Okay, welcome to another episode of the Crimepace. A boutany does it doesn't.
I'm here with Sam Drogi, who's a bee scientist. You work with
USGS or I work with USAS. But to be safe here, I'm going
to say that I'm not representing right right, all opinions expressed there. My
home just me and Joey. But yeah, and I want to say your
home too, is like I'm blown away. So I like the tunnel of
flowers, the tunnel of plants and vegetation. You have to walk through there.
You should see it when it's in bloom. So that's one of the
scrubby Prunus species and it's just a curtain of flowers for a week and a
half. Well yeah, and the Sylphium and the Helianthus. I mean it's
like it's it's it's nice to see that. So okay, well, thanks
for doing this with me. We're sitting in a room filled with boxes of
bees, and none of them seem to be European honeybees, which is amazing,
which is what I love to see. I'm so tired of seeing that
species. So so where to start? So I I watched you got a
Ted Talk, which I watched. It was ten minutes. I could have
watched three fucking hours of that thing. It was absolutely just fascinating stuff.
But there's a couple of things I wanted to ask you about. I guess
what, you know. The thing, it's got to be annoying for you
to constantly when you talk about bees, the things that most people think of
as honey bees. Like you ask a kid to draw a picture of a
bee, it's gonna be a honey bee if you see. That's what comes
to most people's minds. But that's like the least interesting thing. It's like
being in the plants, like you, I talk about plants and someone thinks
of like a tulip, and that's all they know about plants, And they
actually mostly draw yellow jackets. Yellow jackets look more like honeybees. And when
they say, oh I had, I had, I have, I hate
bees. You know, I was mowing my lawn and all these bees came
out and stung me, and I go, those are never bees. Those
are always yellow jackets. So yeah, there's a very shallow understanding of the
breadth of bee dumb out there. But for me, what's what's been interesting.
Why I wanted to talk to you is because I mean when I'm out
looking at plants, that's what I see all the time. I mean,
I'm always seeing, you know, because after a while being in the botany,
you catch up that there's not going to be any plants without the things
that pollinate them, and there's all these really cool What fascinates me are the
specialist syndromes where it's this thing evolved with this with this plant, you know,
with the specific species of plant, and it's it's you know, like
I was, I got really interested in what was pollinating peyote because that's one
of the coolest plants where I live, along with you know, astrophyte and
star cactus all these other I mean, there's myriad other cool species where I
live that that's the only place in the United States that they grow. And
so I was I would just be it. It started to occur to me
and then a friend of mine, Peter Bernhard, he's a botanist. He
is working at Mobile now is always doing pollination studies and I love looking at
I mean, there's so many plants that have weird anthro morphology, you know,
like poricytal anthers and solenam. I want to ask you about that,
because tomato require something special, right, you get the Melastoma tasi. Who
knows what the fuck is I mean, we know what is going on there,
but it's very the first time you see a flower and a member of
the melostonmatasi, you're like, what the fuck is that? Two different kinds
of stamens anthropores, all this weird stuff. So that's where my fascination came
from. But I want to I guess we'll just start right off and this
conversation will be all over the place. We're starting off with the specialist relationships
that you see out there. What are some because there's, like you were
just telling me about castania, the chestnuts had a specialist species to be that
pon an. What's up with that? Well, so like let's use chestnut
as a starting point. But the way to really the big picture is to
think of plants not as as important as the botanists think of themselves, but
just as platforms for biodiversity. So each plant species in a way can be
thought of as working with a select group of highly specialized often members of you
know, let's talk insects, but also viruses and bacteria and fungi, and
it sometimes is individual species, the individual species, but a lot of times
it's at a genus level or groups of members of a genus having some relationship
with some insect, and then all these other things. Was they know very
little about. So you know what one hundred million years ago start of flowering
plants and almost immediately why are they flowering? Is relating to moving away from
wind pollinated to insect pollinated and efficiencies. Right, we should talk about that
too, because I wanted to ask you when bees evolved, because you know
Jurassic and the plants have roughly evolved. It's one twenty five million years ago.
There's you know, we got the smoke from the smoking gum, but
we don't have the gun yet. There's micropollen and fossils and stuff. But
is that about the time one five million years ago that that bees started to
ev over? Well, yeah, that's so somewhat controversial or just being evolving
in itself in terms of being able to backtrack and determine through molecular work mostly
these days, and also some fossil work. There's fossils out there too.
