 Yeah Step back a little bit and just hope that it doesn't We have a really special treat to start things off The honey bee steel band and the swarm have joined us and they have a really beautiful pollinator sing-along song If you need lyrics, they were at the check-in table, but please just let me know hold your hand up I can come around hand out some lyric sheets But at this time I'd love to introduce and welcome the honey bee steel band And the swarm to come up and sing the pollinator song Thank you so much Liz Actually, we sometimes when we perform we call ourselves pollinators for peace Because this at this event. We don't have the steel drum group. We call the honey bee steel band So sometimes when we perform with the steel band, we also throw in this song as a little bonus You'll see a table out in the lobby with a bunch of song signs up there and people dressed like bees And if you want to get in touch with us, you can sign on to our mailing list And we'll let you know when we're doing an event. So welcome everybody. This is called pollinators To flowers, bats and butt of action From harm that's protect their health Hello Burns, I'm the executive director of VPurg the Vermont Public Interest Research Group We are the largest consumer and environmental advocacy Organization in Vermont with about 40,000 members distributed all around the state Some of you may know us because you've received a knock at your door in the summer months And I am very very grateful to you if you have had a pleasant conversation Offered a glass of water or even made a contribution to one of those canvases at the door It means a tremendous amount to us. That's how we get our members across the state How we have the financial support that allows us to run campaigns like this one here today So thank you. Thank you for being here. I am tremendously Grateful for all of you being here particularly on a night like this. We haven't had enough of them this year And this is really really special I'm also really grateful to say that we are partnering with some excellent organizations here today some of them that you saw In the who are tabling out in front many other partnering organizations have joined us in a campaign to protect our pollinators in Vermont If you go to the website protect our pollinators vt You will find more information about this campaign or just pop vt because we try to make things easy So pop vt is a place to find out more information about the campaign and the petition I You may have seen this out front where they were we were selling t-shirts We have this petition available and the organizations that are together joining in this campaign I'll just read to you what this says we undestined Call on the state of Vermont to protect birds bees and other pollinators safeguard public health and support local farmers by phasing out the use of toxic neonictenoid or neonic pesticides and to helping farmers transition to more sustainable pest management Alternatives it's a pretty simple statement There's more information about how and why we got to that point and really one of the things that we hope to show this evening is The state of bees and other pollinators in Vermont and in the region the threats that they are facing and Hopefully identify for you meaningful steps that you can all take to help protect our pollinators Some of those will be what you can do in your own backyard in your gardens And some will be to support policy in Vermont that would help again Transition our friends in the farming community to say for better alternatives to the treated neonic seeds Which pose a significant threat to pollinators in the state? So that's the idea of the campaign. I will say to list wherever you are I'm trying to advance that and it is not working for me So I'm trying to be smooth, but not so much. Is it that button? I Didn't actually plan that but here we are Why we have lists. Thank you very much. Let me Let me thank list for running that for really being the primary planner for this event list. Will you come and take a bow? This hardwood Thank you and many other folks who work for V per who have played a role in this are also Not everybody I see some other folks who as far as I know are not working for me But who have these t-shirts on and they are for sale and they're gorgeous So please if you're so inclined feel free to grab Pay for one of those and then grab it and take it on the way out which would be great These are our partnering organizations Oh, I was just going the wrong way and then these are organizations who are out front Tabling with us here today as well. Well, you've heard just about enough from me I mostly wanted to again say thank you for being here many things to our partnering organizations as well And before I get to Samantha here again the organizations that are partnering together on the protect our pollinators campaign To work with farmers and others to help get to safer alternatives to the neonic pesticides Without further ado, then I would like to introduce we're gonna have two excellent speakers here tonight You are in for a treat Samantha Alger is a research associate Assistant professor at the University of Vermont. She conducts research on be disease teaches be keeping courses Directs the Vermont B lab, which is a research and outreach laboratory located at UVM that offers disease Diagnostic services for beekeepers in the state, so it is my pleasure to introduce my friend and partner Samantha Alger Thank you so much for being here Lots of friendly faces in the crowd So here we go. So through their pollination services these and other insect pollinators provide somewhere around 235 to $77 billion to the global Agricultural economy they're essential for so much of the fruits and vegetables and nuts that we eat Many of you have probably heard one and every three bites of food. You can think an insect pollinator and They're also essential for the reproduction of our native plants Now all of you are here You've heard something about save the bees or protect our pollinators, right? And I think for many of us the insect that comes to our mind is this one right here It's the European honeybee or apis malifera Now the European honeybee isn't is a single introduced species of bee. They're amazing creatures they Can waggle dance to tell their their sisters what the direction of a source of flowers They produce honey for us They build these incredible hexagonal structures of comb and we as humans have learned to Domesticate them and we put them in these boxes and we transport them all across the United States to pollinate our food crops But they are a single introduced species of bee. They are non-native and for us scientists and And beekeepers also we like to think of the European honeybee actually as like a canary in a coal mine situation Where because this is an agricultural livestock animal we follow their populations fairly closely and Beekeepers can open up a box and look inside to see how the health of their bees looks Very unlike the native bee populations And so any problems that we're seeing with the European honeybees could be an indicator of broader ecological problems for other insects Like oh, so what's going on with the honeybees? So this is a survey that was that's gets put forth by the bee informed partnership every year where they asked beekeepers to report their colony losses and So last year beekeepers lost about 48 percent of their colonies This is nationwide and this has been going on year after year So you think about losing half of your cattle or half of your chickens or half of your pigs You know, this is an agricultural livestock animal And in Vermont in case you're interested Vermont beekeepers reported losing seventy one point two percent of their honeybee hives last year So what's going on with the native bees? There are twenty thousand species of native bees in North America I mean in the world four thousand in North America and thanks to some new work by the Vermont Center for Eco studies We know there's somewhere around 250 species of native bees in the state of Vermont I urge you all to check out this really awesome report that just came out in 2022 as a result of this report I would argue that Vermont has a much better grasp on their native bee populations than any other state I think as a result of this work by the Vermont Center for Eco studies. Yeah Spencer Hardy there he is wrote the report He's here tonight And so what did they find? Spencer and others found that over thirty percent of Vermont's native bee species are ranked as critically imperiled or imperiled and 55 of Vermont's 350 speed species are an urgent need of conservation action So we know there's something going on with the managed honeybees and beekeepers feel that these losses are completely Unsustainable to keep moving on and we know that there's problems with these native bees. So what's causing all these problems? Well, we know it's not one single smoking gun It's The interaction of multiple stressors that are all interacting causing some of these problems And I'm gonna take you through some of these tonight. These include a global climate change pest impathogens pesticide exposure and the loss of flowering resources and habitat which Charlie's gonna be talking a lot more about it too after me So with climate change, we know that rising temperatures reduces habitat for some bee species bumblebees in particular like it a little bit colder and Some research has found that bumblebees have lost 200 miles of habitat over the past 100 years Droughts reduce forage for bees when it's not raining bees aren't producing nectar and so be I mean plants aren't producing nectar and so bees don't have anything to forage on and 75% of our native species actually nest underground and so you can imagine how floods and