 230 - Eeraerts - Stocking honey bee colonies for the landscape Dr. Maxime Eeraerts is a FWO postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Environment at Ghent University in Belgium. He talks this week about research he conducted as a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Lisa DeVetter’s lab working on blueberry pollination at Washington State University.
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• (2022) 229 - Lu - Marker assisted selection 101 (for breeding honey bees) Robert Lu is currently going into his second year of his MSc Biology at the University of Alberta. His research topic is the parasitic honey bee mite Varroa destructor - specifically, he is interested in developing novel tools to control varroa infestations in managed honey bee colonies. In his free time he enjoys drawing and horticulture. He is also a fan of seafood.
  
• (2022) 228 - Rinkevich - Are varroa resistant to amitraz? Dr. Frank D. Rinkevich is a Research Entomologist with extensive training in insect toxicology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics. The goal of Dr. Frank's research is to provide a basic understanding of insecticide toxicology that is relevant to field conditions in the commercial beekeeping industry. Current research interests in Dr. Rinkevich's lab include evaluating the effects of pesticide exposure on colony survivorship in commercial beekeeping operations, assessing the capacity and dynamics of metabolic detoxification of insecticides, understanding the genetic, behavioral and social factors that affect insecticide sensitivity, determining the breadth, depth, and mechanisms of amitraz resistance in Varroa, establishing the effects of fungicides on colony health, and evaluating control materials and practices for small hive beetle.
• (2022) 226 - Spendal - Those amazing mason bees Ron Spendal is a Washington County Master Gardener who has been researching and educating on mason bees for over 15 years. He operates educational mason bee displays across Washington County, Oregon and runs a highly-sought after courses on mason bee management through Washington Co Extension.
• (2022) 225 - Chabert - Would blueberry yield benefit from planting different cultivars together? Dr. Chabert defended his PhD in 2018 on integrated crop pollination in France in the National Institute of Agricultural Research. His research focuses on assessing the pollination demand of a crop in relation with the temperature, and on honey bee management with the goal of matching the pollinator supply to the crop pollination demand. He is currently working in Rachel Mallinger's lab at University of Florida as a postdoc. His main question is to determine the pollination requirements and the attractivity level of Northern and Southern blueberry cultivars.
  
• (2022) 224 - Jennings and Willson - Washington Native Bee Society (WANBS) David Jennings is the President of the WANBS. He started young as a naturalist. He had the opportunity to study for two summers on the Smithsonian Institute’s Barro Colorado Island in Panama, where he worked as a field apprentice during high school summer breaks, mist netting birds and researching sloths, howler monkeys, bats and silky anteaters. David has a BSFR in Forestry and Wildlife and a master’s in Biostatistics. His passion is wildlife conservation. While in college he was privileged to study under, and garden for, Dr. Eugene Odum, father of modern Ecology. He has helped protect native forests in Georgia, Arkansas, and Oklahoma before moving to Washington state in 1990. Once here he helped found the 501(c)3 Gifford Pinchot Task Force to protect our remaining ancient forests in SW Washington. He served as their Board Chair for ~15 years. David is an avid scuba diver here in our NW waters. In 2012 he was honored with the Volunteer of the Year award from REEF for his advocacy for the beleaguered rockfish in Puget Sound. His passion for conservation resulted in Governor Gregoire appointing him to the state Fish and Wildlife Commission where he served from 2009 to 2013, helping pass the State Wolf Management plan. David focused on bumble bees and other native pollinators as a needed return to field work after serving on the commission. He has been somewhat obsessed with bumbles ever since…
  
  Colleen Willson is the Vice-President and Education/Outreach chair of the WANBS. Prior to this, she worked with two separate native bee related organizations: CCUWBee (Cascadia College/UW Bothell Bee research initiative) studying the abundance and diversity of bees on campus and BeeVesting (now Pollinator Pathway NW out of 21 Acres in Woodinville) supporting local agriculture by promoting pollinator health. While doing research for those organizations, she found a number of small groups and individuals who were doing work with local pollinators but she found herself searching for a larger organization that she could turn to for all Washington-based native bee resources and connections similar to the Oregon Bee Project. It wasn't until she heard the PolliNation podcast episode with the founder of the Native Bee Society of British Columbia that she recognized what I was looking for and began the work of developing WANBS. She wanted to create an organization that could support native bee enthusiasts of all levels and interests and to encourage them to connect with each other in an effort to support the native bees in WA.
  
• (2022) 223 - Youngsteadt - Urban bees: what drives diversity and how do we measure it? Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt is an Assistant Professor and Extension Urban Ecology Specialist at North Carolina State University. She is an insect ecologist interested in how urbanization and climate change alter the interactions between insects and other organisms. She is committed to conveying research results to audiences who can use them through Extension and outreach. Her non-science interests include running, cat training, and gardening.
• (2022) 222 - Danielsen - Pollinator habitat on water pipelines? Alix Danielsen has worked in the environmental field for over 14 years, including stints in agricultural conservation management, environmental social marketing, non-profit management, and river restoration. At the Hood River Watershed Group, Alix works with private landowners, irrigation districts, tribes, farmers, foresters, community members, and agencies on projects including stream and riparian habitat restoration, irrigation modernization, water quality monitoring, and fish passage barrier removal.
  
• (2022) 221 - Taylor - Bees and school farms Cherie Taylor is the lead teacher at College Hill school Horticulture program in Corvallis, Oregon and oversee the Urban Farm
• (2022) 220 - Washington Co Master Gardener - Pollinator Outreach (par excellence) 2022 was the year we were able to get back out to public events to talk to the public about pollinators. Some of us were a little rusty. In this episode we hear about how to pull off an excellent event and how to involve Master Gardeners.
• (2022) Northern giant hornets in Oregon?
• (2022) 219 - Labuschagne - Living through a Varroapocolypse Dr. Renata Labuschagne joined the Alberta Beekeepers Commission (ABC) in 2019 as the Alberta Tech Transfer Program lead. Before joining the ABC team, Renata was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Steve Pernal’s apiculture research lab at Beaverlodge Research Farm, Agriculture Agri-food Canada, studying the inter-correlation of several important pathogens and phenotypes, so as to better understand drivers of colony health and productivity. Renata received her Ph.D. in Entomology in 2015 from the University of Minnesota studying under Dr. Mara Spivak. Previously, she received her B.Sc. in Animal Science from the Universidade Federal of Ceara, Brazil. Renata’s doctoral research focused on evaluating: 1) the seasonal benefits of propolis (a bee-produced resinous material) on the health and immunity of honey bees; 2) the role that types of resins play as a defense against two highly infectious brood pathogens, Ascosphaera apis (a fungus causing chalkbrood disease) and Paenibacillus larvae (a bacterium causing American foulbrood disease); and 3) the effects of the propolis “envelope” within the hive as a natural defense against disease.
  
• (2022) 218 - Casey Holland - What the heck does IPM mean (in New Mexico)? Casey Holland was born and raised in New Mexico and is currently the Farm Manager at Chispas Farm, a 4 acre urban farm located in the heart of Albuquerque, NM on occupied Tiwa land. We grow over 120 varieties of fruits and vegetables, have a flock of milk goats, grazing sheep, 100 laying hens and geese and ducks. We seasonal CSA programs, host numerous community events, and strive each year to have opportunities to eat on the farm for free.
  
• (2022) 217 - O'Shea-Wheller - Are varroa resistant bees ready for primetime with the POL line? I am a research fellow based at the University of Exeter in the UK, interested in the ecology, behavior, and epidemiology of social insects. Currently, I am involved in projects examining the relative drivers of honey bee colony losses, the dynamics of parasite-pathogen interactions in determining colony health, and the potential for invasive hornets to impact native and managed pollinators.
  
  Prior to this, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Louisiana State University, investigating honey bee epidemiology and breeding in collaboration with the USDA. The principle focus of this work was the validation of Varroa-resistant stocks for use in large-scale pollination operations.
  
  While much of my work is focussed upon pollinators, I utilize a number of social insect models, as they provide powerful and fascinating tools with which to probe both applied and fundamental questions in biology. To this end, my ongoing research includes the development of AI-assisted tracking and detection systems, thus providing analytical tools to better understand colony organization.
  
• (2022) 216 - Yang and Henle - Machines learning to classify insecticides as toxic to bees Ping Yang and Adrian Henle are graduate students at Oregon State University in Cory Simon's research group, studying the application of novel machine learning techniques to predicting properties of chemical systems.
• (2022) 215 - Mahood - Drone congregation areas Julia Mahood is a Craftsman level Master Beekeeper in Georgia. Professionally she is a graphic artist and she’s been a hobby beekeeper since 2004. She is fascinated with the often disparaged drone honey bees and their mysterious playgrounds, the drone congregation areas, DCAs. She is passionate about educating beekeepers from all walks of life and she teach beekeeping in Georgia prisons.
• (2022) 214 - Paul - Mason Bees in (an unusually) Cool Wet Spring Jerry Paul from the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District (BSWCD). Heath is BSWCD’s Communication and Community Engagement Manager and Jerry has been involved with BSWCD as a volunteer and Board Member. PolliNation caught up with Heath and Jerry at the BSWCD office to talk about caring for orchard mason bees (Osmia lignaria) in the spring and their outreach initiative – the Bee Buddies program – that is encouraging stewardship of people cultivating these bees.
• (2022) 213 - Whitford and Feken - The complex life of the honey bee Frederick “Fred” Whitford, Clinical Engagement Professor, Botany and Plant Pathology and Director of Purdue Pesticide Programs. Fred received his bachelor’s degree in wildlife management from Louisiana Tech. He has expertise in pesticide safety education, pesticide registration, regulations, insurance, and environmental and safety audits. He received his master’s and doctorate degrees in entomology from Iowa State University. He has served as the Director of the Purdue Pesticide Program since 1991. He has authored more than 300 publications including 8 books and 140 extension bulletins. He has delivered more than 6,000 presentations throughout Indiana and the United States. In recognition of his significant contributions to Extension outreach efforts, he has received numerous awards, including the Frederick L. Hovde Award of Excellence in Educational Service to Rural People of Indiana, the Outstanding Extension Faculty/Specialist Award from Purdue Extension, Excellence in Extension Award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and Honorary Master Farmer by Indiana Prairie Farmer and the Purdue University College of Agriculture.
  
  Max Feken is an environmental toxicologist and has worked for Syngenta for 8 years primarily focused on risk to pollinators. Prior to that, Max worked for the Florida Department of Agriculture and has over 20 years of experience in conducting ecological risk assessments for pesticides.
  
• (2022) 212 - Clay Bolt - Grassland Pollinators Clay Bolt is the Communications Lead and pollinator specialist for World Wildlife Fund's Northern Great Plains Program and a Natural History and Conservation Photographer specializing in the world’s smaller creatures. Clay's work appears in publications such as National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, and National Wildlife. He is a Senior Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. His current major focus is on North America’s native bees and the important roles that they play in our lives. He was a leading voice in the fight to protect the rusty-patched bumble bee as a federally protected species under the Endangered Species Act, which became North America's first federally protected native bee in 2017. In 2019, Bolt became the first photographer to document a living Wallace's Giant Bee—the world's largest bee—as a part of a four-person exploration team to rediscover the species in the Indonesian islands known as North Maluku.
  
• (2022) 211 - Morfin - New Tech Transfer Program in BC The British Columbia Honey Producers recruited Dr. Nuria Morfin to lead up their new Tech Transfer Program last winter. Nuria comes to the position with fourteen years of experience as a beekeeper, researcher, and extensionist – acting as a link between research and industry. She has expertise in diverse areas, including Integrated Pest Management (IPM), selective breeding, and honey bee pathology. Nuria has collaborated in a number of research projects in North America, has published in reputable scientific journals, and has been an instructor of IPM, queen rearing, and honey bee biology courses.Nuria got her Ph.D. from the University of Guelph – Honey Bee Research Center where she later worked as a researcher studying the impact of stressors on health and behavior, analyzing the mechanisms behind behavioral immunity, and studying the lipidome and metabolome profile of bees. Nuria also worked as a Bee Inspector for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). Throughout her career, she has been actively contributing to apicultural research and industry.
  