Amber is a great place to look at weird things, And the number you
hear the most is one hundred million years ago, and the story you hear
the most is it started with beatles and then I don't know about bees per
se in terms of it's probably pretty close. But bees are just wasps,
so they're vegetarian wasps, so they derived out of that clade pretty it seems
pretty certain because all wasps are generally predatory, right, yeah, again exceptions.
So there are actual official wasps that are also pollen feeders. Most of
those are Western. I'm forgetting the genus name at the moment, but yeah,
So there's a couple of bee species that are feet on carrion. They
know, no bees actually attack other insects. But there's a group of bees
in a I think they're melopennines. So these are the stingless bees in the
tropics that it's tropical and stuff. Yeah, fucking incredible. And that's where
they get their protein rather than from the you know, pollen kit or the
stuff that's wrapped around pollen. Now that's put there by plants, which would
be the protein source. So they all need some kind of protein and mostly
they're getting it from pollen. So all bees, even the parasitic bees are
using the protein part of the equation from these plants as a source of you
know, part of the needs with you know, again not my lane,
so I can't give you all of them, but fats and lipids and amino
acids. They go for starts at all. That would be nectar, right
or sometimes oil so or they can create that component some poind some pond produces
a lot of starts too, could be I don't know. But but regardless
of so beatles were doing this that beatles maybe were pollinating some plants in the
Jurassic before angiosperms evolved. They're the generally older group, but bees really took
off what about a hundred million years ago. It's I'm going to say,
really, not my lane. So yeah, that's the that's the number where
you generally toss around when people ask that question. But I'm sure there's others
that can be more different. But like oldest fossil bee, we have a
we know it off hand now, but but generally around the time angiosperms started
to get gone, yeah, yeah, and so, but regarding these these
specialist relationships like with the cat with the chestnut, like what what was that
species of being. Did it disappear when chestnuts started to disappear or what happened.
Yeah, it didn't really disappear, obviously, because we can find it
again. But it became super like if you look at collections, it's like,
hey, this Andrena Rennie, which at the time we didn't realize was
a chestnut specialist or really a Castanaea specialist. It was like, this is
one of the missing bees of the Eastern United States, which we had a
paper on saying like, oh, you know, we can't find these.
It was about as far as you can go in terms of determining status on
bees, and subsequently a big chunk of those bees we found. It's just
they're rare and specialized and if you don't look, you don't find them.
And that's the biggest problem now. So the chestnut bee was there a bunch
of records Andrena Rennie is the name from one hundred years ago, and then
it pretty much dropped off a cliff. There's some in between records that may
or may not actually be identified correctly from places that we wouldn't expect to see
it, because really, chestnuts are are the chickapins aren't there. So three
Castanea has in the East, well everywhere, I guess, no in the
East, because they're in Europe ben Asia. Two three species so ozar Kansas,
Pumla, and Dentata, kind of being the American chestnut. And so
we found one day walking along power lines. Oh, here's a chinkapin blooming
and I had heard that they had been good for bees, so I collected
the bees. That's a handful off. This one scraggly, obviously unhealthy one,
but blooming may. It was right next to the lab as a matter.
Wow. Again, there's chinkapin throughout, mostly as an understory tree and
which never blooms because they're understore. They're waiting for an opening. But in
a few places they'll creep out into the edge or in a power line that's
managed for brush, and they get the blight and then they die back and
the sprout. Yeah, the pumela and Ozarkansas also get the blight, but
they have a faster cycle time, so they're still reproducing and putting out viable
seed. Not very I guess people are concerned about their status and working on
that, just like chestnut. But that's not they have none of the glory
of the chestnut tree. And only recently did people realize that there's all these
specialist insects well the tree, the botany people realize that. So there's a
great paper by a great paper by Paul Oppler from the seventies who just lists
all the highly specialized insects that are on chestnut. And he didn't know about
andrena or renny at the time. But there's weavils, there's bores, there's
leaf miners, all kinds of things that basically you don't have chestnut. Those
things are gone, and some of those species seem maybe completely gone. Now
that's crazy, because one in every four trees on the East Coast was a
chestnut tree or in some of the East Coast forts. From what I've heard,
I mean that's saying right, that's another whole Right, it depends.