fires can destroy those ground nesting organisms habitat There's also this really interesting thing that's happening. That's Some of us call it phenological mismatches, but it's it's the disruption of seasonal connections between plants and pollinators so if you have a specialist bee species that requires a particular plant to be blooming when it emerges if Climate change is changing when that plant blooms or when that bee emerges There's this mismatch where the plant might not get the pollination services and that bee might not get the food Moving on to pest and pathogens Bees are naturally affected by lots of different pests and pathogens fungus bacteria viruses But if you're a beekeeper is anyone a beekeeper? Yeah, great So your beekeeper this little guy should look very familiar to you It's anyone want to tell me what it is? The Varroa might right so the Varroa might is in terms of pests for beekeepers This is enemy number one. They weren't always here. They were introduced to North America in The late 80s and they've since spread all across the planet and so much time That beekeeper spend is really just trying to figure out how to control their Varroa mites Varroa they kind of they're like ticks in that they are they latch on to the outside of the bee They eat the fat bodies of the bee they transmit viruses and they suppress the immune system of the bee and So much time beekeepers are spending trying to control these mites, but it's actually turns out It's really hard to kill a bug on a bug But luckily Sort of the Varroa might does not prey on native bees. It's just Praise on these European honey bees However, the viruses that these mites transmit can spill over into native bee populations and some of my previous research I found that these viruses spill over from managed honey bees into wild bee populations And that it's actually happening through the shared use of flowers and so as bees forage on flowers they leave behind Salivary secretions and feces and another bee will land on that flower and pick up the virus So it's sort of changed my perception when I look out into a field of blooming flowers You know, I'm looking at these flowers now thinking that they're dirty doorknobs. We're Exactly So it's you know, it's important to know about this if you are a beekeeper or you're interested in beekeeping Is that there's this potential for this path? Pathogen spillover to occur and that there's things that you can do to help reduce that or risk this risk of spillover happening One of the things is actually having a really solid Varroa Management plan because we know these these Varroa transmit the viruses, right? Another thing that we're finding through some of our modeling is that if you plant more flowers You have a dilution effect where the bees are less likely to come in contact with each other on the same flowers So more flowers are better right for lots of different reasons Another thing that I'll note is that we're also seeing this spillover starting to occur with some of these other Solitary bee species and so there's companies out there that will sell you alfalfa leaf cutter bees or mason bees And you can buy these cocoons and put them in cute little houses in your yard But more and more research is finding that That they're actually a source of some fungal Pathogens like ascosphera or chalk brood into your solitary bee species and then it's causing some declines in some places So a word of caution there So moving on to habitat very briefly Insect pollinators need a diverse source of flowering plants throughout the growing season And they also need nesting and overwintering habitat and I'm gonna let Charlie fill in the gaps with that But I do want to make a plug for that report again by the Vermont Center for Eco Studies because they identified a list of habitats that support a High proportion of those unique and imperiled species that I mentioned earlier, which are depicted here on the right So check that out because maybe you have some of those kinds of habitat in your backyard That's worth looking into So now we're gonna talk about pesticides So when I talk about pesticides, I'm referring to insecticides, which kill bugs herbicides which kill plants or weeds right and fungicides which kill fungus And so pollinators can be exposed through a number of ways Either do through direct exposure when they're out searching for for something to eat or when they're nest-searching or looking for a mate They can also bring back the contaminated pollen or water or or nectar back to their Hives or nests to feed their developing offspring their little bee babies and then also as you can imagine if you're if you're a ground nesting bee like 75% of our bees in the state here Anything that's put on the soil is a what was a place where these ground nesting bees may get may get into contact with different pesticides So with insecticides that are designed to kill bugs or insects It's no surprise that they may harm or kill an insect pollinator, right? But there are systemic insecticides like neonicotinoids, which we'll talk about in a minute that can have a delayed exposure Where they can stick around in the environment for months or even years after they've been applied With herbicides one of the big ways herbicides affect pollinators is because they kill the fords that the bees rely on They kill all those weeds or flowers, right? However, there's research that is finding that some herbicides like glyphosate Actually impacts the gut microbiota of the honey bee making them more susceptible to different kinds of pathogens and fungicides for a long time were thought that they probably don't have so much of an impact on insects But now we're finding that in combination with different insecticides. They can make those insecticides way more toxic than just by themselves So now we're going to talk about neonix or neonicotinoids. They're a class of systemic insecticide and They're used in lots of different ways, but the majority of their use is actually through a seed coding and on row crops like corn and soy and wheat and that's a picture of a soy Seed that's been coated and I think there's a display somewhere and you can see they're they're brightly colored to indicate that they've been coated in In pesticides so when these seeds are planted in the ground The plant takes up some of that insecticide only about five percent or less into its leaf tissue and Where the plant will get some protection if an insect bites onto that leaf tissue But these insecticides are also expressed in the nectar and pollen of the plant as it grows So this is one way in which pollinators may come exposed to these insecticides because they're out foraging for those that nectar and pollen they are highly toxic to pollinators and I think oftentimes when we think about pesticides it kills or exposures We think of piles of dead bees and they're twitching But with neonix it's not that simple and it's not that easy because they're toxic in tiny tiny small quantities like point One part per billion can have sub lethal impacts that can cause things like Memory problems where the bees can't find their their locations where they want to forage They have problems growing larvae or laying eggs and they also have trouble fighting off disease And so these things can oftentimes be very difficult to detect or or measure And as I mentioned earlier, they can persist in the environment for a very long time So how are bees exposed when they are to neonicotinoids from treated seeds? Not just from the plants that are producing the pollen and nectar, but there's other ways So when these seeds are planted in the ground The seeds are oftentimes coated in a talc or graphite powder to keep them from clumping and this during planting creates a plume of smoke That then moves across the landscape and it's laden with these neonicotinoids and it can end up on Non-target plants around these areas where they've been planted or on soil or on waterways And that was a video I took of early this spring So pollen and nectar of plants we already talked about that so as you know As you might know corn is actually wind pollinated it doesn't produce nectar But it produces pollen and don't ever let anyone tell you that honeybees don't visit corn because you've all seen it tonight Yeah, yep so These neonics can end up running off into waterways a recent report of surface water in 2022 from the agency of ag has found Clothianidin and neonicotinoid and Many of our waterways actually in Franklin County at levels that are high enough to impact invertebrates So it happens. Yes, it happens here in Vermont and also another problem is that they leech out into soils and neighboring plants can actually take up these insecticides into its leaf tissue So even if a plant isn't visiting corn They might visit the dandelions or golden rod that might be adjacent to these corn that are taking up these insecticides into its Tissue almost like a nutrient expressing into the nectar and pollen So we did a little study here in Vermont because we wanted to understand what was the level of pesticide exposure for some honeybees here in the state and we asked Beekeepers to set up pollen traps to collect pollen from incoming bees where the pollen would get pulled off their little legs And so this is a pollen trap showing you all the little pollen loads that bees came back with Very and it's all different colors because different flowers produce different colored pollen and Then we tested that pollen for 93 different pesticides and in our first year We had I think we only tested 16 samples and we found I'm gonna go back for a second 16 samples and we found 81 Detections of 20 different pesticides just in 16 samples and that was I read it in the literature It's this isn't just Vermont it's elsewhere, but it kind of