• (2022) 210 - Coffan - What's going on with Western monarchs? Robert has lived in Southern Oregon for 25 years and has passionately enjoyed researching the biodiversity of the northwest; from the headwaters of the Rogue River on the flanks of Mt Mazama, to the hills and rivers where Western Monarchs stop and rear their young. He is fascinated by the beauty and life processes of the Monarch butterfly and other pollinators. He has worked to help restore their habitat and bring the population back. Robert shares his knowledge and enthusiasm with students, colleagues, families and children, clients, landowners, decision makers and volunteers. Robert never loses sight of the importance of preserving and caring for this beautiful and diverse part of the world we call home on planet Earth.
  
• (2022) Bee Protection Protocol for Western Specialty Seed Crops Growers of specialty seeds in western Oregon rely on beekeepers to provide bees to pollinate their crops. Growers and beekeepers formed a Bee Protection Protocol to strengthen their mutually beneficial relationship. The protocol addresses pollination, pest management and communication.
• (2022) 209 - Burgett - Working together in the PNW Mike Burgett is the Emeritus Professor of Entomology at OSU, where he has taught since 1974. He has conducted a huge amount of work on apiculture research in the PNW region, but almost an equal amount of work in Thailand studying stingless bees and honey bees.
  
  
• (2022) 208 - Merissa Moeller - Endangered Species Act 101 Merissa Moeller is an Environmental, Natural Resources and Land Use Attorney at Stoel Rives LLP Attorneys. She helps natural resources clients comply with environmental laws so they can run their businesses and build healthy communities. Her work includes strategic counseling, regulatory compliance, and permitting work on behalf of private and public clients, including water utilities, solar and other renewable energy developers, agribusiness, the timber industry, and other natural resource users. She also represents clients in state and federal disputes over water, endangered species, and other natural resources, including by securing and defending permits before the Land Use Board of Appeals and Oregon’s appellate courts.
  
  She discovered her passion for her work while growing up in a family of water scientists in the high desert of southern Idaho. She approaches regulatory roadblocks from all sides, using her diverse experience working for businesses and local governments, state natural resources agencies, an interstate land use planning commission, and the courts.
  
  With that perspective, she strives to ground academic legal problems in the real world, to deliver practical solutions for clients. She seeks solutions that create more winners, benefiting real people and real places.
  
  
• (2022) 207 - Andony Melathopoulos - How did I get into bees? Andony Melathopoulos is an Assistant Professor in Pollinator Health Extension in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University, which was the first such position in the US. He also sits on the Steering Committee of the Oregon Bee Project, which coordinates pollinator health work across state agencies, leads the Oregon Bee Atlas and hosts a weekly podcast called PolliNation. In 2018 Andony was recognized with the national Pollinator Advocate award by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign.
• (2022) 206 - Ellen Topitzhofer - The Holy Grail: Banking Queens Over the Winter Ellen Topitzhofer became interested in honey bees while studying plant genetics and breeding at the University of Minnesota. She then studied honey bee nutrition as part of her MS at Oregon State University. After graduating, she hit the road and worked with commercial beekeepers all over the Northwest as part of the Bee Informed Partnership's Tech Transfer Team mastering on-the-ground applicable research. She currently works as a faculty research assistant in the OSU Honey Bee Lab with a research focus on self-sufficient queen supply techniques.
  
• (2022) 205 - George Kaufman - What the heck does IPM mean (in blueberries)? George Kaufman is a crop advisor for AgriCare, Inc. Halls Ferry Farm is a large-scale farming operation that focuses on producing organic blueberries and hazelnuts. Boasting 2,500 acres of farmable land and hedgerows as far as the eye can see, Halls Ferry Farm wants to change the narrative about what big farms do. “People think that small- and medium-sized farms are the only place where you can execute on big sustainability ideas. Our purpose is to increase access to better and healthier food,” says Wood Turner, who represents Ag Capital, the owners of Halls Ferry Farm.
• (2022) 204 - Josée Rousseau - Birds and the bees: How bird data can inform us on where insect pollinators live Josée is a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She has been working with birds and bird data for the past 20 years and recently started a project assessing the role of birds as indicators of pollinator community richness. The goal is to leverage the large amount of bird data to help conserve bee populations.
• (2022) 203 - Dana Church - How humans changed the world of bumble bees Dana studied bumble bee spatial memory for her PhD at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is a nonfiction author, and her first book, The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees, was published by Scholastic in March 2021. Dana has two more upcoming nonfiction books: one on monarch butterflies, also with Scholastic, scheduled for fall 2023; and one on animal cognition with Orca Publishers, scheduled for winter 2024.
• (2022) 202 - Moyer - Getting Bees Out of the Walls Charly Moyer is the Vice President of Douglas County Bees. He is also a District Forester with Roseburg Forest Products in Roseburg, Oregon.
  
• (2021) Rare rabbitbrush fairy cuckoo bee discovered in Oregon The rare rabbitbrush fairy cuckoo bee was discovered in Oregon in 2019. Learn about this tiny bee, whose unique lifestyle is based on stealing nest space and food resources from other bees.
• (2021) 201 - Nico Ardans - What the heck does IPM mean (in nurseries)? Nico Ardans has 15 years of experience in the nursery industry. He has worked virtually every job in the greenhouse and is the new Value Stream Leader at Peoria Gardens. He works to continually improve the Gardens processes while planning and supporting the production of premium annuals, mixed baskets, poinsettias, and mums. He is currently training his team of growers to take over stewardship of the Gardens IPM program.
• (2021) 200 - OSU Pollinator Health Lab - An Expose! The Pollinator Health Lab is Andony Melathopoulos (Pollinator Health Extension Specialist), Jen Larson (Coordinator for the Master Melittologist and Master Beekeeper programs), Sarah Kincaid (Lab Manager and Educational Coordinator for the Master Melittologist program), Lincoln Best (Taxonomist for the Oregon Bee Atlas).
• (2021) 199 - Kayla Perry - What drives bumble bee community composition? Kayla Perry, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University. Her current research aims to disentangle local- and landscape-level drivers of insect communities. Previously, Kayla earned a Ph.D. in entomology at Ohio State, studying how disturbance events like emerald ash borer–induced tree mortality impacted the community structure of forest invertebrates. Kayla has received numerous awards and fellowships for her work, including a postdoctoral fellowship with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the J. H. Comstock Award from the North Central Branch.
• (2021) Volunteer's discovery adds to knowledge of rare Oregon bee species The small stonecrop mason bee (Hoplitis emarginata) had never been found in Oregon until 2019 when it was discovered by Master Melittologist Judi Maxwell in the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon. Only one person had seen it in the wild previously, in Northern California in the 1970s. Maxwell found the bee in native stonecrop plants, which led to another sighting of the bee a month later in stonecrop plants farther north at the foot of Mount Jefferson.
• (2021) Rare lava field bee rediscovered by Extension volunteer Oregon's lava hole bee hadn't been seen in Oregon for almost 50 years when OSU Extension Master Melittologist Ellen Watrous rediscovered the bee in 2018 for the Oregon Bee Atlas. This bee had only been seen in Oregon four times since it was first spotted in 1927 by Oregon State University entomologist Herman Scullen in the lava fields of McKenzie Pass. Watrous found the bee as part of a volunteer effort to assemble an atlas of Oregon bees, which is being assembled to guide conservation efforts.
  
• (2021) 198 - James Tracy - Monarch collisions on roadways Dr. James Tracy is a postdoctoral fellow in entomology working in Dr. Robert Coulson’s Knowledege Engineering Laboratory. He received a Master of Science in Entomology from Kansas State University in 1986 and a Bachelor of Science in Entomology from Texas A&M in 1983.
  
  James is interested in insect ecology related to the use of insects in biological control of pest or invasive organisms. He also is interested in landscape ecology involving applications of species distribution modeling using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). James’ thesis project involves studying landscape-level interactions between introduced tamarisk beetles (Diorhabda spp.; Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) and the federally endangered southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) that will nest in tamarisk in the southwestern U.S. Three species of tamarisk beetles were introduced into the western U.S. for biological control of invasive tamarisk along rivers from 2001–2009. Part of his research involves developing megascale (1 km resolution) species distribution models using climatic data and Old World distributions for three species of tamarisk beetles and combining these models with dispersal models to predict arrival of beetles in areas with flycatchers. Another part of research involves developing microscale (1 m resolution) flycatcher habitat suitability models for simulating both the negative effects of tamarisk beetle defoliation and tamarisk dieback and the positive effects of habitat restoration measures on the habitat suitability of the flycatchers at specific locations.
  
  James has 22 years of experience working as a biological science technician (insects) for the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Temple, Texas in a weed biological control laboratory under Dr. C. Jack DeLoach. Their primary research involved the use of tamarisk beetles in biological control of tamarisk. While at USDA, James published a monograph on the taxonomy and biogeography of tamarisk beetles. His Master’s thesis project at Kansas State University involved studying the reproductive biologies of Ooencyrtus spp. egg parasitoids (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) useful in biological control of squash bugs (Anasa tristis, Heteroptera: Coreidae)
  
  
• (2021) 197 - Laura Johnson - Bee Health in Vermont Laura Johnson is Vermont’s Pollinator Support Specialist. She has a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from St. Lawrence University and a master's degree in horticulture from New Mexico State University. She is also am a Certified Crop Advisor and beekeeper and holds a Vermont pesticide applicator license. For more than two years, she also served as an agriculture extension volunteer in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, where she first started working with honey beekeeping. She is not new to Extension, having started with the Migrant Education program in 2017 before moving to an agronomy outreach role with the UVM Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture. In this role, she will collaborate with existing University of Vermont programs and statewide and regional partners to promote best practices for pollinator health in agriculture. This effort will collect and disseminate practical information for farmers while also addressing information gaps through on-farm research. The focus will be on supporting the well-being of pollinators in the context of other farm health goals, such as integrated pest management, soil and water quality and climate change resilience
  
• (2021) 196 - Bob Walters - Bee Check Bob Walters is responsible for the technology operations, development of new business relationships with states, members, and software partners. FieldWatch operates the DriftWatch Specialty Crop Site, BeeCheck Apiary, and CropCheck registries to increase stewardship and collaboration.
• (2021) 195 - Maddie Carpenter - What is the North American honey bee? Maddie Carpenter is a graduate student pursuing her Masters of Science in Entomology from Purdue. Her focus is on the importation history of honey bees, and how those patterns inform present-day genetic diversity and differentiation among managed and feral stocks.
• (2021) 194 - Joe Maresh - Oregon State Beekeepers Association Conference Joe Maresh is the Vice President of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association. He was born and grew up in North Portland, Oregon. As a child, he did a lot of agricultural work and noticed that all of the farms that he worked on had bees. As a young adult, he held a lot of odd jobs, including cook and wildland fire fighter. At the ripe old age of 20, he went to work on tug boats and retired after 40 years. Joe started keeping bees in 1999, when he moved out of Portland to east of Canby. Starting with two hives, he harvested 140 pounds of honey the first year and was hooked. The second year, he joined the Portland Metro Beekeepers Association and expanded to five hives. In his third season, he split those five to ten, and that winter lost all but one. For several years, he kept between 10 and 20 hives so that he could sell honey and do small pollination jobs. When he retired in December 2013, he expanded to between 30 and 40 hives. Joe served as president of PMBA for three years, starting in 2014. He is “a hands-on type of guy” who enjoys working with others toward a common goal. As PMBA president, he started several group-buying ventures for nucs, sugar, and queens. He also pools his bees with others for almond pollination in California. Joe finds bees and the people who keep them fascinating and looks forward to serving the membership of OSBA.
• (2021) 193 - Laurie Adams and Josette Lewis - California Pollinator Coalition Laurie Davies Adams, Director of Programs of the Pollinator Partnership, (www.pollinator.org), has for 19 years led the world’s largest nonprofit devoted solely to the health of all pollinators. As Executive Director for 21 years, she presided P2’s signature initiatives, the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), National Pollinator Week, Eco-regional planting guides, the BeeSmart™ Gardener App, the U.S. Bee Buffer Project and Monarch Wings Across America. She has signed agreements with over 11 federal agencies influencing over 1.5 billion acres of US land to encourage pollinator conservation. She is Vice-Chairman of the Wildlife Habitat Council’s Board. Under her direction, the Pollinator Partnership has twice won the EPA’s PESP Champion Award and the Garden Club of America’s National Environmental Stewardship Award. She was a key consultant with the White House on the Presidential Memorandum on Pollinators and instrumental in the development of the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators.
  