There's a lot of nuanced that. It depends what kind of landscape you're on,
what the you know, there's multiple factors. What the But one of
the interesting things about that group is if you and about let's talk about bees
and forests. So in the spring, if you the highest density of naturally
occurring bees is in bottomland forests, in the spring, or let's call it
richwood forests. So we've got a vernal understory of herbaceous plants and we've got
a subshrub bloom. And then if you have edges, you know, even
more action is going on there because the sun's coming in and they're really pumping
their bloom into that. And then you have actually a tree layer, so
you have all the everything's blooming, so even some trees. And this is
this is before the trees have really leafed out like this. Are we talking
like spring ephemerals mostly? So spring ephemerals, yes, So starting in March
there's action in there and then the densities really build up, like think of
spring. Beauty's that carpet of spring. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's
a Claytonia specialist bee super abundant in those environments. So this is the bee
that only pollinates clayton Only on Claytonia. There's Juvuleria specialists there. So if
Claytonia were to suffer something that happened to the American chestnut, you lose this
bee. Yes, and it is because the evil lesser Celandine, which is
a vernunculous name. I always forget but it's imported European species completely taking over
the bottom lands. Have some crazy invasives here. What is that wavy basket
density of propagules and invasives, wavy basket gress, waved basket just moving into
the where I work at the refuge. I haven't seen it here. And
that's a new one, huh. I mean that thing relatively new, young
god, and it didn't I mean it. Someone wrote me and they were
like, we we saw this popping up a number of years ago, like
a decade or two ago, and the guy he was working with some fondness
and they let the NR no and they were like, oh, they just
kind of ignored it, and now it's really fucking bad. Yeah, it's
basically like still grass, so and built in how it kind of works,
but also in the fact that it will completely carpet forest. It's weird too.
Those seeds are like they're sticky and if you touch your eyes or something
afterwards, it burns its some fucking weird. Really, Yeah, there's a
there's something weird on that. Whatever that exbit it is, smoke it.
If you smoke wavy basker, I wonder you probably burn your lungs or something.
I don't know, but kind of get a use for it. Yeah,
who knows, man, But it's a bad one. So yeah,
So that's one of a huge list. When you go to the Midwest,
and then maybe the West, I don't know so much, but the Midwest
has a much lower propensity to have, particularly forests, but pretty much everywhere
this high density of invasive species here. That's the battle you keep them from
English here too. Oh God, there's so much true miscanthis too. That's
another bad one. But what struck me here was there's not much habitat.
Like when we came to your lab. That was the first time I'd see
like a mass. I'd seen a mass of a bunch of native plants.
Like there's the there's forests here, and there's four Oh they're pretty on the
sides of the roads, you know, sloping to a fucking eight lane road
of cars. But there's not much native plants. And you don't see that
much habitat. I don't see it in I don't see native plants in any
kind of landscaping. I don't see native plants in people's yards. It's really
fucking, you know, ecologically death, that's really so different from the rest
of the No, it's much like a lot of the US. But I
guess for some reason I thought it would be a little different here. I
see bacchariss helmafolia, But that's kind of a recent Was that always here?
Is that? Well? Yes? But so Baccharis hammifolia normally is a the
backside is it often called is it high tide or load tide bush? But
it's the backside of salt marshes and the estuary coastal Why is it along all
our roads? Now? Salt We salt the hell out of the roads.
And so that's perfect much like solidago semper veerans, which is people call it
invasive in Chicago. I don't like that. I don't like calling native plants
invasive if they're only from a few hundred miles away in the same content,
because distributions have shifted over millions of years and glaciation and then so but it
does the same thing. It's a coastal golden rod tolerant of salt. They
use a ship ton of salt in Chicago. You get that out competing any
of the other native plants, but only along the roads. Really, like
you don't see it. I don't see it invading non disturbed areas. There's
a bunch of sort of backside estuary salt marshy things, pluchia I can't remember.
And yeah, and there's an annual salt marsh aster and what's your what's
your opinion of the coyote. But I like the back wrist we call coyote.
But it's a fucking pollinator all in that habitat, particularly roads. It
doesn't really leave the road sides. So but along roadsides, you know,
what's your option. There's almost nothing else that will grow there that's not invasive.
Particularly it's like kisses right up to the road. If it's not mowan,
it's a composite, and you know it's not doesn't pretty much doesn't have
any specialists on it, but it has a ton of opportunity for pollen nectar.
I'm not sure what people are gathering there, insect people, but if
we look at that, uh, there's a lot going on very late in
the season. So this leg so it just finished blooming here maybe two weeks
ago. Oh, it's still going on some of the highways. It's great.
I think it's great to see because a lot of that is the females
and it looks like they're it's just it was just there the game because they
put those hairs out of the female flowers. It looks like yeah and so
yeah, so it And then if you look at it's native habitats, it's
a very important dune slash salt marsh's esterin plant that's providing uh, you know,
resources for that end of the year. So for some bee species are
out all year, right, so not everything's a specialist, and so you
want to have bloom throughout, so they shift around. Think bumblebees, right,
So bumblebees are out from March or February sometimes these days, and then
they're not they're done in November, depending on the species. And so bageris
great plant. Nothing else around. Maybe it's not your number one like I'm
going to go to it every day, but that's how things work. Will
they grow in a garden here? Like could you grow in in a garden?