blew my mind to see it happening here in my own backyards Um all across the state southern Vermont Burlington area northern Vermont and out in the Northeast Kingdom There were four apiaries and they were sampled once a month for the summer So we expanded that every year and this year we've now turned this into a citizen science project where we have 15 beekeepers We have over a hundred samples that we're sending into the lab this year But you're probably interested in seeing hearing about the neo-nix specifically and what we found so from 2021 to 2022 what we found is that? 21% of the samples were positive for at least one of the three highly toxic neo-nix Clothianidin amidicloprid and thiamethoxam and that we always found levels of these neo-nix high enough to cause physiological impacts to bees and We also found neo-nix specifically Clothianidin in golden rod growing adjacent to corn and if you're a beekeeper Or even if you're not a beekeeper, you know that golden rod is a really important nectar source for pollinators and a good end for honey for the bees for honey bees to overwinter So I think a lot of beekeepers Well, so there was some comments to some of the beekeepers in our community. Why don't you just move your bees somewhere else? And so we did a little exercise with the Vermont Center for Eco Studies to see what What would that even be possible? What would that look like and so each of these circles represents the flight zone of a honey bee from a single apiary So an apiary is a bee yard place where beekeepers keep their bees And so there's three flight zones of three different apiaries depicted on this image of a map of Addison County and the red represent corn fields and the purple represent soy fields So you can see it'd be kind of hard to move the bees given how far that they fly and how much they might come in contact with So that's all about neo-nix for now But in summary from, you know, this is the the end last slide the summary slide What can we do to help the pollinators? So let's avoid using pesticides in our own backyards and beyond Being aware of pathogen spillover we talked about some things that to help lessen or reduce the risk of pathogen spillover And then lastly that's kind of a segue to Charlie's work focusing on planting native plants and preserving and creating habitat is really a key thing here Thank you Because I work at a university I can't advocate That's that's that's Paul's job The question was the question was was there such thing as honey before In the United States before the honey bees were imported and the answer is no and actually as as white people moved across the You know westward expansion the native americans actually called the honey bee the white man fly Because they'd start seeing honey bees first before they'd start seeing white people moving in it was an indicator that they were moving west Yeah, so the question was with this cold freeze that happened in early May and the fact that it's been so wet and cold How might that be impacting pollinators? Yeah So for the it's kind of a mixed bag for the beekeeping community, you know I'm I that's where I spend most of my time working with beekeepers and It's actually been a really good honey year So I've heard because there's so much water in the bees and the flowers are producing so much nectar And so the bees are putting on a lot of honey But we need to have enough warm days for the bees to go out and actually fly and collect that honey So That's my answer in terms of the honey bee. Yeah, I'm not sure how the cold snap would have affected the butterflies now Sorry, thanks. I should have said at the beginning as well that both Samantha and Charlie will be available after Charlie gives his presentation here in just a moment and so there'll be an opportunity if you have further questions for Samantha or for Charlie after his Presentation I also again just want to draw attention to because there wasn't the first question because for those of you watching at home May not have heard was why not Thank you why not Recommend the passage of state legislation that would ban the use of neonic treated seeds in the state That's not a role for Samantha to play But I can play that role and so v. Perg and our coalition partners are supporting a State policy that would prohibit the use of phase out the use of neonic treated seeds on farms in Vermont State just to our west New York has passed this legislation We are right now waiting on to see whether the governor Huckle there will sign that Legislation surely it would give a big leg up to us if she signed that legislation But he did pass through their legislature and we hope that that can be a model for some legislation here I'm not really is it is it a clarifying question that you had your hand up now? Well, I'm not we can be happy to talk about that afterwards And there are actually other people here who work more on that particular legislation than me So the question was about something that happened in this past legislative session Let me just say with respect to this past legislative session or any other None of what we're trying to do is easy And we are often opposed by some very powerful forces in big agriculture the chemical and pesticide industries And so it really would be hugely helpful if you are so inclined to sign, you know put your name on this petition This is how we will identify Activists in communities all across the state in legislative districts around the state who might be interested in being helpful at just the Right time with just the right message to just the right person in the legislature We have some petitions back there That my friends Marcy and Liz and Lily all have wave up here So if you need that you can also raise your hand They'd be happy to hand you this petition right now and if you haven't hit it. Thank you You can send them down the aisles They will be available to you out in front afterwards So that's that's my pitch on that there is something that we can do and Lots more to learn but there is something that we can do in Vermont And I'm thrilled to be working with our very our many many coalition partners Including no fun and others who are working and rural Vermont who are working directly with farmers every day This is not an anti-farmer campaign I just want to make that crystal clear farmers have to work with us and be in partnership With us in this effort and I think that we have a good chance of moving forward if we can if we can make Sure the campaign is cast in that light All right, that's more on the state of the problems I know you I know there are questions out there There will be a time afterwards but this state of the problem with the current state of the situation for Pollinators in the state we talked a little bit about some of what we can do from a state policy perspective And now I want to bring up one of Vermont's Tremendous expert resources not just on pollinators, but on gardening. I don't know if you're anything like me I love my Sunday mornings I'm often out in the garden myself and I'm listening to somebody who who's He's just great and he tells me how to be a better gardener I can't follow all that advice, but I love listening to him Charlie Nardosi is a regional Emmy award-winning writer Speaker radio and television personality as many of you know He's worked for more than 30 years bringing expert gardening information to home gardeners through radio television talks and tours He's the author of seven gardening books three radio shows in New England and a TV gardening segment on WCAX channel three. Please join me in welcoming Charlie Nardosi Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you Paul, and it's great to see you all here on a beautiful The one beautiful summer night I'm very impressed that you're doing this because I was looking at them boating on the lake and thinking I could go for Look it. I'm sorry. I got to go Go for a swim. So thank you all for coming It's it's really a beautiful night here in Vermont and a beautiful setting to do this And it's great to see so many people interested in pollinators when we were first started talking about this I think Paul had kind of modest expectations, and I know that he's probably exceeded those Exponentially here by the number of people of common and it's nice to see some old familiar faces and friends too So it's great So Samantha did a great job kind of laying the the groundwork of the problem that is occurring with pollinators and touched upon many The things that I'll be talking on I'm also I feel like I'm preaching to the choir a bit here So some of the things I'm going to talk about are things that may sound very familiar But I don't want to assume anything if I've learned anything in the gardening world in the 30 40 years of doing this You don't assume people know things until you you tell them and you talk to them about it So some of this information may be repetitive, but some of it might be eye-opening for you too So I'm just going to dive right into it here And not into her presentation, but my presentation Well, there's a lack of benefits with corn. So let's talk about the 83 to 97 Takes me back to my master's degree Okay Where am I? Oh there I am grow pollinator garden. So I Want to talk about some of the possible solutions to what we've been talking about here this evening About the problem that pollinators are having the dramatic decline not just in honeybees, but native bees and other pollinators, too and so I'm going to kind of Go through pretty quickly to different kinds of pollinators then talk more about the plants and in that sense I'm not going to talk so much about specific plants because I could go on for a long time doing that But talk more in general about the kinds of plants and how to grow those plants and the things that you