  Dr. Josette Lewis has worked in agriculture for more than twenty-five years, spanning government, industry, university and non-governmental organizations. Most recently, she led the Environmental Defense Fund’s collaborations with grower organizations, food companies, and policy makers to promote sustainable agriculture practices. Josette led the launch of the World Food Center at UC Davis, and worked in international business development with Arcadia Biosciences. Prior to that, Josette spent 16 years at the US Agency for International Development. As Director of the Office of Agriculture at USAID, she worked with senior levels of the U.S. government to develop a $1 billion per year global food security initiative. She has served on the US Secretary of Agriculture’s advisory committee on Agricultural Biotechnology in the 21st Century, the Foundation for Agricultural Research’s Food Systems Innovation Advisory Committee, the James Beard Foundation Impact Program Advisory Committee, and is a member of the board of directors for the International Life Sciences Institute Research Foundation.
  
• (2021) 192 - Lisa DeVetter - Blueberry Pollination Planner Lisa DeVetter is an Associate Professor of Small Fruit Horticulture at Washington State University.
• (2021) 190 - Maxime Eeraerts - Sweet cherry pollination Dr. Maxime Eeraerts is from Belgium, the heart of Europe. At Ghent University he obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree of Bioscience Engineering in Forest and Nature Management in 2013 and a Master’s degree in Environmental Sanitation and Environmental Management in 2014. After this he worked on multiple projects about applied entomology in fruit cultivation, landscape ecology and ecotoxicological studies focused on wild bees. In 2020, he obtained a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences at Ghent University. In this PhD project he studied how landscape structure and the diversity of pollinating insects mediate crop pollination in sweet cherry orchards. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Lisa DeVetter’s lab working on blueberry pollination. He is also fascinated by the outdoors, likes sports and to cook, plant trees and grow shiitake mushrooms in the forest.
• (2021) 189 - Spencer Leonard - Fable of the Bees (Part 2)
• (2021) 188 - Spencer Leonard - Fable of the Bees (Part 1)
• (2021) 187 - Mace Vaughn - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Pollinators
• (2021) 186 - Dean Herzfeld - Where do pesticide applicators get their training?
• (2021) 185 - Kathleen Law - Keeping Bees Safe During Blueberries
• (2021) How to help bees survive a heat wave Extreme summer heat can pose a danger to bees. Although bees have ways to keep cool, many gardeners put out shallow trays of water and pebbles to help them. Does that help? Here's what the science says.
• (2021) 184 - Steve Javorek - Bee Habitat in Lowbush Blueberry
• (2021) 182 - Miranda Jones - The Great Oregon Squash Bee Hunt Miranda Jones is an Honors Associate pursuing her undergraduate in Biology (with an Entomology minor) at Oregon State University. She has worked in the OSU Pollinator Health Lab since 2020.
• (2021) 180 - Glyn Stephens - Splitting your booming colonies
• (2021) 179- Michael Branstetter - The deep history of the mason bees
• (2021) 178- Anna Ashby and Amber Reece - 10 beekeeping questions you were too afraid to ask Amber Reese has been keeping bees for nine years and received her Oregon Master Beekeeper Certification in October 2019. She considers herself a hobby beekeeper with a strong interest in educating youth. She has given presentations about various beekeeping topics to grades K-6th, her local beekeeping club and at various community events. She is currently a board member of the Linn Benton Beekeepers Association.
  
  Anna Ashby manages the Chef's Garden at The Allison Inn and Spa. Honey bee colonies are a part of the garden. When Anna started at The Allison in 2013 she was an OSU Master Gardener, so knew about plants, but I did not know about beekeeping. Her journey to become an OSU Certified Master Beekeeper was to become competent at that portion of her job.
  
• (2021) 177- Olivia Messinger Carril - A field guide to the common bees of North America? Olivia has been studying bees for over 25 years. She got her start at the USDA Pollinating Insects Research Unit, aka the bee lab. Her advisor and mentor gave her numerous opportunities to study bees in ecosystems around the western U.S., including an opportunity to study the bees of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, a project that she used to complete her Master's degree. She followed this up with a move to Southern Illinois to work on her PhD, studying Diadasia and its host flowers. She now lives in Santa Fe New Mexico, where she splits her time between teaching science to middle school students and sampling the bee communities of New Mexico. She is the author of The Bees in Your Backyard, and the upcoming book The Common Bees of Eastern North America.
• (2021) 176- Fred Weisensee - The pollinator plants you need! Fred is now living on the family farm in the foothills of the coast range, northwest of Corvallis and this is the location of Dancing Oaks Nursery and Gardens. He moved to this site in 1995 with his partner Leonard Foltz. The nursery has display gardens that are used to grow various plant communities and as a source of propagation for plants sold on-site and online. Fred has a full time medical practice in Corvallis.
  
• (2021) 175 - Marie Vicksta and Michael O'Loughlin - Pollinator Habitat on County Roadsides Marie Vicksta has been with Yamhill Soil & Water Conservation District since 2010. Marie provides technical assistance to landowners on farm conservation practices to improve water quality, reduce erosion and enhance wildlife habitat. She also evaluates potential eligibility for USDA programs or grant opportunities and assists landowners with project development and management. She is also the primary contact for complaints related to natural resource concerns. Before coming to work with Yamhill SWCD, Marie worked with the Wisconsin Bureau of Endangered Resources in the Wolf Depredation Payment Program working with stakeholders and outreach. She has also worked on research projects in Costa Rica and Ecuador. She graduated with her Master of Science in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development from the University of Wisconsin in 2009.
  
  Michael O’Loughlin and his family farm a total of 200 acres in Yamhill County. The O'Loughlin Farms and garden is a private research station tracking onsite precipitation, testing slug biocontrol, and studying beetle predation and Northwestern garter and ringneck populations. Michael has been a Master Gardener since 2014 and Oregon Bee Atlas since 2018. Since then, he has mentored new Master Gardener students, participated on the Yamhill County Master Gardener insect committee, taught classes in entomology and garden pollinators, served as a local expert for garden beetle or herpetology questions, and contributed articles to the Master Gardener newsletter. He is also on the Advisory Committee of the Oregon Bee Atlas and leads up the mighty Yamhill County Atlas team. He has also designed, consulted on, and/or built nine school gardens across the state, including a pollinator garden at Mary Wood Elementary School in Tigard. In the six years that O’Loughlin has been a Master Gardener, he has accomplished a tremendous amount of work that benefits gardeners across the state. Although many people may be familiar with his work, many do not know that O’Loughlin is the force behind them, and in 2020 he was awarded the statewide Statewide Behind the Scenes Award for the Master Gardeners.
  
• (2021) 174 - Veronica Wignall - Whacking bees for science: Competitive exclusion between honey bees and bumblebees in the UK Dr Veronica Wignall is a recent PhD graduate from the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI), which is based at the University of Sussex in Brighton, southeast UK. Her research explores several aspects of a big question in insect conservation – how do we improve floral resources for pollinators? Dr Wignall uses ecological methods to investigate resource competition between pollinators. How do bees and other insects compete for nectar and pollen from flowers?
  
• (2021) 173 - Jessica Rendon - Japanese beetle (is no friend of pollinators) Jessica Rendon is with the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Insect Pest Prevention and Management Program. She works alongside her fellow entomologists and colleagues to monitor, identify, and eradicate invasive insect species from Oregon. She has had the pleasure of working on the Oregon Bee Project, a cooperative effort between the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the Oregon State University Extension Service, the Oregon Department of Forestry, and a diverse set of stakeholders who are actively engaged in caring for our native and managed bee species. She received a BS degree in Environmental Science from Humboldt State University in 2008, and a PhD in Entomology from the University of Idaho in 2019. The Pacific Northwest holds a special place in her heart.
  
  
• (2021) 172 - Theresa Pitts-Singer - Where next for managed solitary bees Theresa Pitts-Singer is a Research Entomologist at theUSDA-ARS Pollinating Insects Research Unit in Logan, Utah. Her 18+ years of research on alfalfa leafcutting bees and blue orchard bees focuses on bee reproduction during crop pollination, on chemical cues that affect bee behavior, and on effects of certain pesticides on bees. She is co-editor of the book Bee Pollination in Agricultural Ecosystems, is co-author of 2 patents on bee-related products, and has published over 45 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including her work with professional colleagues, postdoctoral associates, and graduate students.
• (2021) 171 - Brittany Goodrich - How pollinator markets work Brittney Goodrich is an Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. She grew up in a rural farming community in Iowa where uncertainty in agricultural production and marketing influenced family and friends on a daily basis. Consequently, she has always been intrigued by the choices farmers make to address uncertainty in their operations, and is particularly interested in researching how individuals within the agricultural supply chain use contracts to manage risk and align incentives. Her current research explores how threats to honey bee colony health impact pollination services markets for California’s fruit and nut crops.
• (2021) 170 - Halie Cousineau - School gardens and pollinators Hailie is the Oregon State University Extension Service Lane County Pantry Food Heroes Coordinator and State Wide Food Hero Garden Education Coordinator. She is also an Indonesian specialist and world traveler who is passionate about sustainability, community empowerment, nutrition and local food communities. Skilled in Travel Photography, Communication, Cooking, Organic Farming, Beekeeping, Adobe Suite, and International Relations. Her passion is environmental education through applied learning and study abroad programs.
• (2021) 169 - Al Shay - Moving your pollinator garden up a notch Al Shay is currently an instructor in the Horticulture Department at Oregon State University. Al holds undergraduate degrees in art as well as horticulture. Additionally Al has a Masters in Agriculture degree from OSU. Al has been in the “Green Industry” for 38 years; 27 of which were spent in the field managing landscapes at such varied venues as; Oregon State University, Eugene Country Club, The Oregon Garden and DeSantis landscapes. In 2007 Al returned to OSU for his graduate degree and was appointed an instructor upon his graduation in 2010.
• (2021) 168 - Carolyn Breece and Ellen Topitzhofer - Late Winter Hive Management Carolyn Breece and Ellen Topitzhofer support the field research of the OSU Honey Bee Lab. Together they manage the lab’s 80 research and educational colonies, preparing them for experiments, and collecting data. They also teach classes and workshops to community beekeepers, OSU undergraduates, and Oregon Master Beekeeper participants.
  
• (2021) We are moving to the desert, can we still keep bees?
• (2021) 167 - Linda Hardison - Oregon Flora… reloaded Linda Hardison is the director of the Oregon Flora and a research assistant professor in the Botany & Plant Pathology Dept. at Oregon State University. She grew up in Texas, and received undergraduate degrees in botany and marine biology at the University of Texas at Austin. She moved to the Pacific Northwest to attend graduate school at the University of Washington, and received her Ph.D. in botany there in 1995. In 1996 Linda made Corvallis her home and began a post-doctoral position in the Botany Dept. at OSU. Linda has been director of the Oregon Flora since 2005.
• (2021) 166 - Alison McAfee - Queens don’t like it too hot or cold Dr. McAfee is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University, where she studies honey bee reproductive health. She is also a science writer, publishing a monthly column, Science Insider, for American Bee Journal as well as other articles for Scientific American and the Gairdner Foundation. In her spare time she enjoys steep hikes up snowy mountains, catching huge, ugly fish, and breaking speed limits on her bicycle.
• (2021) 165 - Zach Portman - When pan traps might not pan out (for bee surveys). Zach Portman is the Bee Taxonomist in the Cariveau Lab at the University of Minnesota. As a bee taxonomist he spends most of his time identifying bees and researching their classification. He also studies other aspects of bee natural history and conservation.
• (2021) 164 - Chris Looney - Hornets and invasive bumble bees in Washington Dr. Looney received an MS in Entomology from WSU, and a PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Idaho in 2007. He joined the Washington State Department of Agriculture in 2009, where he manages the Olympia Entomology Laboratory. The WSDA Entomology Lab provides identification services for Washington stakeholders, supports exotic pest surveys across the state, and conducts research on exotic insect species.
  