You know we're going to transplant some to the lab so I'll be able
to answer that. I don't see why not. It's also you know,
it's a decent quick growing right hedgerow? Oh yeah, and they get like
eight feet tall privacy screen. There's Backers neglecta in Texas, which is just
fucking loaded with cool insects. If it's got a good full sun's site,
it will be year round blocking of privacy or whatever you want to call it.
Uh, it's as far as I know, it's not in the trade,
and I do see it. And like on the Eastern Shore, near
houses that are near roads that aren't like Lottie dahouses will often have backris shrubs
that just had adventifitiously volunteer and then they're like, oh I got a shrub
here. Yeah they're great, and this yeah, late late summer, early
fall, they're just loaded with fucking poem. We dialed back to the castanea.
So the one of the many cool things about chestnut. So we have
all this bloom in the very very early spring. There's a series of trees,
not too many, that provide pollen and nectar, and there's a whole
world up there in the canopy that's only now just beginning to be studied.
In terms of bees. Some bees are really only up there or largely up
there. And the thing about chestnut, first of all, it was,
as you mentioned, common in Appalachian Piedmont plus or minus area and fairly restricted
range, but a big chunk of the east had it. And it's the
last thing to bloom, so it's blooming late June early July. No other
tree is blooming at that time that is producing anything worthwhile for pollen and nectar.
So one would imagine it was a huge pollen and nectar source for bees
that are, you know, working the forest end of the spectrum. And
if you're Andrena or any that's your game, right, you know, you
can't be like, well, I'm out early in the spring with everything else
is blooming, I'll just dip into whatever. It's like, it's chestnut or
nothing. Yeah, these these specialist relationships are what's fascinating me the most because
it's i mean, you see people talking about Yeah we talked about this last
time, the monarchs in the milk weeds. That's great, but that's that's
just a small microcosm of what nature is. There's all these specialist relationships,
both in plants and insects. Yeah, you know, and one thing you
had mentioned too in that that Ted talk, you said, specialization is really
important in deserts. Why is it, you know, I'm not one hundred
percent sure, but you think about deserts and you have a much more unpredictable
resource, right, much more extreme. Yeah, so there's there's going to
be much more selection. Okay, so yeah, we're talking about we talking
about specialization in deserts. So it's much more extreme environment. There's going to
be more specific natural selection. But but there's but there are a bunch of
specialist bees that only associate with one genus or even species of plant. So
Kreaso bush is a good example. I can't remember the exact number, but
I'm going to say something like teen different species of bees only go to kreosop
bush. And I don't know that that group. Well, it's a Western
thing. Everything is different out west, and just like plants, and so
I can't tell you how many species are involved, but I think it's only
one or two maybe in the US of kreosot bush. And it's dominant,
right, so it's all over the place. It's one of the last things
that can make it in the super dry deserts, and it will produce something
almost every year, and so it provides I think a lot. What's going
on is that some of these so let's back up. Most bees that are
specialized are not on annuals. They're on perennials and shrubs, and then rarely
you get a tree. Salex is a good example, but most salecs are
actually shrubs, not trees. There's black black Salex nigra year in the east,
but I digress on willows. But the idea is that that's what's going
on in the desert is you have lots of shrub communities divided by mountain ranges,
and you know, over time you isolate, and you know you have
you look for your predictability, so you can't. So bees can also hang
out for several years in the desert underground without emerging just dormant. Yeah,
they need to write because what if it's like the super crappy year, everyone
dies. You know, you're off the off the you know, molecular chart.
Then so there is that, but you want to be yeah sort of,
but you want to be have that capacity and have some predictability so that
you know you can raise your babies. Most annuals don't provide that predictability.
Some of those hanging out in the seed bank for I'm sure there's some specialist
bees. That's nothing is coming to mind. That is centrists on Crimeria.