can do as a Home gardener because I assume most of you are home gardeners To assist the pollinators and create a habitat or an ecosystem so that they can thrive That's really we're not just trying to get them to survive We want them to stay around we want them to thrive. We want to be there year after year after year So first of all, who's a pollinator? Raise your hand for your pollinator Well, I am because I pollinated my paw paw trees this spring and I have paw paws So anyway, yeah, I know exciting, huh? These are things to get gardeners really excited pollinators we've been talking about bees and Samantha of course mentioned about honeybees and bumblebees the social bees that have nests and hives But the most important thing to remember is what she also mentioned is that 75% of the native species of Insects and pollinators and bees are in the ground not so much in a hive somewhere up on a tree or in a Box or some areas like that There are a lot of bees beyond the honeybee the honeybee is like the poster child for pollinators Just like the monarch is for butterflies. No, there's lots of different types There's sweat bees and digger bees and and leaf cutter bees and all these other bees that are out there that are doing the job of Pollinators is just the honeybee kind of gets all the attention the other oh The slides are in a little different configuration, so I'm just picking up that The other thing to remember is that as I mentioned, they're not all just colony insects There are solitary bees many of the bees we talked about are solitary bees in that one You probably recognize maybe not by its back end but by where it is is a mason bee and Mason bees are one of those native species of bees that are amazing pollinators In fact, if you had an apple tree you would need six mason bees to pollinate that whole apple tree Whereas you would need about 360 honeybees to do that same job So that's why you want to protect the native species as much as some of these other bees that get all the Press about them the thing that the mason bees will do is that they come out early They like it a little bit cooler than the honeybees So they'll be out there earlier when those flowers are starting to bloom on your trees They don't go very far though about 300 feet or so around They're in yards around the area of where they came out of unlike the honeybee they can go for a few miles So you do have to be aware of that too, but creating habitats for them is important You can certainly buy those little nesting boxes You've probably seen them with the little tubes in them or you can do some of the things I'm going to talk about which is leave a lot of the plant material around in your yard So they can make their own homes there You don't necessarily have to put up a hotel They could find their own little Airbnb's wherever they are in your yard Airbnb's I just caught that Another one that is a pollinator We don't think too much about our birds and specifically hummingbirds So they have the long proboscis that goes into those any of those tube shaped flowers You might have the more to shape flowers you have around the more hummingbirds you have the more hummingbirds You have the more movement of pollen that's going to be happening around on all of those flowers And they are just fascinating to watch We had a bunch of them this year I'm not sure why maybe it's just growing the right flowers But I had a lot of them and they just keep chasing each other around. It's like they're not playing tag I think it's more territorial thing But it's pretty fun to watch them go around and flies now We don't necessarily think of flies most people think of flies like mosquitoes cluster flies those kinds of the nuisance flies But there are a lot of flies hacknit flies syrup flies All kinds of different flies that are out there that are actually pollinators And one of the most fun things to do for yourself to really kind of get in tune with pollinators Is to walk into a field of goldenrod, which is blooming now. It's a nice thing to do Stand there in a hot summer day, and we will get one Monday I think is the one hot summer day we're gonna have and close your eyes and listen You just listen and you hear all this activity around you And you don't even aren't even aware then if you start looking you'll see all these different flies All these different bees on those flowers a lot of them are flies that we don't even really recognize But they are a key role in pollinators to have these flies and have habitat for them as well and Finally another one is ground beetles So and you know really think of beetles as a pollinator But in fact there are ground beetles that will climb up into flowers and move pollen from one flower to another a lot of the White-flowered trees and shrubs like Magnolia's for example in spirea will be pollinated by ground beetles The other one that our song groups so beautifully sang is bats I didn't put it up here because we don't really have those fruit bats kind of in Vermont But that's another animal that is a pollinator So when you think pollinators don't just think honeybees is kind of my message with all of this think of a whole Habitat of different kinds of creatures What do the pollinators need well to start with they need nesting areas so I'm gonna go right to left on this This is not how I unusually set it up, but that's okay We can work with this so that area on the right is our backyard So a few years ago we had this big storm that blew through knocked down some big oak trees and some other trees We did harvest some of that wood for firewood because that's how we heat our house But we also left logs and branches and brush piles around that is essential to do that What you don't want to do is what happens on the far left there that is My neighbor's yard not here is he okay? He likes to clean the forest And this is I'm not sure where the psychology of this that would be an interesting study Where does that come from is it because we came out of that the plains of Africa, you know billions of millions of years ago Whatever it was but we have this this urge or maybe it's the fear of like wild animals are gonna come get us You know the mountain lions are gonna come out of the forest and eat us But this urge to clean the forest so you can see through it. We want to see through the forest, right? So that's what he did in his a little forest area He went through there and cleaned up all the understory took off all that rubbish I'd know those branches and things that are just sitting on the ground raked it out a little bit and and now he's happy But unfortunately, that's not great habitat for not only bees and and pollinators for wildlife and for lots of other creatures So you want to leave things just like I say with our two little spaniels that I have they get something in their mouth Leave it leave it Just leave it. I know for gardeners That's a real hard thing to do because we want to be out there gardening right? I want to garden I want to clean things up. I want to pull things out I want to deadhead everything if you can just leave some of this stuff That's gonna go a long way to helping the pollinators the other things you want to leave are the leaves When they drop down the leaves are really important because they create a layer on the soil around your plants And that's where a lot of these pollinators could be over wintering So when you remove all the leaves you're not only removing a nutrient source that will break down and help your plants But you're also removing a habitat where some of these pollinators will nest The other thing that you have to keep in mind is you don't want to be cutting back your perennial flowers in the fall I'll say that again in case you thought you misheard me You don't want to cut back your perennial flowers in the fall because that's what we've been trained I was trained at our glorious University on the top of the hill to do that But that was a long time ago now Things have changed and that's the nice thing about gardening is that you learn things as you go along and as we learn We adapt and what we've learned is that to help pollinators and a lot of other beneficial insects and native creatures We want to leave all that material there because that's where they might be over wintering in fact a lot of them Will be over wintering in the hollow stems of a lot of those flowers that you have there So resist the temptation to go clean it all up like you would that way You don't want to do that and to clean it all up and go throw it into compost pile Which for me as I get to be a little bit older gardener I'm trying to reduce the workload and the idea of taking organic matter out of the garden putting it in a pile somewhere Waiting then taking the stuff from that pile the compost and putting it back in the garden just doesn't make a lot of sense So if we can just leave it there and what ends up happening is you do leave it there And in the spring after you get a string three four five fifty degree days Consistent 50 degree days then you can start going in and doing your cleanup things you can just relax. I Can now clean it up, but when you clean it up I would also encourage you not to remove it, but just to chop it do what I call chop and drop Just chop things down leave it on the ground now there may be upset Exceptions to this especially if you have a lot of disease on your plants and you want to clean those out I can understand that but for the most part you want to leave that material in the garden because that's going to be Material that'll break down for the flowers to grow up and whatever plants you have growing and also material for those pollinators as well Also as Samantha mentioned 75% of our pollinators our bees will be in the ground if you see holes in your ground I saw a great example