• (2021) 163 - Ian Tait - 2020 Year in Review Ian Tait is the Founder and Co-Chair, Feed The Bees Campaign. Feed the Bees is an initiative to encourage individuals, businesses, organizations and governments to support a healthy and sustainable bee population, and plant gardens to feed pollinators and encourage biodiversity in communities everywhere. "We need you to plant more - and we need more of you to plant - so there's pollen and nectar from March to October!" Feed The Bees is an empowered work team of two people trying to make a difference worldwide.
• (2020) 162 - Katie Buckley - Washington’s Pollinator Health Task Force Dr. Buckley is the Pollinator Health Coordinator for the Washington State Department of Agriculture. She was the chair for Washington state’s Pollinator Health Task Force and leads WSDA's Pollinator Program. She coordinates on pollinator issues with different state agencies and conservation, agricultural, and other industry groups and she has an active program on pollinator education.
• (2020) 161 - Kate LeCroy- Exotic Mason Bees Kate LeCroy is a PhD Candidate at the University of Virginia studying mason bees (genus Osmia) with T'ai Roulston. Over the last three years, Kate has partnered closely with 200+ citizen science program participants to monitor mason bee diversity and disease ecology across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Along with running training webinars and coordinating the 12-week monitoring projects each year, Kate identifies the springtime mason bees and fungal associates from each location and shares these data back with each participant. Pre-pandemic, Kate would spend a lot of her time each spring driving around the nooks and crannies of Virginia blasting Dolly Parton, visiting her program participants to deliver monitoring equipment and answering any of their questions in person. Kate loves community-building while doing science, and she hopes to do this throughout her career.
• (2020) 160 - Jim Cane - Bees and fire Dr. Jim Cane is a recently retired as a Research Entomologist with the USDA’s Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research in Logan, UT. he has extensive experience working with bees and wildflowers in sagebrush systems (but also much, much more).
  
• (2020) 158 - Kara Maddox - Pollinators for the Masses Kara Maddox is the Creative Director of Communications for the National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC). Kara’s responsibilities include developing and implementing communications & marketing strategies, managing digital content and social media activity, and supporting Corporate Social Responsibility engagement efforts for NPSEC.
  Kara joins the NPSEC team after 10+ years of teaching in higher education. She is a Professor of English and Communications for Georgia Military College's Global Online Campus.
  Kara attended the University of Georgia where she double majored in English and English Education. She holds a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Augusta State University. In 2018, Kara earned her Master of Arts degree in Communications from Johns Hopkins University with concentrations in Public Relations & Digital Communications. She is the founder of KJMdigital and now lives in Colorado Springs, CO.
  
• (2020) 154 - Josh Vlach - Invasive pests and pollinators Josh is an entomologist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture. His primary work is to anticipate, detect, and prevent the establishment of invasive invertebrate pests. A good deal of this consists of visual identification of organisms at the ODA lab. The groups he tends to focus on are wood boring insects, sucking pests (aphids, leafhoppers, mealybugs, plant hoppers, scales, etc.), thrips, and slugs and snails.
• (2020) 152 – August Jackson – Steens August Jackson is an Interpretation Coordinator at the Mount Pisgah Arboretum in Eugene, Oregon. He's also an instructor for the Master Melittologist program here. He is an avid photographer of native bees. He knows his native plants. He also has a really wonderful book that he self-published on The Bees of the Willamette Valley.
• (2020) 157 - Katie Arstingstall - Bees collect pollen from more plants than you think Katie was born and raised in Northern Kentucky, graduating from the University of Louisville in 2012 with a BS in Biology, conc. Ecology. She moved to Oregon in 2017 to pursue a MS in Wildlife Science at Oregon State University. She defended my Master's in June of this year and immediately accepted a position as a wildlife biologist with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI). She leads a field crew, studying pollinators in the Coast Range. As an undergraduate she studied tropical ants on Barro Colorado Island in Panama with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. As a graduate student, she transitioned to solitary bees, using DNA metabarcoding of bee pollen to identify important food sources for native bees in a range of habitat types. At NCASI, she has continued her journey with solitary bees, and she hopes to keep studying them in the future.
  
• (2020) 156 - Shelley Hoover - Preparing hives for winter
• (2020) 155 - Brian Spiesman - Bee Machine
• (2020) The biology and management of honey bee colonies for winter. This presentation is to provide you with the theory and management practices to ensure high honey bee colony winter survival. The presentation is by Dr. Andony Melathopoulos, Assistant Professor of Pollinator Health Extension in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. The presentation was made to the Lane County Beekeepers Association on September 15, 2020.
• (2020) 153 - Miles Dakin - Bee Friendly Farming Our guest today is Miles Dakin, who is the new Bee Friendly Farming Coordinator at Pollinator Partnership. He started working for P2 after finishing his Master's in Entomology in June 2020. He is primarily focused on BFF member and partner engagement and registration, as well as developing new and innovative conservation projects that directly help grow Bee Friendly Farming. He lives with his wife Michelle in Sacramento, CA with their dog Nova, cat Jupiter, Meyer's parrot IO, and 5 tarantulas.
• (2020) How do wildfires affect bees? How do wildfires affect Oregon bees? Flames and heat can destroy their nests and smoke can disrupt their navigation abilities. But research shows they rebound strongly along with other flora and fauna after a fire.
• (2022) Northern Giant Hornet: A Potential Threat to Honeybee Colonies in Oregon The northern giant hornet was detected in British Columbia and Washington in 2019. This publication outlines the identification, life cycle, and predatory habits of the northern giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) for beekeepers. It also provides recommendations for reporting a suspected sighting in the Pacific Northwest.
• (2020) 151 - Sarah Peebles - Resonating Bodies Sarah Peebles is a Toronto-based installation artist, composer and music improvisor. Much of her work explores digitally manipulated found sound, unconventional methods of amplification and distinct approaches to performing shō, the Japanese mouth-organ used in gagaku (court music). She has also collaborated with artists, technicians and bee biologists on a series of projects addressing pollination ecology and biodiversity, entitled “Resonating Bodies” since 2008. Peebles' activities over the past 3 decades have been wide-ranging and include music for dance, multi-channel sound, radio, video/film, performance art, integrated media, sound installation and improvised performance. She has been active in North America, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, and has collaborated with musicians, visual artists, data visualizers and with the groups “Smash and Teeny” (Peebles & guitarist Nilan Perera), and “Cinnamon Sphere” (Perera, Peebles & action calligrapher Chung Gong). Her 2014 release, “Delicate Paths - Music for shō” features solo and group improvisations and electroacoustic works (unsouds.com 42U). Her music is also published on Cycling '74, innova Recordings, Spool, Post-Concrète, and others.
  
• (2020) 149 - Caydee Savinelli - BeSure
• (2020) 148 - John Ascher - 10 Oregon Bees Dr. John Ascher is an Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, National University Singapore (NUS). He studies global bee diversity including systematics, biogeography, and conservation, and contributes to building specimen collections and online databases including citizen science portals. Working in Singapore and previously in New York he has studied urban bee faunas and changes in these over time. His main focus recently has been completion of global taxonomic and distributional world bees but he also pursues a wide range of projects with his students and collaborators, such as studies of blue color, island biogeography, sting evolution, and population genomics of Asian bees.
  
• (2020) 147 - Christina Grozinger - BeeScape Christina Grozinger is the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and the Director for the Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State. She is a Fellow of the Entomological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received her bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology at McGill University, and her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. Grozinger uses an integrative approach – from genomics to ecology – to study health and social behavior in bees. Together with other members of the Center for Pollinator Research, Grozinger is developing comprehensive approaches to improve the health of wild and managed pollinators, and coordinates networks of researchers, stakeholders, educators and policymakers to address these issues. The Center is the largest group of pollinator researchers and educators in the world, with more than 30 faculty and their associated students and staff engaging in efforts to conserve and support pollinators.
  
  
• (2020) 146 - Shelby Kilpatrick - Checklist of Pennsylvania Bees Shelby received her B.S. in Entomology and Agricultural Leadership and Development from Texas A&M University in 2017. She is broadly interested in bee biodiversity, taxonomy, systematics, ecology, biology, and biogeography. Shelby is co-advised by Dr. Margarita López-Uribe and Dr. Heather Hines, as a part of Penn State’s Integrated Pollinator Ecology (IPE) Graduate Training Program. Her current research projects include updating the checklist of bee species in Pennsylvania and investigating the evolutionary history of squash bees [Hymenoptera: Apidae: Eucera: (Peponapis) and (Xenoglossa)]
• (2020) 145 - Native Bee Society of British Columbia - Connecting bee enthusiasts together Sarah Johnson is the founding President of the Native Bee Society of BC established July 2019. Sarah is also a pollination ecologist with an endless passion for the conservation of our furry friends, the bumble bees! She is a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University studying how bumble bees are impacted by changing landscapes in British Columbia. She currently holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, one of the top PhD awards in Canada. Sarah was on a previous episode talking about her role in managing a national native pollinator conservation program based out of southern Ontario with citizen science.
  
• (2020) 144 - Mike Burgett - The “other” honey bees Mike Burgett is the Emeritus Professor of Entomology at OSU, where he has taught since 1974.
  He has conducted a huge amount of work on apiculture research in the PNW region, but almost an equal amount of work in Thailand studying stingless bees and honey bees.
  
• (2020) 143 - Hailey Wallace - What makes a bee garden tick? Bee gardens involve matching plants that bloom at different times, to bees that emerge at different times. And not all bee species go to all flowers. In this episode we hear about how all these factors come together in Portland gardens.
• (2020) Buzzing and Beautiful: Designing Pollinator Gardens with OSU Extension A recording of a webinar touring through two new OSU guides to help you garden for pollinators and then ask questions of all the authors. We covered everything from what shrubs to plant, how to use mason bees, shrubs and trees that bloom in winter and some garden designs that look great, attract a wide array of pollinators, but use plants that are readily available in local nurseries. 
• (2020) 141 - Neil Bell - The best pollinator shrubs and trees Neil Bell oversees the Master Gardener program in Marion County and Polk County and works with my volunteers to assist homeowners with their garden problems. His research interests involve evaluating evergreen shrubs for un-irrigated landscape applications in western Oregon. Since 2001, he has done evaluations of Ceanothus, Cistus and Halimium at the Oregon Garden in Silverton and at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center (NWREC) in Aurora. Currently, he is evaluating Grevillea and Arctostaphylos for hardiness, growth and flowering at NWREC. He uses these results to design low-input landscapes for the region that emphasize year-round ornamental appeal. He is also an author on two new publications for pollinators and landscape design.
• (2020) 142 Megan Asche - Social Wasps Megan Asche is a PhD candidate in the Department of Entomology at Washington State University under the supervision of Dr. Richard Zack and Dr. Pete Landolt. She specializes in honey bee biology and Polistes wasp behavior.
  
  Megan is currently investigating alternative trapping methods for controlling Polistes paper wasp populations. Her research is focused on the development of food-based trapping strategies which could ultimately replace the indiscriminately spray of chemical pesticides.
  
  Megan has been an active member of the Entomological Society of American Pacific Branch since 2015. Currently, she holds multiple positions within the association, including: Editor of the photography showcase “Through the Loupe” for American Entomologist magazine, Board member for American Entomologist magazine and ESA “World of Insects” Calendar committee member.
  
  In 2007, Megan was awarded a BA in design from Western Washington University. She worked as a graphic designer for 6 years, specializing in corporate advertising campaigns and merchandising, before beginning her career in science. Her art background and training in communication design have made her uniquely qualified to produce diagrams and scientific illustrations. In 2019, her digital artwork was featured in the journals Ecology and Environmental Entomology. She also just completed a diagram of ocean ecological zones for an article that is in review for the journal The American Naturalist.
  
  Megan is an award-winning macro insect photographer and has contributed to many international scientific and outreach publications. Since 2013, she has posted over 7,000 insect images online that are available for public viewing at macronature.com. These images are taken for educational purposes and are donated to researchers upon request.
  
• (2020) 140 Rebecca Sweet - Pollinator cover crops in vineyards Rebecca Sweet is the founder of Buzz Cover Crop Seeds, which provides diverse mixes of cover crop, pasture and insectary seeds to small and mid-sized farms in the Pacific Northwest. Rebecca has 16 years of experience researching and applying cover crops in perennial and annual systems in the Willamette Valley.
  
