 at Davis Media Access. My name is Daisy and I will be your host for today's episode. We will be talking about pollinators native to Davis and how they affect local farms and cities. Today we have our two guests. Welcome to the show. We have Joanne Heridy, project manager from the Yolo County Resource Conservation District and Diane Crumley, education and outreach coordinator for the North Davis Riparian Greenbelt. It's mouthful. It definitely is. Thank you so much for being here and let's start out with what makes local pollinators essential to our community? So local pollinators especially in Yolo County are really important because we lead the state in terms of agriculture. So pollinators are really critical to that pollination being successful. In terms of they act as sort of like postal carriers for pollen and genetic material. It's important for when a flat when any sort of crop is being grown in the field they have these flowers and they need to provide, I'm messing up already. I'm sorry. That's all right. Well we have the vast majority of the food that we eat does need to be pollinated and in our county some of our main crops, vegetable, fruit and nuts and then also even alfalfa for dairy, are really important crops both throughout California and locally and they require pollination by both either honey bees or the less known native bees. Something like 75% of our crops are fruit, vegetable and that crops require pollination from specifically from insects. So a lot of other crops can be pollinated via wind but these crops specifically in our county the highest egg producing crops are required bees to be pollinated. And which crops in Yolo County depend on bee pollination? So the biggest crops here are almonds, tomatoes, sunflowers, all those sunflowers you see in Yolo County need to be pollinated by bees and also things like squash and melons those are the main predominant crops that need to be pollinated by bees. And what is the difference between these native bees and you know the classic honeybee? So there's probably three critical points in terms of what the difference is between those. The first is that the honeybee what everyone's familiar with is an introduced variety. It's not native what we consider indigenous to North America. It was introduced specifically for its pollinating capacity for crops. The second is that there's the two different varieties it's social versus solitary bees. A lot of the native bees are solitary in that they make their own nest by themselves and they go and forage for their food by themselves whereas honey bees are very social. They have colonies, they forage together and then they create hives what everyone's knows as hives. And then the other main difference is that honey bees are generalists so they don't have any whatever is flowering they're gonna eat it up whereas a lot of the honey bees are sorry this native bees need specific food sources from specific plants. So a lot of times when we are developing hedgerows and I don't know if anyone's familiar with a hedgerow there's a specific graphic that I'm gonna point to right here it's what we do a lot at the RCD is create these habitats on unused portions of farm edges and what it does is create habitat for native bees all kinds of animals wildlife and what we seek to plant throughout the year is habitat and plants that are going to flower year round so they're going to provide nectar sources for these honey bees for native bees year round. We want them to be a lot of times native plants flower in the spring we want them to have nectar sources even in the winter and a lot of times these native bees are looking for specific plants so it's really important to have diverse diverse hedgerows that have multiple different plant species in them. Can we look into like the hedgerow design like what makes these unique from other types of hedgerows specifically Yolo County's hedgerows? Yeah so Yolo County's hedgerows are provide multiple what we call ecosystem services so they provide a lot of different benefits on farms they have natural enemies they provide habitat for natural enemies that might attack crop pests they are really good for erosion control sometimes they provide habitat in terms of wood holes for native bees ground for ground nesting insects and they're also biodiverse habitats and so we there really these diverse landscapes that provide habitat for birds insects animals all sorts of things. And one of the things that have been really well studied here in Yolo County is farmers originally were kind of afraid to plant these because they were thinking well what if they also attract pests so maybe they attract beneficial insects so they've been extremely well studied and they it's been determined that in crops that have these rich native hedgerows that there are more beneficial insects and so they can use less pesticides or be going completely organic because the beneficial insects will take care of the pests and then they have this great place to live and eat in the hedgerows and that there were more pests found in just the weedy areas that if you just you know leave the ground alone and do nothing so so that was just an extra added benefit and then on top of it when you have the native pollinators they use a different form of pollination oftentimes it's caused this buzz pollination where they go into the flower deeply and they they they they end up gathering more pollen and then they don't seem to travel in such a straight line the way most honeybees do and so