of this I'm not sure what kind of insect it is because I'm not an entomologist But it's in my container on my porch of adraniums and there is this insect that is It's maybe some of you know what it is It's actually going out and attacking grasshoppers Bringing it back to that hole kind of chomping a little bit on it leaving part of it outside the hole I don't know. Maybe someone else is gonna come eat the rest of it. I couldn't tell and then going down into the hole So I'm not doing anything. I'm not gonna mess with someone who can eat a grasshopper so There's a lot of things that are happening in your lawn in your yard area that you don't necessarily want to just Assume that it's a yellow jacket. Everyone assumes it's a yellow jacket If I don't get rid of it and it's sting me and I'm gonna get it's gonna hurt and all those things 99% of the insects out there are not gonna hurt you and most of them are beneficial So keep in mind that a lot of the pollinators will be solitary and maybe in the ground as well Also, another thing they need is water and this year has not been an issue as we know about having water But there's many different ways you can provide water This is a simple way that I was mentioning about those trees that blew over and we cut them down What was left of them and left some stumps and we found that some of those stumps had a hollow heart So I just leave left those there and what happens is the water accumulates in that hollow heart And that's a great place for a pollinator to go to get some water now. I know what you're thinking mosquitoes, right? Let's be practical about this. We've got a little thing of water here. How many mosquitoes could really be in there, right? It's not gonna be that many mosquitoes But that's one way to have a water supply another of course is to have bird baths out Not just for the birds but for the bees as well and for all the pollinators or have a pond Or a stream that would be there as well So it's a lot of different ways you can provide some moisture and even you can go as far as creating what we call mud puddles Anyone ever do a mud puddle? Oh, this is a fun thing to do about Joanne of course with kids So what you can do is find a spot that will get some full Sun if you have clay soil I don't know if anyone in Vermont has clay soil That's probably even better if you can hollow it out a little bit make it a little little indentation in there with some clay soil And then just fill it up with water and let it drain and then every once in a while when you think about it And especially in your water in your gardens and you feel like it's a dry day Just throw some more water in there What'll happen on a sunny day is you get butterflies coming in and you'll get some bees too and not only are they interested in the moisture They're interested in the minerals that are in the clay as well So it's a nutritional feed for them at the same time as one where they're getting some moisture, too So create a little mud puddle fun thing to do with kids and grandkids And of course, this is from the Xerces society. You want to leave undisturbed areas This is can be a part of your lawn that you just let grow up That's one thing you could do You can have a little area on the side of your house in the back area wherever it is But leave an area that's just gonna grow up into grasses or you can be planting planting things like some of the little blue Stem and some of the bunching grasses are really good to have one of the things that people often have been talking about as a way to Support pollinators was this no-mo-may anyone turn no-mo-may. What do you think a no-mo-may? I'm sorry. I disagree Yes, because no-mo-may encourage people to not mow their lawns in May What do you think they did in June and July and August a lot of them they were mowing So what I would rather see people doing is creating areas in their yard where they leave it on mode And just let it grow up and then if they need to have their lawn Let's have them have some lawn because we're in a place where we need to bring in more and more people people Who normally don't think about pollinators like we do but just our have a homeowner with some lawns and it is Maybe they heard an idea about protecting the bees or the butterflies How can we approach them in a way that's really an easy thing for them to do and that is one of the things that I think would Be easier just ask them to leave some areas around their yard that is not mowed down or mowed down Infrequently so that it would be a place for pollinators and for the flowering plants and of course avoiding the pesticides And Samantha said that very well, so I won't even linger on that one So creating a pollinator garden how many people have a pollinator garden that one that they have dedicated to pollinators Yeah, I said I'm preaching to the choir. Okay So we'll we'll move through this pretty quickly then what are the plants you want to do first of all Let's not get so fixated and all the plants you can buy I love to buy plants as much as anyone else out there But pollinators will really be able to thrive with a lot of the wild plants out there I'm calling them wild plants and not weeds and one of the best ones is the one on the right being the dandelion I Have a friend who's lives in Heinzburg and he raises bees and I was there one spring day on his property gathering ramps wild leaks and I was just chatting with him about the bees and how they're doing and how was the winter not so great Then he said he pointed up to the field But once those start blooming things will get better and I looked at the field and it's like green right? What's there? What he was pointing out were all the dandelions that we're gonna be there in a probably a week or so Dandelions are great. They bloom on mass. They bloom early They have pollen and nectar for the bees to forage for so having areas of your property that you just let the dandelions grow Is a great thing and if you're someone like me you like eating dandelions too the greens are great They're nutritious you can make wine out of them You can make a coffee substitute out of the roots. They're a nice plant to have so dandelions in the spring are great And then this time of year we've talked about goldenrod It's a really nice plant to have in the property if you have patches of wild areas You can just let grow up and let the goldenrod come in. It's gonna be a great plant to have and then there's clover so the State flower, do you know the state flowers? Red clover exactly. Yeah red clover So red clover is a beautiful plant good pollinator plant and this one I do I want to tell you a little story about the white clover the Ladino clover the Dutch white clover This is a clover. It's not native. This is one that came out of Europe Like a lot of our plants came over with the European colonists a couple hundred years 300 years ago or so 400 years and This was something that when you bought grass seed like in 1920s and 30s There was always a percentage of that seed is clover because they realized the benefit of it clover Of course is a legume fixes nitrogen. It will stay green during drought times. You remember drought, right that word That's when you don't have all this rain So stay green during drought times and the flowers are a great pollinator plant a great pollinator flower in fact, I came back from a garden conference in Minnesota and Marla Spivak was out there and she gave a talk about B lawns Which I'll talk about in a minute, but she said they have identified 55 species of native bees and pollinators on white clover 55 on white clover So anyway, white clover was included in grasses and everyone was happy about it Then came the Second World War and after the Second World War the agricultural and chemical industry had all these herbicides left over you might say and they wanted looking for ways to market them and so what they found is that people in the 1950s were buying houses creating lawns and they thought oh we can get people to spray it on their lawns if we had a bad guy If we had a villain so they started saying that white clover you don't want clover in your lawn You want to have a nice green lawn without any flowers or bees in it because he might sting you and so that was the Advertising for years for decades that they had that advertising Luckily that has changed and they don't do that any longer But that was kind of the background for why people think of clover as a weed and not so much as a beneficial plant So creating a bee lawn I was at that conference I was just mentioning and they've done some interesting research about this and this for me is another Representation of how can we get someone who just has a lawn to kind of take one step towards doing things to help pollinators And what they found is that they can seed lawn with certain types of low-growing or low flowering plants That will be able to flower and support the pollinators at the same time be mowed. That's called a bee lawn So they were using three plants in particular. They're using the white clover there. They were using Well, there's a fescue grass. I think they're a little blended in there. Okay On the on the on the right over there. That's a Fine fescue. So if you have fine fescue grass or if you can if you're starting a lawn start with fine fescue grass That's better than something with Kentucky blue grass in it It's not essential, but it'll be a make much easier to get the bee lawn flowers Established in the middle is a flower called prunella or heel all you probably know that one It's blooming right now. You see it all over the place a low-growing kind of purple little flower So they put that in there with the white clover and also with a creeping time So they had those three plants mixed up put it in the lawn And how they did it is that they