• (2020) 139 Jay Evans - Beeoptimism: Reflections on the advances in bee research It’s been over 10 years since Colony Collapse Disorder beset the beekeeping industry. We catch up with an author who looks back at the advances made over this period with a sense of Beeoptimism.
• (2020) 138 Ron Spendal - The secret lives of mason bees Ron Spendal is a Washington County Master Gardener who has been researching and educating on mason bees for over 15 years. He operates educational mason bee displays across Washington County, Oregon and runs a highly-sought after courses on mason bee management through Washington Co Extension.
  
• (2020) 137 John Ascher - The problem with measuring bee decline Dr. Ascher is an Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, National University Singapore (NUS). He studies global bee diversity including systematics, biogeography, and conservation, and contributes to building specimen collections and online databases including citizen science portals. Working in Singapore and previously in New York he has studied urban bee faunas and changes in these over time. His main focus recently has been completion of global taxonomic and distributional world bees but he also pursue a wide range of projects with his students and collaborators, such as studies of blue color, island biogeography, sting evolution, and population genomics of Asian bees.
• (2020) 136 Mandy Shaw - Bee Entrepreneurship Mandy Shaw is beekeeper and founder of Waggle Works in Portland, Oregon. She specializes in helping new beekeepers gain a better understanding of the complexities of life inside and outside of the hive, and become more confident in their bee handling abilities. Mandy is an avid swarm catcher and travels throughout the Portland Metro Area rescuing and relocating honey bees and bumble bees. In 2018 she started her podcast, Beekeeper Confidential. Mandy serves the beekeeping community as a board member of Portland Urban Beekeepers.
• (2020) 135 Suzie Savoie - Spring native pollinator plants Suzie Savoie is co-owner of Siskiyou Ecological Services and Klamath-Siskiyou Native Seeds, is the Conservation Chair for the Siskiyou Chapter Native Plant Society of Oregon and is co-author of Native Pollinator Plants for Southern Oregon. Suzie provides native seed collection services, online native seed sales, native nursery plants, and native plant consultation. She is an avid hiker, backpacker, gardener, native plant enthusiast, and off-grid homesteader. For seventeen years Suzie has been using native plants for gardens and habitat restoration on her property in the Applegate Valley, and she enjoys helping others do the same.
  
• (2020) 134 Jim Cane - Spring Bees Dr. Jim Cane is a recently retired Research Entomologist with the USDA’s Bee Lab in Logan, Utah. He has been interested in comparative studies of solitary bees for 30 years, beginning with the evolutionary origins and use of lipid exocrine secretions to attract mates, repel predators, supplement larval diets, waterproof, and disinfect their nests. We had him on previous episodes talking about common summer bees and alfalfa pollinating bees. 
• (2020) 133 Kim Patten - Pollinator habitat on working farms Putting habitat into a working farm involves juggling operational constraints and pollinator biology. In this episode we hear about an innovative example of how PNW cranberry growers are attracting and boosting bee populations around their bogs. 
• (2020) 130 – Carolyn Breece – Should you keep bees? There has been an explosion in people keeping bees for a hobby. But for many, beekeeping is a bigger commitment than they expected. This week we are joined by Carolyn Breece who will help you figure out if beekeeping for you and what’s involved in getting started. 
• (2020) 129 – Ron Bitner – Vineyards for Pollinators Idaho and Oregon’s Treasure Valley have a deep connection to bee management for alfalfa seed, but in this episode we hear about how that tradition is being transferred to pollinator management in vineyards. 
  
• (2020) 128 – Serkan Ates – Livestock forage plants and bees Some of the best plants for long-tongued bees like bumble bees and honey bees are grown for livestock. This week we dive deep into these livestock plants with Dr. Serkan Ates. Dr. Ates is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal and Rangeland Sciences.
• (2020) 127 – Kirsten Traynor – 2 Million Blossoms There is nothing about browsing though a magazine. There are some great beekeeping magazines, but what’s missing is a magazine devoted to pollinators more broadly. Enter 2 Million Blossoms, a new quarterly magazine launched in January.
  
• (2020) 126 – Casey Hale – Bees that are parasites on other bees When you think of a bee you probably think of an insect hard at work growing its nest and pollinating plants. But over 10% of bees are kleptoparasites; bees that don’t build their own nests, but are parasites on other bees.
  
• (2020) Trees and Shrubs for Fall and Winter Bloom Fall and winter flowers add cheer in the Pacific Northwest's rainy season. Flowering shrubs are also a boost to pollinators, providing nectar and pollen when little is available. Learn what shrubs and trees to plant now to brighten your garden in the months to come.
• (2020) 125 – Lila Westreich – The Secret Life of Mason Bees Many of us put mason bees out in our backyard or farm. But when they leave the nest, do you know where they are going to forage? In this episode we hear how a sleuthing graduate student in Seattle is beginning to piece together a picture of what resources these bees are actually using.
• (2020) 124 – Lauren Ponisio – Pollinator Hedgerows Hedgerows can be great ways to attract pollinators in agriculture and forestry settings. But how can such relatively small plantings impact pollinator abundance and diversity on larger scales? This week we dig deep into the science of how hedgerows contribute to pollinator health. 
  
• (2020) 123 – Megan Swanson – Bees in the Classroom Literacy on pollinator biology and ecology in the US is poor. But schools can be skittish about insects, especially bees, and teachers lack resources to make pollinator education come alive. This week we hear about an initiative that to get around these obstacles – The Bee Cause Project. 
• (2019) 122 – Alberta Agriculture and Forestry – What Happened in 2019? What happened in 2019 when it came to Apiculture? We visit the Apiculture unit at Alberta Agriculture and Forestry in Lethbridge to find out. Hear about highlights from Apimonida, the introduction of an Asian giant hornet in Washington and BC and problems beekeepers have been having with European foulbrood.
  
• (2019) 121 – Weston Miller – Solving Pest Problems People living in cities are confronted by a range of pest problems, some of which impact pollinator health. This week we hear about an initiative to make science-based information on managing these pests clearer, more intuitive and easy to find. 
• (2019) 120 – Claire Kremen and Corin Pease – New to the PNW! The Pacific Northwest got not just one, but two great pollinator positions in 2019. Claire Kremen has moved her lab from Berkeley to the University of British Columbia and Corin Pease is the new regional Pollinator Conservation Planner at Xerces.
• (2019) 119 – MR Pollination – Alfalfa leafcutter bees Alfalfa leafcutting bees don’t get the attention of honey bees, but they are also a remarkable example of how people have learned to manage a bee species. It’s often hard to get details about this industry, but this week we bring you an inside scoop from one of the industry’s gurus – Weldon Hobbs.
  
• (2019) 118 – Rich Hatfield – Queen Quest Oregon’s bumble bees are all hibernating. Mated bumble bee queen are known to winter in loose soil or leaf litter, but we don’t know much more beyond that. This week we talk with Rich Hatfield about a new community science initiative called Queen Quest, to learn more about the wintering requirements of bumble bees.
  
• (2020) Enhancing Urban and Suburban Landscapes to Protect Pollinators The way we garden can help promote the health of bees and other insects. This guide offers detailed plant lists, garden designs and advice on creating pollinator habitat.
  
• (2019) 117 – Gregory Lynch – Miel Montréal Co-op Ever heard the term “native beekeeper” before? Me neither, until I talked with Gregory Lynch from the Miel Montréal Co-op. In this episode he explains how the Co-op has developed a wide range of educational services that goes beyond (honey bee) beekeeping, to promoting native bees and urban biodiversity more generally.
  
• (2019) 116 – ApiEXPO 2019 In this episode we take a stroll through the tradeshow at the world’s largest beekeeping conference, Apimondia, which was held in Montreal, Canada in September. In this episode you’ll hear about a machine that can turn 1000lbs of liquid honey into velvety-creamed honey, the latest in varroa control, styrofoam hive equipment and tips on how to re-use plastic foundation.
  
• (2019) 115 – Robert Marshall – Roadside pollinator habitat Roads crisis-cross the state of Oregon, making roadsides an appealing focus for creating an interconnected network of pollinator habitat. But roadside habitat has to fit within the constraints faced by Departments of Transports. In this episode we hear about some of those constraints and successes achieved by Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). 
• (2019) 114 – John Jacob – Solar panels and pollinator habitat There is a lot of ground under solar panels that could be planted to pollinator habitat. In this episode guest host Maggie Graham (MSc candidate, Water Resources Science, OSU) talks with John Jacob, a Southern Oregon beekeeper, who has been working with solar panel companies to make sure new installations include habitat for bees.
  
• (2019) 113 – Kass Urban-Mead – Bees in trees? How important are trees to the health of bees? In many cases we don’t know because trees are a lot bigger than us. That doesn’t stop our next guest from scaling into the canopy for her research. This week we feature PhD Candidate Kass Urban-Mead.  Kass is working on PhD in Entomology at Cornell University.
  
• (2019) 112 – Bob Curtis – Improving Bee Health During Pollination Pollinating crops can be difficult on honey bees. Since 2014, the California Almond Board has been working with beekeepers, pest control advisors and groups like Project ApisM to come up with standards (Best Management Practices, BMPs) to increase the health of bees in California Almonds.
  
• (2019) 111 – August Jackson – The Bees of the Willamette Valley Learning the bees of your local area can be a daunting task. Most guides and keys, for example, include bees that don’t even exist where you live, and are packed with hard-to-understand terminology. This week we talk to August Jackson, who has come up with a solution – a concise guide to the bees of the Willamette Valley.
  
• (2019) 110 – International Pollinator Conference – Highlights The Fourth International Pollinator Conference was held in Davis, CA. In this episode you will hear about some of the interesting new research happening on pollinator health from around the world. 2019 International Pollinator Conference highlighted recent research advances in the biology and health of pollinators, and linking these to policy implications.
  
• (2019) 109 – Shelley Hoover – Its all in the queen Honey bee queen quality is an often overlooked dimension of colony health. In this episode we catch up with Dr. Shelley Hoover who is the Apiculture Researcher with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. She tells us about work to assess different commercial queen stocks and to fit queen production into crop pollination.
  
• (2019) 108 – Rosalyn Johnson – Bio-diverse and drought-tolerant gardens In this episode we talk with Dr. Rosalyn (Ros) Johnson from Yardbio.com about how to establish local, native, and drought-tolerant species in backyards to support pollinators and wildlife. After Dr. Johnson earned her degree in Wildlife Ecology she decided to move to a part of the country she really like and work on preserving and supporting species and ecosystems locally – the San Francisco peninsula.
  
• (2019) 107 – Bryan Danforth – The Solitary Bees Although solitary bees make up the bulk of bee diversity, there hasn’t been a comprehensive biology book about them. That is until now. This week we catch up with Dr. Bryan Danforth about his new book, The Solitary Bee, authored along with Frances Fawcett, John Neff, and Robert Minckley.
  
• (2019) 106 – Jim Cane – Squash and Sunflower Bees Squash bees were recently discovered in Oregon last year. This week we talk to Dr. Jim Cane about the biology of squash bees and what how far (and fast) it might spread into the state. We also take this opportunity to have Dr. Cane profile another summer bee that can be found in virtually any backyard in Oregon – the sunflower bee of the genus Melissodes.
• (2019) 105 – Tyson Wepprich – Insect Apocalypse? There has been a lot of attention lately to whether there is a long-term towards declining insect abundance across the world. This week we catch up with Dr. Tyson Wepprich who recently reported on butterfly abundance declines in Ohio over the past 20 years. Dr.  Wepprich is an entomologist who researches insect populations, phenology, and adaptations to climate.
  
• (2019) 104 – Bonnie Shoffner – The finer points of pollinator outreach Public outreach may seem simple, but impactful and effective outreach is an art. Bonnie Shoffner from Portland Metro is a real pro at pulling off pollinator outreach events and this week she shares here secrets for success. 
  
• (2019) 103 – Rachel Mallinger – Bees in blueberries, forests and gardens (in Florida) Oregon and Florida may seem miles apart, but the role of bees in both states has remarkable parallels. This week Dr. Rachel Mallinger University of Florida talks about blueberry pollination, bees in forest systems and interests of gardeners around bees in the Sunshine State.
• (2019) 102 – Jacob Pecenka – Watermelons, pests and pollination Watermelons are hard notoriously to pollinate. But pollination is not their only problem; they can also experience reduced yield from pest damage. This week we hear from Jacob Pecenka, a PhD candidate at Purdue University, from who tells us about the trade-offs from managing pests and loosing pollination and how Integrated Pest Management can provide an excellent way to navigate these trade-offs.
  
