 Hello, my name is Ben Gomott. I am a research scientist at the Heddinger Research Extension Center, and I would like to visit with you a bit today about a project I am working on with my colleagues at North Dakota State University and Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center concerning honey bees and shelter belts. Our work is funded by a grant provided by the North Central Region of Sustainable Ag Research and Education. Pollinators are important to food production as well as maintaining global biodiversity. Honey bees are particularly important in North Dakota as we are the number one producer of honey in the nation. Each year beginning in May, bees begin to return to North Dakota from around the nation where they have been busy pollinating crops. It is typically during this time that North Dakota lacks floristic resources for honey bees, therefore beekeepers generally feed their bees, which is an added cost for them. Shelter belts have been established throughout much of the upper-grade plains and typically include flowering trees and shrubs, which flower early in the season and may provide resources for honey bees. With this in mind, in 2020 we began a study to determine if in fact trees and shrubs associated with shelter belts are providing early season resources for honey bees. As well as we wanted to determine if the amount of shelter belt surrounding an apiary impacts its overall production. We are working with cooperating beekeepers using their bees and so far have focused research efforts on Central and Southwest North Dakota as well as Northwest South Dakota. At each apiary we select two hives in which we place scales on and these scales collect hourly weights as well as air temperature. We also select two additional colonies that we set them on pollen traps, which allows us to collect pollen from returning bees that were out foraging on flowers. We use this pollen to determine which species bees are using at a particular time throughout the early season. So far preliminary data from 2020 suggests that trees and shrubs associated with shelter belts are being used by honey bees and that in fact there may be a relationship between the amount of area surrounding an apiary that consists of shelter belts, although more data is needed at this time. Pollen data suggests that honey bees forage from a wide variety of plants during the early season including many trees and shrubs. This research is ongoing but what we hope to be able to do is provide beekeepers with information that will help them determine where to place their bees during the early season to take advantage of early season floristic resources. We also help to use the data to determine if there are trees and shrubs which are beneficial to honey bees, maybe they can be incorporated into future shelter belt plantings. So they also include pollinators in mind during shelter belt establishment. For more information please contact me Ben-Gomot at 701-567-4323. Thank you.