mowed the lawn area that they were going to seed really low They scalped it really down low Usually late fall like October November for Minnesota, which would be similar for us same same kind of climate They raked off that grass They aerated that soil and then they threw the seed in there They put all the seed in there watered it well for a few weeks then next spring the lawn started growing that first mowing In the spring they can mowed it really high like six inches high just enough to kind of keep it the grass down So the light can get into those little seedlings But then after that every two three weeks they would mow it three to four inches high And what that was is the height was high enough so that the clover the prunella and the Time would all be able to flower and yet it still looked kind of like a lawn So it's kind of an interesting idea and they've had some good success doing this Just by mowing a little bit higher and having the right kinds of species in there They're benefiting all the bees that are using those species for pollen and nectar and still having people feel like they have a Lawn area in your yard. There's information Where is it right at the bottom down there? I would just Google probably Be Lawns University of Minnesota. It'll send you to that website Anyway, so those are some of the things that kind of in general you want to think about and then you want to Think about what kinds of plants you're gonna grow and don't discount trees and shrubs You know, we talk so much about pollinator plants and it ends up being a lot of flowers flowers herbs things of those nature But trees and shrubs play a really key role and of course we all know him, right? Doug Tallamy his book bringing nature home talked a lot about this and his groundbreaking research for those who don't know Doug Tallamy's an entomologist or was I think he's retired now from the University of Delaware And he did some research. This is what this is what professors do, right? Samantha to send the research to students out there to do these these tasks that you never want to do So go out into the forest and count the number of butterfly and moth larvae Do you find in the trees the number of species of them? So they did that and he was just kind of curious, you know He's counting them for the trees that were around campus and in the forest around there And what he found out that there were certain trees that had a lot more of these moth and butterfly larvae in them than other ones and He called these trees the keystone species and he finally found is that five percent of these native species Supported 75 percent of the pollinators. So it's not just about planting a native It's planting the right native for your area and if you want to find out what your keystone species is He teamed up with the National Wildlife Federation and there is their native plant finder And you can go in there put I think they do it by zip code put your zip code in and then these plants pop up And they'll tell you which ones will be the right plants for your area So he did that down in the mid-atlantic area And he came up with the best woody plants So anyone on a guess what's the number one species that had one number one? Tree or shrub that had the most Species of butterfly and moth larvae You read the book didn't you? 534 yes, and then these you could see black cherry willow birch poplar and crab apple those were the top ones What made me smile is that I have all of those in my yard But what I mean to bring up with this is that if you're thinking of planting a big tree Or you're planting some habitat or you just want to fill an area and to get some shade or block of view or whatever Think about this use this as a filter to decide what you're gonna plant plant the oak trees Plack the plant the willows the birches plant the native versions of them willows don't plant the Nishiki willow for example, you know the ones that are all colorful and turn into this huge monster You know plant things that are native if you can But the idea is that those are gonna be the species and they also checked other plants like street trees in the area like Ginko how many different species of moth and butterfly larvae do you think are in Ginko? to That was it compared to 534 for the native oaks So it gives you an idea of a filter of how to look at some of the trees and shrubs in your yard So how to choose flowers? That's the wrap it up with talking about different kinds of flowers for pollinators Certainly you want to have flowers that have a lot of nectar to them and of course flowers with pollen to them I always love seeing bees like this at this like they've been to a party You know, and they just been rolling in the rolling in the pollen. It's like wow. This is so great And This is Samantha mentioned the waggle dance and I was fascinated when I first heard about this years ago How many people are familiar with the waggle dance? How many people have done the waggle dance? There you go. That's a whole another thing Well for those of you who aren't I'll briefly explain what it is Scientists found out and I just learned from Gerald here That's the scientists who found out about the waggle dance won the Nobel Prize for it, which is pretty wild that the the bees are social creatures and When a bee goes out foraging and finds a source of pollen They have to be able to communicate it with the rest of the bees in the hive So they come back and there's literally a dance floor where he comes down there and all the other bees come out I like check them out. Yeah, where you been? You got some pollen so so they check out the pollen they check out the quality of the pollen You know where it is and if they decided something good Then that be that's got all the pollen is gonna have to somehow communicate where the pollen is so everyone else can go out So what they'd start doing is a waggle dance And so the waggle dance is kind of a figure eight dance with a straight line through it And they do the straight line in a direction of where the pollen source is and for how long they waggle tells them How far away it is so if you thought you were the human beings were the only intelligent species on the planet Yeah, try a waggle dance Try communicating where the food is in the house by waggling in a direction for a certain period of time and see if anyone understands So and then what they do is they all go out and they gather their pollen So it's really kind of a cool thing. I will not do a waggle dance for you. I'm sorry. I know you're really looking forward to it So what how are you gonna grow your garden to get all these plants in there? So we talked about the dandelions and one of the benefits they all bloom en masse Plant flowers in clumps large clumps of flowers Don't plant one of this one of that that kind of thing plant clumps of beebom clumps of flocks clumps of root beckias Big areas so that when the insects come in there's a lot of pollen a lot of nectar for them to To partake of also have plants or flowers with different shaped flowers soon different shaped blooms like the Yaro have a landing platform Queen Anne's lace dill fennel flowers those flat flowers. You'll see certain pollinators like those they can land on them They get their pollen they can have a cappuccino and then they can move on Or you look for flowers that have radial symmetry radial symmetry means when they're flying above They look down and they could see that if you cut that flower in half the left side and the right side are Mirror images of each other so Shasta daisies Rebecca Galliardia Choreopsis all those kinds of flowers have a tubular shaped flowers. Wow. What happened to that? Oh, there it is Tubular shaped flowers like I was mentioning before with the hummingbird Everything from a trumpet vine to a salvia and a lobelia anything that would be something attractive to a Pollinator that would try to get their neck didn't polar pollen that way and fragrance have fragrant flowers and his hyssop Basil is a great pollinator plant. I always grow extra basil in our garden And let it flower. You know, I was taught all those years that you should always take the flowers off of your basil, right? So you get more leaves. Well, just plant extra ones and leave the extra ones let them flower and they're gonna be a great source of pollen Inactive for the pollinating insects. I also grow mint underneath a lot of our Trees that are in our yard. So instead of putting mulch rings I put mint rings around them and right now the mint is flowering which is great And and the bees are enjoying it and a mint if it escapes in the lawn a little bit I don't care because when I mow the lawn, I'm smelling mint. It's like, ah, that's so nice so Look for fragrant plants for pollinators as well. Of course the idea of blue and yellow was for bees They don't really see red so much, but they see other things ultra violet But that doesn't mean you're just gonna grow blue and yellow flowers You know grow a variety of flowers in a variety of colors for all kinds of different kinds of pollinators So diversity is really key with the pollen the pollinator flowers And also think about heirlooms and hybrids when you're buying plants So heirlooms are those open pollinated plants like this in the Koshiana a lot of there That are great pollen plus sources great pollinator plants. You need those kind of plants in your landscape hybrids though have been hybridized for various reasons and some of them are hybridized for convenience and for Continual flowering and so you often will get sterile hybrids So this one you can kind of see here is a Cleomy called a senorita Rosalita It does have nectar, but it doesn't have pollen. So it's a sterile hybrid. So you can have some of those in the yard I'm not a purist about flower gardens You can certainly have some