• (2019) 100 – THE Everything-You-wanted-to-know-about-pollinators-but-were-afraid- to-ask SHOW To mark 100 episodes of PolliNation we have assembled the dedicated faculty from OSU to answer your questions: Lincoln Best (Taxonomist, Oregon Bee Atlas), Dr. Sandra DeBano (OSU Terrestrial Invertebrate Ecology Lab, Hermiston), Jennifer Holt (Oregon Master Beekeepers, Oregon Bee Project, Oregon Bee Atlas) Dr. Gail Langellotto (OSU Master Gardeners and Garden Ecology Lab), Dr. Andrew Moldenke (OSU Insect Ecology),
  Dr. Ramesh Sagili (OSU Apiculture Lab).
  
• (2019) 99 – Adam Allington – The Business of Bees Adam Allington in a reporter with Bloomberg Environment in Washington DC. He covers environmental issues including pesticides and chemicals. Prior to coming to Bloomberg he spent more than ten years working in public radio. Over the course of one year, Adam, along with environment reporters David Schultz and Tiffany Stecker traveled to all corners of the honeybee ecosystem from Washington, D.C., to the California almond fields, and orchards of the upper Midwest to examine the changing relationship between commercial pollination and US food production.
  
• (2019) 98 – Bob Falconer – Backyard Pollinator Strips Made Easy Bob Falconer joined the OSU Master Gardeners in 2009 but has been gardening since the 1970s. He’s been involved with horticulture since high school, with experience spanning 50 years. He was part of the team that developed and piloted OSU Extension’s Ask an Expert app, which received the OSU Vice Provost Award for Excellence.
  
• (2019) 97 Hannah Levenson – Regional bee communities (and the plants they like) Hannah Levenson is a North Carolina native with a diverse research background ranging from working on reef degradation in The Bahamas to the impacts of pesticide applications on honey bee hives in South Dakota. Now she is a graduate student in Entomology with a co-major in Biology at North Carolina State University working under Dr. David Tarpy.
  
• (2019) 96 Mia Park – Urban Prairie Restoration for Bees Dr. Mia Park is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biological Sciences Department at North Dakota State University, Fargo. Dr. Park’s research asks, “Who are our wild pollinators? How are they impacted by anthropogenic disturbance? How can we manage landscapes in a manner that supports their abundance and health?”.
• (2019) 95 Lincoln Best – The Oregon Bee Atlas (Year 1 Update). Although we estimate there are 500 species of bees in Oregon, there has never been a concerted survey of the state’s bees. Without even a checklist of species, it is very difficult to know whether the health of Oregon bees is improving or declining.
• (2019) Honey Bees & Pollinator Health A list of resources about honey bees, beekeeping, and pollinator health.
• (2019) 94 Aaron Anderson – Which Native Plants Are Best For In Your Garden For Oregon Bees? In this episode, Aaron Anderson, a Ph.D. student in the OSU Department of Horticulture, talks about his research on gardening with native plants. Under the direction of Dr. Gail Langellotto, Aaron is researching native plants that support ecosystem services; that gardeners find attractive, and that they would want.
  
• (2019) 93 Dr. Elina L Niño – Pollinating California Almonds Dr. Elina L Niño’s research interests are broad and range from understanding reproductive processes involved in queen bee mating to developing and evaluating new control methods to combat Varroa mites.
  
• (2019) 92 Jim Cane – The Weird And Wonderful World of Alfalfa Pollination Dr. Cane is a Research Entomologist with the USDA’s Pollinating Insect-Biology, Management, Systematics Research in Logan, UT. Dr. Cane has been interested in comparative studies of solitary bees for 30 years, beginning with the evolutionary origins and use of lipid exocrine secretions to attract mates, repel predators, supplement larval diets, waterproof, and disinfect their nests.
• (2019) 91 Pierre Lau – The Everything-You-Wanted-To-Know-About-Pollen Episode Pierre Lau is a Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University, where he has devoted his time and effort to studying honey bee nutritional ecology. He started building his academic resume at the University of California, San Diego and California State Polytechnic University, Fullerton with honey bee behavioral and native bee pollination studies.
  
• (2019) 90 Dr. Casey Delphia – The Bees of Montana Dr. Casey Delphia is a Research Scientist at Montana State University and Associate Curator of Apoidea in the Montana Entomology Collection (MTEC) where she conducts research on managed solitary bees and wild native bees in agricultural and wildland ecosystems.
• (2019) 89 Kim Flottum – The Venerable Tradition of Getting the Word Out About Bees This week we talk with Kim Flottum. Kim has not only thought long and hard about communicating with people of bees, as editor of Bee Culture and BEEKeeping magazines, but he has a tremendous sense of the history of this endeavor, being situated in the historic A. I. Root Company in Medina, OH.
  
• (2019) 88 Rebecca Perry and Grace Cope – The Benefits of Golf Course Flower Patches Depends on Course Management This week we are joined by Rebecca Perry and Grace Cope from Dr. Adam Dale’s Landscape Entomology program at the University of Florida. Rebecca is a graduate student whose masters project focused on conserving monarch butterflies on golf course wetlands, and Grace is an undergraduate research intern.
  
• (2019) 87 Steve Peterson – How To Make Mason Bees Thrive? Steve Peterson has been working with cavity nesting bees for a long time. How long is a bit of a mystery, as Steve is going full bore placing blue orchard bees out in California almond orchards at the time of writing (and catching up with Steve at this juncture would be very, very hard).
• (2019) 86 Dr. Priyadarshini Chakrabarti – The Secret Life of Bee Nutrition Dr. Chakrabarti is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher in Dr. Ramesh Sagili’s Honey Bee Lab at Oregon State University. Her chief focus lies in improving honey bee health by understanding honey bee nutrition and deciphering the effects of pesticides on pollinators.
  
• (2019) 85 Lynda Boyer – Producing Native Plants For Bees Lynda Boyer was hired in 2001 by Heritage Seedlings to facilitate restoration of native habitats on nursery properties and manage a native seed production program. Heritage Seedlings now grows over 120 species of native Willamette Valley wildflowers, grasses, and sedges on 35 acres for commercial seed that is used on restoration sites in the Willamette Valley.
  
• (2019) 84 Kathleen Baughman – Nurseries and Pollinators Kathleen Baughman is a 1995 graduate of Washington State University with a degree in Landscape Architecture. In 2009, Kathleen made a lateral shift into Horticulture and worked in pest management at a rose nursery for several years before coming to Iwasaki Bros., Inc.
  
• (2019) Honey bee colony loss, herbicide related?
• (2019) 83 Harry Vanderpool – Talking to Pesticide Applicators About Bees Harry Vanderpool has been a beekeeper for 25 years in the south hills of Salem, Oregon. Vanderpool Farms is now a family operation providing pollination services and farm direct honey. Harry has served as Vice President and President of the Willamette Valley Beekeepers Association and Vice President and President of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association.
  
• (2019) 82 Sarah Kincaid – Promoting Bee-Friendly Farming Sarah Kincaid is an entomologist and pollinator specialist in the Insect, Pest, Prevention, and Management Program (IPPM) with the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA). Sarah is a founder and ODA IPPM project lead for the Oregon Bee Project.
  
• (2019) 81 Dr. Valerie Peters – Climate Change, Pollinators and Coffee Dr. Valerie Peters is an Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University. Valerie is an ecologist interested in the conservation of biodiversity, with research projects both in Kentucky but also Costa Rica, and she studies how global stressors such as land use change, invasive species, and climate change impact biodiversity and use ecosystem services, such as pollination, as a tool to place value on species, such as pollinators and biodiversity.
  
• (2018) 80 Dr. Christina Mogren – Bees in Hawaii Dr. Mogren is an assistant researcher of pollinator ecology at University of Hawaii Manoa, with a research program focused on how nutrition can be used to increase pollinator health to mitigate stress caused by pesticides, parasites, and disease.
  
• (2018) 79 Robyn Shephard – Hybrid Vegetable Seed Pollination Oregon is one of the biggest vegetable seed producing states in the US. In this episode, we catch up with Robyn Shephard, an agronomist with Lakeside Ag-Ventures, in a red radish seed field to learn how hybrid systems work and the steps vegetable seed growers are taking to keep bees healthy during pollination.
• (2018) 78 Emily Erickson – Breeding and The Attractiveness of Garden Plants Emily is a PhD student in entomology at Pennsylvania State University. Her work focuses on the plant-pollinator interactions, with a focus to supporting pollinators and biodiversity in urban environments. Emily did her undergraduate work at UC Davis where she studied International Agricultural Development and minored in Entomology, which honed her interest in how humans interact with the natural world and set her on the path to studying bees and their role in man-made environments.
• (2018) 77 David Cantlin – More Clover In Your Turf? Lessons from the City of Fife David Cantlin is the Facility and Operations Manager for the City of Fife in Washington State, where he is implementing his Bee Clover project. His goal is to educate the people of Fife of the wonderful benefits that clover provides, as well as using public lands to create stronger habitats for pollinators, as well as a more enriched ecosystem.
  
• (2018) 76 Dr. Chelsea Cook – Honey Bee Scouting and the Virtues of Being Easily Distracted Dr. Chelsea Cook is a postdoctoral researcher, funded by the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship, at Arizona State University. Chelsea’s focus is using behavior, neurophysiology, and genetics to understand how social insects organize, especially to accomplish critical tasks.
  
• (2018) 75 Amy Cox – Eco-lawns and Pollinators How can we ask not what greenspaces can do for us but what greenspaces can do for the environment? Portland-based Pro Time Lawn Seed was one of the first businesses to tackle this question, with the founder of the company developing low-maintenance and low-input lawn seed mixes, and the new owners expanding the mission to promote pollinator habitat, species diversity and soil health.
• (2018) 74 Lila Westreich – Mason Bees and Landscapes Lila Westreich is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, in the Department of Environment and Forest Sciences. She has a B.S. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the effect of varying landscape composition on the solitary mason bee, Osmia lignaria.
• (2018) 73 Research Retinue – Is Glyphosate Harmful To Bees? The OSU Research Retinue goes into depth on research papers that have been recently featured in the news. We convened Retinue this week to review a paper that got a fair amount of press over the past few months. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicides in the world and is regarded as relatively non-toxic to bees and other pollinating insects.
  
• (2018) 72 Garth Mulkey – Specialty seeds and bees This episode explores the fascinating relationship between bees and specialty seed crops. Oregon vegetable and flower seed industries are deeply invested in the health of pollinators. Moreover, the great conditions for growing seeds in the state has led to a proliferation in the variety of different flowering crops grown in Oregon.
  
• (2018) 71 Courtney MacInnis and Dr. Steve Pernal – Honey Bee Nosema Disease: An Old Disease With New Twists Courtney MacInnis received her MSc from the University of Alberta in 2017. As a MSc student, Courtney examined the viability and infectivity of Nosema ceranae spores in various substrates associated with honey bee colonies. Courtney is now a PhD student at the University of Alberta, supervised by Drs. Lien Luong and Steve Pernal.
  
• (2018) 70 Dr. Sara Galbraith – Measuring Success: Mason Bees as an Indicator of Forest Management Quality Dr. Sara Galbraith is a postdoctoral researcher in the Forest Animal Ecology Lab at Oregon State University in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. She has a B.A. in Biology from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Idaho and the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center in Costa Rica.
• (2018) 69 Michelle Flenniken – Bee viruses Michelle Flenniken is an Assistant Professor in the Plant Sciences Department at Montana State University. She is a microbiologist investigating honey bee host–pathogen interactions and Co-Director of the Pollinator Health Center at MSU. Michelle received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Iowa, then was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, before obtaining her Ph.D. in Microbiology from Montana State University.
• (2018) 68 Project Apis m. – Enhancing the Health of Honey Bees Through Research and Education Our guest today is Danielle Downey, the Executive Director for Project Apis m., whose mission is to fund and direct research to enhance the health and vitality of honey bee colonies while improving crop production. Danielle has been working with honey bees and the parasites that plague them for 25 years.
  