they kind of go all over the place so they end up doing a better job of pollinating and so you get a higher yield so there's more tomatoes there's more melons if you have these so it's a it's a win-win situation there's a lot of research coming out of the Xercesa society that's showing that specifically in cherry tomatoes that native bees are better at pollinating the cherry tomatoes than honeybees and so they do a better job of activating the flower and so what we're trying to do on farm edges is encourage all the edges to be this biodiverse habitat to encourage native honeybee habitat and then also there's new developmental research that shows there's pollinator strips that you can plant within farm edges on farm edges and cover crops that are specifically geared towards encouraging a lot more native habitat. Yes and that's been done recently because so many of our farmland in Yolo County has been being converted to orchards so for example walnut trees and and almonds and then and some fruit trees so if you have a bunch of bare ground then that is you know bad for for erosion and just not biodiversity so they're developing studies studying what types of what they call covered crops that then are in turn pollinated by native bees and honeybees that will both benefit the soil but then also be a resource so instead of renting your honeybees and having them shipped across the country to sit next to your orchard you're planting your own sort of food and habitat for bees and and so they're so then they're living there and then that's you have the cost initially of doing the planting but you're not constantly renting and it costs three hundred dollars a you know a bee box and so for for one acre and so when we're talking hundreds and hundreds of acres it's actually a large cost in terms of renting the honeybees so if you create the habitat then yeah about this habitat exactly what as a resident in the city what can we do to help these bees let's say we're in the city and we don't have these hedgerows what can I do in a backyard what can I do right well the the wonderful thing about living here in Davis is that we do have a lot of of resources for for gardening and for learning about gardening and for access to native plants and one of the the largest resources I would say is the UC Davis Arboretum it's a hundred acres which is incredible to begin with and but then they have a teaching nursery and are raising hundreds of different species of plants and twice a year they have sales and which one is coming up September 29th and then you'll have another one October 13th and another one November 3rd and this is a fantastic opportunity it's supports this wonderful resource and that and I have when I have gone and bought my first sort of native plants this was several years ago I you know got them out of the car put them in my backyard sat down before I could even have a sip of iced tea I saw three native bee species that I had never seen before ever and they just it was like you know literally planted and they will come because this area has been a really rich you know prior to there's only been agriculture here 150 years so this was a huge prairie for thousands of years and so there is the potential for a lot of of species of native bees that that we can provide for so I would say the going to the arboretum going to their plant sale but then also on campus there is a small garden that's the called the Haagen-Dazs honey behaving and that is located out in the west part of campus and it's in the middle of their research farms and it's a half acre and it has been beautifully designed we have to really credit the Haagen-Dazs donated $250,000 to create this and and it's an it's a free open garden year-round and you can see very clearly what is working what might work for your garden and it was designed for for both public education and for research they have open house days one coming up this Saturday where families can come out and and learn all about the native bees it's they have art projects out there and it's it's really a remarkable place they they said it's been there eight years and when they first planted it within just a couple of months they they identified 40 native species and now it's up to at least 80 so wow that is incredible we for the viewers at home who want to learn how to type of mimic these types of gardens the resources that we have yes one of them is going to the UC Davis Arboretum website and that's the first one listed there Arboretum.ucdavis.edu and also if you if you just Google gardening for pollinators UC Davis Arboretum they have a beautiful set of information there the second one is be garden.ucdavis.edu and that will take you to the honeybehaven website which there are great resources and then the final one that brings us back to what we were talking to at the the beginning is resources for pollinators on on our local farms and that's the NRCS California website for pollinators and NRCS stands for national yeah natural resource conservation services and they're a federal organization that is in every state and we're lucky to have one here in Yolo County and if you're also interested you can always contact Yolo RCD and we can point you to your actually like point you in the direction of good pollinator habitat on farm and locally in in the city and they have wonderful resources on their website yeah a really nice publications too great thank you so much for both being here for today's episode thank you for watching today's episode of in the studio