of those kind of plants in your yard But make sure you have enough open pollinated plants in your yard to for those pollinators It's important to have both of those The other thing is you want to avoid unusual hybrids So the one on the left everyone knows is echinacea the one on the right is a toy poodle That is also an echinacea that's called hot papaya that's the variety there's another one called milkshake Great names not so great flowers for pollinators because they've been over hybridized And it's not just the idea of sterility in the flowers, but it's also the insects don't recognize it They're flying around they're looking for the echinacea with the cone and the petals around it They're not looking for this thing that looks like a toy poodle So you want to make sure that you get the right plants and it's always good to go for natives like the eschlepius tuberosa here on the left But they've also done some research in fact University of Vermont did some research about this about a group of plants called native ours These are native varieties that are kind of one step removed from the native But not so far removed that the pollinators don't recognize them and they're not helpful to those pollinators So the one on the right is called. Hello. Yellow. It's an eschlepius tuberosa same type Looks the same with with the foliage and the growth habit, but the flower color is different The same is true with some of the echinacea I grow a group called Cheyenne spirit a seaborn echinacea different colored petals on them But it looks like an echinacea so I see all the pollinators on those just as much as the native So you can go a little far a field from natives just don't go too far a field So you won't be able to recognize them and then the last word about milkweed everyone wants to plant milk I get so many questions about I want to plant milkweed in my thought butterfly and pollinator garden And what they want to do is of course go out to a field and dig up some milkweed and put it in their garden That's common milkweed that is a very prolific plant. In fact, it'll take over your garden It'll take over your yard. It'll take over your house if you leave it long enough So you don't want to use that so when you're thinking about plants that are native that might be good for pollinators Also have a little filter about is this going to work in my yard. There are purple milkweed There's swamp milkweed There's world milkweed a lot of different types of species that are better adapted to home gardens than the common milkweed And of course, there's the eschlepius tuberosa or the butterfly weed So hopefully that gives you some ideas about how you can change your behaviors or support the things you're already doing So you can go home to your spouse your friend your partner and say Charlie said it was okay to do that. I've been doing it for years You can also get involved. I know the pollinator pathway folks from Addison County. Where is there? There they are right there Do people know what pollinator pathways are? No, okay, I will explain it to you So pollinator pathways started actually down in Connecticut Connecticut Wilton Connecticut on the border of New York State and there is a group of garden club folks down there who wanted to Support pollinators and what they realized is that it can't just be a pollinator garden here a pollinator garden Someone's backyard and all these Vacant areas in between barren areas there needs to be a pathway. That's how it's going to work So what they started doing is working with local library schools Civic areas creating public pollinator gardens so that these pathways would start working throughout their areas And this movement is spread and now it's in Vermont the pollinator pathway folks here in Addison County I think there's some up in Stowe. You mentioned in Lemoyle County, too Good way to get together with other people who are involved with pollinators It could be just encouraging neighbors to grow pollinators in their backyard Or it could be working on a civic project where you're putting them in public places as well And there's a lot of great information they get speakers to come in and all kinds of information So supporting pollinator pathways is a good thing and just creating more pollinator habitat is exactly what we want to do So thank you all very much. I appreciate you coming out and I think we'll take some questions, right? Thanks so much Charlie and Samantha. So we have it's about 705 or so we're gonna end by 730 If we have questions that last that long, we're happy to try to take those for either Charlie or Samantha here What I ask is that you try to make it as brief as possible I'm gonna have to try to repeat the question again because we're recording this and folks are watching some live and some Will watch it in tape later So try to make it brief and an actual question would be awesome and I'm gonna try to move around. Yes, ma'am So the question is are there do you studies that you know of or studies that may happen that would look at how Pollinator species may have been affected by the flooding that we've experienced this year Samantha is this on yes. All right Where's Leslie Spencer? So I am not aware of any specific studies that are going to happen However, there are many people in the research community like Leslie who just finished her first year as a PhD student who had or Who is doing a study in blueberry looking at how you can plant? Things around blueberries to attract pollinators But also try to keep pests out of blueberry crops and her first field season was flooded and so as a Researcher doing fieldwork you kind of shift gears and say maybe I'm also going to be looking at bees and flooding territories now So that's just one example, but I think we're all sort of by doing the work We always do we're gonna have a weird year and And be able to draw some conclusions about how the flood is affecting another example is we're seeing really weird things With some of the pathogens that we follow in honey bees with no Zima loads. That's a fungus doing really weird things this year So, okay. Yes Spencer or no, sorry to your right. Yes. I'm sorry. The question is how are Can you repeat that? Okay, how are the ground nester bees affected by the jumping worms? Do either of you have a thought on that? Where's Maryam? Do you know? Come right up here if you want to answer this right up here Maryam studies those jumping worms Hello everyone Yeah, there is honestly there is nothing about jumping worms and ground nesting bees yet But we are thinking about doing some research, but we're always looking for funding So that's been the problem so far to not to work with that. The only thing I would say is People sometimes because no one wants to have jumping worms they do some kind of like Control measures that are not really very thoughtful like I don't know. I've heard like flaming gardens or like pouring soap or vinegar You could kill anything else in the soil, too So those are it I would say other than hand-picking them For now until we find a way to control them Probably just don't do anything. We don't know how they affect ground nesting bees and yeah I'm so glad you're here. Thank you, Maryam This is awesome. We have more experts in the crowd here than we knew Yes, we're here Sure. Yeah So the question was it's a question about Addison County, I think is what we're looking for and the the image That showed here. We are Samantha we want to repeat this and then Yeah, so I believe the question is about the distribution of the Neonicotinoid detections that we're finding and whether we're finding them more in some counties over others Okay, so the first year of this study. We only had 18 samples and it was just one in every county. Um, I will are four samples in each county that's 16 samples 16 samples and What we were finding is that we we were only finding the Neonix in places where there was Treated corner soybean near those sites and so as a result This year We did that we expanded the study. We have a lot more citizen or community science beekeepers involved and We identified bee yards that are either Near-treated row crops or not near-treated row crops To look at those differences I will say that the surface water report looking at Neonicotinoids and service water by the Agency of Agriculture I think the only county that they've found the Neonix was Franklin County Yep. Thank you. Do we have more questions? Yes. Wait a minute back. Yeah Just shout out if you can So for its first question is about deadheading when and whether and how and I didn't quite catch the second So you'll test So you'll testing for Neonix. So deadheading and soil testing for Neonix Charlie so yes deadheading that is one of those horticultural practices We're always taught to do and it's very beneficial if you want to keep flings flowering So you deadhead your bee bomb for example if you do it early enough It'll send up a second flush of flowers Maybe even a third flush so it's good to do that and I think again in the horticultural gardening world We want we grow flowers because we love to see flowers not only to support pollinators, but to see them ourselves So I think it's fine to go ahead and deadhead, but the last one You know that maybe this time of year the ones that are flowering Those are the ones you probably want to leave later because not only will they be helpful to pollinators? You get plants like the Rudbeckias in the Echinacea that will be great sources of seed for birds for finches For example, so the ones that are be blooming more late summer fall I would leave those through the season but earlier in the year you can certainly deadhead and to get to more flowers that come up so the second question was it are there soil tests you can do for neonicotinoid residues and What I didn't