• (2018) 67 Rich Hatfield – PNW Bumble Bee Atlas Rich Hatfield is a senior conservation biologist for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. He has authored several publications on bumble bees, including a set of management guidelines entitled Conserving Bumble Bees.
  
• (2018) 66 Dr. Sarah Lawson – The small carpenter bee and their Cinderella daughters We are starting a new series to help expand our understanding of the amazing diversity in the bee genera of the Pacific Northwest. This week, we are focusing on the small carpenter bee from the genus Ceratina with Dr. Sarah Lawson, who is a lecturer in the Department of Biology at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.
  
• (2018) 65 Robert Coffin and Josh Loy – Teeing off with Monarch Butterflies In past episodes, we have highlighted the important role golf courses play in pollinator health. In today’s episode, we talk about a fantastic success story here in Oregon. Earlier this month, Stewart Meadows Golf Course in Medford, Oregon became Oregon’s first golf course with certified Monarch Butterfly Waystations.
• (2018) 64 Mike Rodia – Residential Beekeeping and the Law Ralph (Mike) Rodia, a life time member of the Oregon State Beekeepers Association (OSBA) and the Willamette Valley Beekeepers Association [WVBA], has a PhD in Organic Chemistry, was a research scientist, college educator, occupational health inspector and supervisor (Oregon OSHA), Oregon Chief Deputy State Fire Marshal, and has been active in the OSBA at the regional and state levels for the last 20 years.
  
• (2018) 63 Lori Weidenhammer – Victory Gardens for Bees This week we catch up with Lori Weidenhammer about her book Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide to Saving the Bees. Lori was recently through Corvallis for the Oregon Bee School and this offered an opportunity to talk about the book before class one morning.
• (2018) 62 Sam Droege and the Bee School This week, students with Oregon State University’s Bee School took a break in the OSU Pollinator Gardens on their last day of class (they were working on the Apidae) to ask questions of native bee biologist Sam Droege. Sam Droege is a biologist with the US Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, in Maryland.
  
• (2018) 61 Dale Mitchell – Oregon’s pesticide incidence reporting system Beginning in 2013, Oregon faced a series of bumble bee poisoning incidences associated with pesticide use on linden trees. In response, the Oregon Legislature passed the Avoidance of Adverse Effects on Pollinating Insects bill.
  
• (2018) 60 Dr. Bob Peterson – Alfalfa leafcutting bees and mosquitos. Alfalfa leafcutting bees (Megachilie rotandata) don’t make the headlines like honey bees do, but they are pretty important to agricultural production. These bees pollinate alfalfa plants to make the seed that gets planted out across hay fields across the US and beyond. This week we learn about the peculiar management system associated with leafcutting bees.
  
• (2018) 59 Dr. Hollis Woodard – Bees in dynamic and extreme environments Bees can live in some extreme environments; from the hot deserts of the US southwest, to the tundra in Alaska and northern Canada. Dr. Hollis Woodard’s research focuses on the underlying mechanisms that allow these bees to adapt to these extremes, providing insights into basic bee biology that can help us understand how bees might respond to our rapidly-changing planet.
• (2018) 58 Pollinators and their People: The voices of Oregon Pollinator Week 2018 Oregon just hosted its largest Pollinator Week in its history and we thought it was a great opportunity to catch up with some of the people who made the over 20 events in the state happen. We start the episode at the Pollinator Festival in Klamath Falls (June 22) where we caught up with Dr. Nicole Sanchez (Assistant Professor, Horticulture, OSU) and Akimi King (Biologist, US Fish and Wildlife Service).
• (2018) 57 Drs. Margaret Couvillon and Roger Schürch – Assessing habitat through honey bee dances. PolliNation was joined this week by Drs. Margaret Couvillon and Roger Schürch from Virginia Tech. As you will learn in this episode, the Couvillon Lab investigates the dynamics of how pollinators collect their food in the landscape, with a specific focus on honey bee foraging, recruitment, and health. Dr. Couvillon is in the Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech.
• (2018) 56 Dr. Ramesh Sagili – How to make a lot of honey this year! Dr. Ramesh Sagili is an Associate Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University and heads up OSUs mighty Bee Lab. He is a regular guest on PolliNation and this week he comes on the show to tell us how to manage colonies for an intense honey flow (happening right now in Western Oregon with the onset of the blackberry flow).
  
• (2018) 55 Mimi Jenkins – Watermelon Pollination: How native bees affect watermelon crops Mimi Jenkins is a PhD candidate at Clemson University in wildlife biology studying how wildflowers in watermelon fields affect the diversity and crop pollination services by native bees to watermelon. Mimi works with watermelon growers in coastal and central SC as well as researchers at Clemson and the USDA Vegetable Lab in Charleston, SC.
  
• (2018) 54 Ron Miksha – Crop Pollination: Past, Present and Future Ron has worked with honey bees since childhood, producing a million pounds of honey and thousands of queens and packages. He has had bee farms in Pennsylvania, Florida, Saskatchewan, and Alberta and has migrated bees for pollination in the eastern USA. His comb honey farm in southern Alberta produced 50,000 comb sections a year.
  
• (2018) 53 Kelly Rourke – National Pollinator Week Eleven years ago the U.S. Senate’s unanimous approval and designation of a week in June as “National Pollinator Week” marked a necessary step toward addressing the urgent issue of declining pollinator populations. Pollinator Week has now grown into an international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles.
• (2018) 52 OSU Research Retinue – Mowing or mowing less: What helps the bees more? The OSU Research Retinue reviews a research study that garnered a fair amount of press this month on the connection between lawn mowing frequency and bee abundance and diversity. The study, led by Susannah Lerman from USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, compared the bees visiting lawns mowed weekly, every two or three weeks.
• (2018) 51 Heather Higo – Rearing your Own Queens Heather began working with honey bees in 1987 at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia, Canada and completed a Master’s degree in bee research under Mark Winston. On completion she took on the position of SFU bee research coordinator, managing the university’s honey bee colonies and bee research lab, and mentoring students until the lab closed.
  
• (2018) 50 Lincoln Best – Taxonomy with The Oregon Bee Atlas Lincoln Best is the Lead Taxonomist for the Oregon Bee Project/Atlas. He is obsessed with natural history, the little things, and designing plant communities to support biodiversity. He has studied the biodiversity of native bees from Haida Gwaii to Tasmania, and from Baja California to Taiwan.
• (2018) 49 A $7 million investment in pollinator health by the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (FFAR) Last month the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (FFAR) announced a $7 million investment in Pollinator Health. FFAR targeted key gaps in our ability to focus research into innovative and concrete initiatives that can change practices in the world. This week we are joined by Dr. Sally Rockey, who became the inaugural Executive Director of FFAR in 2015.
  
• (2018) 48 Travis Owen – The Amateur Anthecologist Travis Owen is a self-described nature enthusiast with a passion for pollination ecology and the role of pollinators in the environmental context of Southern Oregon. His passions have grown and evolve over time. In his twenties he was a DJ, then taught himself to build furniture, began to learn the ways of plants, then pollinators.
  
• (2018) 47 Briana Ezray – Mullerian mimicry and why telling bumble bee species apart by color can be hard. Briana Ezray received her BA in biology from Willamette University and worked for the Oregon Department of Agriculture on a survey of native bees pollinating crops. She began her PhD in 
Entomology at the Pennsylvania State University in Dr. Heather Hines Lab. Overall, her research involves topics such as bumble bee biogeography and mimicry, bee community disease ecology, and conservation biology.
  
• (2018) 46 A Well-Curated Bee In A Museum Is Worth A Thousand Pictures Dr. Chris Marshall is the curator of the Oregon State Arthropod Collection (OSAC) located at Oregon State University. In this episode, Dr. Marshall discusses the value of museum collections in being able to piece together patterns of bee biodiversity across space and time (OSAC’s collection was started around 1860).
• (2018) 45 Practicing Good Mason Bee Stewardship… The Bee Buddy Way This week we are joined by Heath Keirstead and Jerry Paul from the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District (BSWCD). Heath is BSWCD’s Communication and Community Engagement Manager and Jerry has been involved with BSWCD as a volunteer and Board Member. PolliNation caught up with Heath and Jerry at the BSWCD office to talk about caring for orchard mason bees (Osmia lignaria) in the spring and their outreach initiative – the Bee Buddies program – that is encouraging stewardship of people cultivating these bees.
• (2018) 44 John Gates – Making Nucleus Colonies John Gates has been a beekeeper for 43 years. He served as the Apiculture Specialist British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, Apiculture Program 1975-2002. He was a full-time commercial beekeeper from 2002-2015, specializing in bee breeding, stock production and pollination. He has lectured widely in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean.
  
• (2018) 43 Mark Winston – Listening to Bees Mark Winston was the recipient of the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction for his book Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive. One of the world’s leading experts on bees and pollination, Dr. Winston is also an internationally recognized researcher, teacher and writer.
  
• (2018) 42 Research Retinue – Honey Bees and Conservation The Research Retinue is a new segment on PolliNation that goes into depth on research papers that have been recently featured in the news. The Retinue is made up of intrepid OSU undergraduates and this week involved Addison DeBoer (Biology), Lacy Haig (Zoology), Umayyah Wright (Environmental Science), Isabella Messer (Horticulture).
  
• (2018) 41 Rose Kachadoorian – What States Are Doing For Pollinator Health Rose Kachadoorian is a Pesticide Regulatory Leader with the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) and oversees efforts involving pesticide registrations, certification and licensing of pesticide applicators, endangered species, and other pesticide related issues. She has been with ODA for over 20 years.
  
• (2018) 40 Tom Landis – Monarch Butterflies in Southwestern Oregon Tom Landis has a PhD in Forest Ecology and has worked for 30 years as a nursery specialist for the USDA Forest Service. He now runs Native Plant Nursery Consulting and is a member of the Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates, where he provides educational and hands-on Milkweed and Monarch Workshops.
• (2018) 39 Jeff Reardon – Bees in the Legislature Representative Jeff Reardon has served the East Portland District of Happy Valley (District 48) in the Oregon Legislature since January 2013. Shortly after coming to office there was a tragic pesticide poisoning of bumble bees in a suburban big-box parking lot in Portland.
  
• (2018) 38 Dr. Ramesh Sagili – The Elusive Secrets of Honey Bee Nutrition and Managing Varroa Mites Dr. Ramesh Sagili is an Associate Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. He obtained his PhD in Entomology from Texas A&M University in 2007, specializing in honey bee research. His primary research focus at OSU is honey bee health, nutrition and pollination.
  
• (2018) 37 Alison Center – North American Butterfly Association Alison Center has worked as a wildlife biologist for the Bureau of Land Management and U. S. Forest Service and volunteers on the Coast Fork Willamette watershed council’s technical team. She is presently working as the editorial assistant for BioProcess International magazine and is the president of the Oregon chapter of the North American Butterfly Association (NABA) based in Eugene.
• (2018) 36 John Gruszka – Independence From Packaged Honey Bees: the Case of Saskatchewan, Canada John Gruszka served as the Provincial Apiculturalist in Saskatchewan, Canada between 1978 and 2011. As John mentions in the interview, Saskatchewan is one of the most productive honey producing places on the planet, but it suffers from quite an inhospitable winter (John says it’s the closest you get to ‘Siberia’ on the continent).
  
• (2018) 35 BEEvent – Oregon’s Pollinator Conference BEEvent is really without equal in the US. Started in 2014, this annual event provides gardeners and land managers with the practical knowledge and tools to help bee pollinators. The conference is organized by the Linn County Master Gardeners and the 2018 conference (3 March, 2018 in Albany, Oregon) will focus on “Creating a Pollinator-Friendly Landscape in your Garden” (featuring former PolliNation guest Linda Hardison).
  
• (2018) 34 Dr. Gail Langellotto – What do Bees Need from Your Garden? Dr. Gail Langellotto is an Associate Professor of Horticulture at Oregon State University, and coordinator of OSU Extension Master Gardener program. As the secretary of the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture, Gail works with industry, academic, and nonprofit leaders to document the benefits of home community gardening and to promote public support for research and extension in consumer horticulture.
• (2017) 33 Mehmet Ali Döke – How Honey Bees Survive The Winter Mehmet Ali Döke earned his bachelor’s in Molecular Biology and Genetics, and master’s in Biology from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. During his junior year, he started working with honey bees and was a part of the group who surveyed the beekeepers in Turkey to document bee losses and possible reasons in coordination with the COLOSS effort.
  