mention in my talk was that we are also testing soil and plant tissues in addition to the pollen samples that the beekeepers are collecting and so yes and you Yourselves can also send in samples Because the lab we use is Cornell's eco talk psychology lab And it is I think ninety dollars a sample or you can get in touch with our lab And we have funding to test the samples and so we're probably going to be doing it again next year If you want to be involved and get something tested reach out to me And I'll work with you to send the samples in because we have another batch that we're sending in right Sydney Yeah, in late September, we'll be sending in another batch and we're happy to include more so Yeah, so with the soil sampling most of the soil sampling that we were doing Can you just repeat? Oh you're talking about leaf tissue? We're doing we're sending soil and and plant tissue It's well repeat that question real quick and then we'll get beyond some of that very specific stuff But yes, yeah, this is very technical Yep Yeah, sure so the question was how can you time the sample collection to ensure that the UV light does not degrade the sample Good question. So we did our sampling this year at different times to try to Kind of to capture certain windows of so that during the dust time when the plants when the seeds were being planted And so we asked beekeepers this was the strength of doing a community science project because they were all monitoring their fields And so they collected their soil samples their plant tissue samples and their pollen samples within a day of the plants of the seeds Being planted to try to capture it before it was broken down on the soil. Yeah And then for the plant tissues that we'd be collecting this time of year The idea would be that it's inside of the plant at this point because it's plants that have taken up the neonic residues from the soil Much like a nutrient so we there wouldn't be the UV degradation at this point And that that was what we found in our samples that we had tested last year was golden rod Or you know solid a go growing adjacent to corn we found the neonix in the golden rod So it was in the plant. Yeah But you have a question way in the back and then I'll move towards the front. Okay You want to repeat sure? I think I heard that the question was are you sampling only around? agricultural fields, but or also other managed areas like golf courses Okay, so This is where I get sticky so we got Because we're doing this sort of as a community science project and we're working with beekeepers We were kind of working within the areas where beekeepers have their apiaries Which is surprisingly very often near treated row crops like corn and soy So that's where we were predominantly doing our sample collecting this year although there are places where beekeepers have apiaries not near row crops and Not near things like golf courses where those sort of serve as our control group for this work The reason why we really focused on row crops in this research is because of the anticipated Well a couple reasons because the neonicotinoid treated seeds used in row crops is Is Prophylactic use of neonate of an insecticide. It's not using integrated pest management practices And it's really bad for the pollinators and because of those issues with using not using treated Seeds, there are lots of policy changes that are coming down the line that we're anticipating coming And we've seen it happen before in Vermont and when I've given Expert testimony on the impacts of neonicotinoid treated seeds on pollinators referring to that's so much literature That's out there. The question that I get is yeah, but what about Vermont bees? And so in anticipation of this question coming up. We wanted to have data on What bees are bringing in in Vermont near treated row crops? We would also it's be a great thing to do also near golf courses because turf grass is also a seed that's Coated that's right Yes, ma'am in the glasses. Did you have a question? No? Yes So the so boiled down the question is whether we have any information about whether the excessive rain not necessarily the flooding But the rain that we have been experiencing this year has affected pollinators I'd be curious if Spencer or Emily may had any ideas about that as well But my thoughts is are that the ground flooding and the rain could definitely impact any ground nests of You know of nesting bees in the ground, right? Also, I was thinking about the colder weather and maybe that delaying the time of emergence of some insects Does anyone else have any thoughts Emily or Spencer other experts about Emily Emily may from the Zersi Society everyone The flooding question has been coming up for us as well And I think we like you a lot of the research on flooding comes from it just happening during the course of a research project So there have been there have been research projects that have been interrupted by a flood Where they're looking at wild bee abundance and diversity and then there was a flood and they looked to see what happened over time And I think what we're seeing this year in my own backyard, which is clay plain Totally saturated ground water high water table Those bees have kind of devastating impacts on the nesting of those bees that are underwater And that the larvae are sort of flooded out or they are no longer able to survive in this sort of anaerobic Conditions under there sometimes there's also with excessive moisture you get fungal pathogens in their nests But it seems like over time with those studies that have had some flooding interrupt a long-term monitoring project That there is Recolonization from other areas that did not get flooded So if you have for example some topography where some bees got flooded out from the clay Then you get recolonization over time So I think next year we're probably going to see lower abundance and diversity in the areas that saw a lot of flooding But I think over time you do get that kind of recolonization I am curious if Spencer is still around if what he has to say about it, too If so Spencer, please find the woman who asked the question and And then we can go from there Yes, sir So here's a question about weather and how to mow a natural meadow specifically at this time of year Charlie Yeah, so we're kind of up against the natural succession of this climate in this area This area if we disappeared tomorrow would just turn back into forest And that's what every the every one of these fields is going to going to want to do eventually So if you have a meadow and you just leave it there year after year Certainly you start seeing poplars come in and you start seeing dogwoods come in Shrub dogwoods and things of that nature as they go through their natural succession So even though it's not a great idea to mow things down in the fall because that's where a lot of pollinators might be If you want to keep that as a meadow that's flowering at a certain stage You do have to mow it and the time to do it would be late in the season like November or so After all the pollinators have kind of settled down if you can mow up high that would be better if you the longer of a stem That you can leave there whether it be a golden rod or whatever the higher chance that if there's a pollinator in there They're going to be able to survive versus cutting it way down to the ground like six inches tall Thanks, right yes front row So the question is did either of you read the article in the New Yorker called is beekeeping wrong and you have a reaction So I was sent that article I Tried to read it But it was behind a paywall and I'm cheap But I but I have been asked this multiple times and have had discussions with beekeepers and other people who are you know native? conservationists, you know who want to see the native pollinators do better So beekeeping Honey bees are because of the way we farm in our monocultures and the way we get our food Honey bees are the most important managed pollinator and Frankly the way that we get the pollination services We do in these areas where there is no habitat left for the native pollinators to provide Beekeeping is a is a great hobby for those of us who you know our backyard beekeepers You can learn a lot and about loving insects by farming a honeybee But my argument would be to do it in a way that's very respectful and educated around What are the impacts that honeybees are having to native pollinators and how can we reduce those impacts and there's a really really great talk by Xerces society about What do you remember the do you remember the title of it? So what about honeybees or something like that and it talk and it hits this whole topic right on right on the head about What you can do if you're thinking about beekeeping and you're kind of caught in this conundrum But it you know thinking about the the pathogen spillover one is it is a big one Trying to make sure that you have a really solid varroa management plan So you're not spreading diseases to the native pollinators and if you're just want to be a beekeeper to also do a pretty Great job at also creating habitat because the honeybees are in such high densities That it can out that research is showing that it kind of outcompetes the floor resources of the native bees around it so It's a tough question Yeah, thank you, and I'm afraid we're gonna end on a tough question So please join me in thanking our our speakers here tonight Samantha and Charlie I Really appreciate I appreciate both of you I appreciate all of you for coming out and also many thanks to our partners again if you haven't seen the petition yet We will have some out front feel free to contact any member of our coalition as well for more information about how to get involved in the Days and weeks ahead and thanks for coming out tonight. Thank you