• (2017) 32 Matt Arrington – Pollinating Blueberries in the Pacific Northwest Matt Arrington recently graduated with a Ph.D. in horticulture from Washington State University. He has experience in applied plant research with small fruit and tree fruit. Matt is currently working with Dr. Lisa DeVetter at the Small Fruit Horticulture program in Mount Vernon, Washington as a graduate research assistant.
• (2017) 31 Doug Sponsler – The Risk of Pesticides to Honey Bees and Ecotoxicology Doug is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State University’s Center for Pollinator Research. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, and he went on to receive his PhD from Ohio State University. His research brings spatial ecology perspectives to the topics of pollinator foraging and toxicology, with particular emphasis on urban plant-pollinator interactions and mechanistic understandings of toxic exposure.
  
  
• (2017) 30 Steve Frank – Healthy Trees, Healthy Pollinators Dr. Steve Frank is an entomologist who recognizes that urban trees provide a lot of services back to people living in cities. Trees also provide a lot resources to pollinating insects as well. Given the importance of trees to broad ecological systems, Dr. Frank looks for practical and innovative ways to preserving tree health.
  
• (2017) 29 Alan Turanski – What companies can do to Save the Bee Alan leads vision, innovation and continuous improvements at GloryBee. Ranging from sustainability, technology, facilities and being a cause forward company, he is committed to ensuring GloryBee is a business as a force for good. Alan is an advocate for the honeybee and was also a driving force in developing GloryBee’s Save the Bee initiative, which donates to bee-saving projects.
  
• (2017) 28 Al Shay – Urban Landscapes for People and Pollinators Al Shay is currently an instructor in the Horticulture Department at Oregon State University. Al holds undergraduate degrees in art as well as horticulture. Additionally Al has a Masters in Agriculture degree from OSU. Al has been in the “Green Industry” for 38 years; 27 of which were spent in the field managing landscapes at such varied venues as; Oregon State University, Eugene Country Club,
  
• (2018) Residential Beekeeping: Best-practice guidelines for nuisance-free beekeeping in Oregon This publication outlines guidelines for best practices for beekeeping in residential areas. It outlines the steps residential beekeepers can take to operate their bees in nuisance-free manner.
• (2017) 27 Sarah Johnson – Bumble Bee Decline and Recovery Sarah Johnson is the lead biologist for Wildlife Preservation Canada’s Native Pollinator Initiative. WPC is a nation-wide organization focusing on hands-on recovery initiatives for critically endangered species, and the pollinator initiative supports Canadian bumble bee recovery through a diverse set of programs.
  
• (2017) 26 Skyler Burrows – Bringing Taxonomy to Citizen Scientists Our guest today on PolliNation is Skyler Burrows, a taxonomist working with Utah State University, the USDA Bee Lab, and formerly with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Virginia Working Landscape program.
• (2017) 25 Dr. Dewey M. Caron – Managing and Preventing Varroa Mites Dr. Dewey M. Caron is Emeritus Professor of Entomology & Wildlife Ecology, Univ of Delaware, & Affiliate Professor, Dept Horticulture, Oregon State University. He spent 40+ years teaching, doing bee extension and bee research at Cornell (1967-70), University of MD, College Park (1970-1981) and University of DE, Newark DE (1981-2009).
• (2017) 24 Kristen Healy – Mosquito Abatement and Pollinators Kristen Healy is an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology at Louisiana State University. She obtained her B.S. in Zoology and M.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Rhode Island, her Ph.D. in Entomology from Rutgers University, and a MPH in Environmental Health from UMDNJ.
• (2017) 23 George Hansen – Beekeeper Built Bee Habitat After a short six-year career as a public school teacher, George and his wife Susan transformed a hobby beekeeping operation into a commercial endeavor. The business started from a few swarms and a collection of retrieved nuisance hives, but now runs 5000 + colonies in three states.
• (2017) 22 Oregon Flora Project – Making A New Natural Resource Linda Hardison is the leader of the Oregon Flora Project, based out of Oregon State University’s Herbarium. The Oregon Flora Project seeks to present scientifically sound information about the vascular plants of Oregon that grow without cultivation in formats that are useful to generalists as well as to scientists.
  
• (2017) 21 Dr. Jim Rivers – Seeing The Forest For The Bees Dr. Jim Rivers is a vertebrate ecologist and leader of the Forest Animal Ecology Lab at Oregon State University. With broad research interests that are focused in the fields of animal behavior and physiological ecology, his research program combines observational, experimental, and comparative approaches to test predictions from theory in empirical settings.
  
• (2017) 20 Erin Udal – Bringing Bees To The People Erin Udal leads community pollinator conservation projects out of Vancouver, BC and was formerly the Program Manager and Pollinator Specialist with the Environmental Youth Alliance. With her background in conservation biology, she designs bee-friendly gardens and develops citizen science projects, working to help people protect pollinators in our backyards and parks.
  
• (2017) 19 David Phipps – Golf Courses as Pollinator Habitat David Phipps is considered one of the Northwest’s leaders in golf course environmental stewardship and innovation. While working as the superintendent at Stone Creek Golf, he received the GCSAA President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship in 2012, as well as the 2004-2005 Cooperator of the Year by the Clackamas County Soil and Water Conservation District.
  
• (2017) 18 Lynn Royce – Bees in The Trees Lynn A. Royce, Ph.D. did her doctoral research on tracheal mites of honey bees and has studied pollinators for over 30 years. She is a passionate scientist who cares deeply about implementing research in practical applications to improve honey bee health. In this episode, we talk about her organization Tree Hive Bees, and how you can perform “bee-lining” to trace wild bees back to their colonies in trees.
  
• (2017) 17 Ellie Andrews – The Sociology of Pollinator Health Ellie Andrews is a PhD student in Development/Rural Sociology at Cornell University. As honey bees across the US face a range of challenges, keeping bees healthy and productive requires ever more skill and investment. Her research seeks to understand the sociological dimensions of these educational imperatives: how are new beekeepers learning to keep bees and how are experienced ones adapting to new challenges?
  
• (2017) 16 Ellen Topitzhofer – Honey Bee Parasite Spread in Pollination Ellen Topitzhofer works for the Bee Informed Partnership, an innovative organization across the U.S. that works with commercial bee keepers to tackle some of their most pressing pest management issues. In this episode, we discuss the unique pest issues in the Pacific Northwest, and explore the universal problem of varroa mites in bee colonies.
• (2017) 15 Jen Holt – How to Become a Master Beekeeper Jen Holt is the brand new Coordinator for the Oregon Master Beekeeper Program at OSU. In this episode, we’ll learn about how Jen got interested in bees, what she sees for the future of the program, and the ins and outs of how the program functions today.
• (2017) 14 Jessa Kay Cruz – Creating Pollinator Habitat Around Farms Bee habitat in agricultural landscapes is key element in any good strategy for pollinator health. But farmers have a lot going on and may not have clear answers to some important pollination questions. Our guest is here to help us with these issues. Jessa Kay Cruz is the Senior Pollinator Conservation Specialist for California with… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 13 Ruth Marsh – Repairing Bees with Art Ruth Marsh is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Halifax, NS. Her work uses absurd and often comically deadpan narratives to address loss, absence and longing in the context of living creatures and the natural world. She is interested in investigating themes of environmental loss through labour intensive meditations on transformation: life to death, experience… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 12 Scott MacIvor – The Bees of Toronto Scott MacIvor is an Assistant Professor of Urban Ecology at the University of Toronto at Scarborough in the Department of Biological Sciences. Scott is also a researcher at the Green Roof Innovation Testing (GRIT) lab at the University of Toronto in the faculty of Landscape Architecture. Scott has published 12 peer-reviewed articles on green roof… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 11 Laura Taylor – Pollinator Restoration in Soil and Water Conservation Districts Laura Taylor works for the West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. In this episode, find what happens when a local government wants to do something to help pollinator health. As a conservation technician and an educational coordinator, Laura created an innovative program to monitor wild pollinators around restoration sites. Learn how she got the… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 10 Aimee Code – Using Pesticides around Bee Habitat Aimee Code is the Pesticide Program Director at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. During her career she has worked in urban and agricultural setting to mitigate the risks of pesticide use and promote integrated pest management programs. She also works with communities ​around the country to implement policies and practices to restore dwindling pollinator populations.​… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 09 Dr. Meghan Milbrath – Northern Bee Breeding Network Dr. Meghan Milbrath began working bees with her father as a child over 20 years ago, and now owns and manages The Sand Hill Apiary, a small livestock and queen rearing operation in Munith, Michigan. She studied biology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, and received degrees in public health from Tulane University and… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 08 Dr. Sujaya Rao – Contrary Perspective to Native Bee Declines in Agricultural Landscapes: The Willamette Valley Experience Today on the podcast talk about bumblebees in agriculture. Dr. Sujaya Rao is a Professor in Entomology at Oregon State University. Her research covers IPM in field crops and native bee pollinators in diverse cropping systems, and in native habitats. A serendipitous discovery made by her led to development of a new bee monitoring tool.… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 07 Sarah Common – Hive for Humanity: Keeping People Healthy with Bees Today on the show we explore bees and their social impact. In 2012, Sarah Common co-founded Hives for Humanity Society, alongside her mother, Julia, in response to a gap she saw in opportunities for connection to nature, to community and to meaningful work for marginalized citizens. She has coordinated partnerships between a variety of organizations… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 06 Dr. Dave Smitley – Protecting Pollinators in Urban Landscapes Dr. Dave Smitley is a professor and researcher at Michigan State University. He works with the turf grass and nursery industries to deal with emerging pest problems, and the greenhouse industry to grow plants in ways that are safe around pollinators. In this episode we talk about practical tips as well as national initiatives to… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 05 Mike Burgett – Honeybee Pollination Markets Mike Burgett is the Emeritus Professor of Entomology at OSU, where he has taught since 1974. He has conducted a huge amount of work on apiculture research, including a survey of beekeepers and growers in the Pacific Northwest of the US, which is our main topic for today. Today we’ll discuss pollination markets as they… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 04 Dr. David Lowenstein – Wild Pollinators in Urban Areas Dr. David Lowenstein is a post-doc researcher at Oregon State University’s Department of Horticulture. Today we talk about Dr. Lowenstein’s fascinating research on urban pollinators during his time in Chicago. In this episode we discuss biodiversity in a city, what property owners can do to attract pollinators, and the unique challenges of urban bee research.… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 03 Dr. Joseph Wilson – The Bees in Your Backyard Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Utah, Dr. Joseph Wilson has coauthored a marvelous book called The Bees in Your Backyard. We discuss the book in detail in the interview, including how to tell bees apart from other insects, common bee myths, and more. Dr. Wilson has conducted research on evolution and ecology… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 02 Dr. Elaine Evans – Citizen Science and Surveying Bumblebees Today’s episode is all about getting the public involved in surveying and identifying different species of bees. Dr Elaine Evans is our guest. She’s the new Extensions Educator working on bee conservation at University of Minnesota. Dr. Evans has been working on education and advocacy for native pollinators for a long time, and is the… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) 01 Francis Ratnieks – The Benefits of Bees in Urban Areas Welcome to the first episode of PolliNation Podcast. “A hairy vegetarian wasp.” That’s how professor Francis Ratnieks of the University of Sussex describes the bee. Professor Ratnieks has done a lot of research on bees, from honeybee biology to practical solutions for beekeepers and homeowners interested in encouraging pollinators. This wide-ranging interview is full of tips… Continue reading →
  
• (2017) Welcome to PolliNation Podcast PolliNation is a podcast from Oregon State University Extension Service that tells the stories of researchers, land managers and concerned citizens who are making bold strides to improve the health of pollinators. You can Subscribe to the Podcast on Apple Podcasts. If you are a non iOS user then You can Follow us on SoundCloud. And… Continue reading →
  
• (2023) 2023 Pest Management Guide for Tree Fruits: Hood River, The Dalles, White Salmon, Rogue Valley, Umatilla County This guide provides tree fruit growers with the latest information on pesticides and herbicides for fruit trees. People who grow apples, pears and cherries can learn application rates and recommendations for each stage of tree growth.