That's what I think of the genus. Centris on Crimeria is a really weird
fucking plant, and it's related to krestod Actually it's in the order Zygophleles,
but it's in its own family, and it's a hemiparasite too, And you
get them in Chile and then the desert. So you get one species in
Florida, but it grows in more xeric areas, like drier areas. But
I remember one in Chile that was just fucking weird, and they got those
pink orchid looking flowers and their petals have been morphed into like these lipid producing
plants too. Yeah, yeah, so there's a I think we've talked about
that before too. So oil producing plants have co evolved with bees, like
sixteen separate taxonomic times from the b point of view, where that is,
and so they're providing oils and I'm not sure if it's instead of nector or
in addition, but anyway, they those bees are definitely specialists on oil producing
plants. Maybe though they're like, you know, this family's oil, this
is fine as well as this family's oil, but it's usually more complicated than
that. And in the East, the only oil collecting bees we have are
Lysomachia specialists in the bee group acropis what ischia again, so loose strife but
the right yeah, yeah, yeah, And there's a couple out west,
but I don't know that people have found the bees out there. So most
of the lysomachias are Eastern. And it's also a group of plants and bees.
Not so much the plants. The plants you can still find, but
the bees are that are the specialist bees are really hard to find. And
then there's a nest parasite of those bees that was again on that list of
like maybe it's gone because it hadn't been seen in eighty years. There was
a bee that was a nest parasite of other bees. Yeah, twenty percent
of all native bees are nest parasites. So they're coming in invading a nest.
Lots of different strategies on how to do this, lay their egg and
then eat the young, or kill the young and eat all the next door.
Jesus Christ. That's always a good story for people. And you know,
talking to kids in elementary schools about that, like just imagine if you're
when you're born, your mom filled your room with candy, but then close
the door and turn out all the lights, and then you're eating all your
candy. Then suddenly you hear the sound, and then the teacher is like,
you know, giving you the Okay, that's enough, that's fucking hilarious,
traumatizing kids. You leave. They're all just sitting there, wide eyed
and gate mouth legola good. I could see a TV series on you know,
analogs of insect biology of native bees in the US. Do that they're
nes parasitic? Yeah? Well worldwide, worldwide wide. Yeah, so anyway,
so obviously the nest parasite is less common than the host, and if
the host is rare, that means that the nest parasite is rare. And
it appears that particular group, for whatever reason, is less common than it
was less commonly collected, which is different, right, If you don't look
for it, you don't find it. When we moved to our current place
of where we work at Patuxent, I was about thirty acres to play with.
I was mowing a trail and I looked over and I saw Lysimachi quadrifolia,
one of the you know, it's around kinds of things, and I
said, thought, wouldn't it be cool if I saw macropus on that.
So I'm just on the lawnmower looking over there, and I saw macropus.
So we are one of the few places in Maryland and we've been planting them
in this past year. It's not exactly the same location they actually showed up
in our plantings. Do you think I mean, since there weren't a lot
of people paying attention to this except bee biologists, and there's not in the
popular culture. People are just so ignorant to it, you'd think there have
been a Do you think there were species that were described or maybe not even
described, and then when extinct, they just disappeared because the habitat has been
so thoroughly yeah, developed, could be. We have, for example,
a list of species that haven't been seen in many years. But a lot
of those when we look at that they were rare to begin with. We
refound a bunch others were taxonomically dubious, right, so there's not that much
work. There's still many many undescribed species of bees, particularly out west worldwide,
huge numbers, so a lot of this taxonomy came from one hundred years
ago when we actually had a lot of tax or fair number of taxonomists.
They're more taxonomosts than there are now in the United States. And they though
they're communication, they didn't have the Internet, right, so everyone was redescribing,
like all one person described the male, another described a variant on the
female, and there was those central database. What would you because I think
this stuff is totally fascinating now any specialist relationship, any I pay so much
attention to the insects I've seen now than I did five years ago. What
would you say to people that don't get it? They're like, why is
this important? Like someone's like, you know, quasi racist grandpa, who's
really mad that there's money being put into this, Like how do you explain
the depth of complexity and the food chain and why the biosphere is important and
why every block in that Jenga tower is important? Yeah, so I don't
use the Jenga tower, but I use a brick house. Right, So
if you have a brick house, you can remove bricks. I a species
for a while and then sections collapse. So that's a good analogy of what's
going on. Additionally, like with bees. We're in a much better shape
than say with you know, leaf mining insects. To put some dollars and
cents on these things, yeah, because they're pollinating things that we use.
So no pollinator, you either have a really expensive system where you're hand pollinating
or you don't get it at all. Right, And so for the dummies
that don't get it, you know, you have to put the monetary value
on it. I just got it. So aggravating of the arrogance in that,
like why is this important? It's like someone taking a part of car.
It's like me going into my fucking truck and it's not working, and
I'm like, what's wrong? Oh, something's wrong. I just start throwing
fucking pieces out of it, you know, And I'm like, well,
all you need is the engine, right, I mean, you know,
completely oblivious to me. Yeah, well nature is much better than your engine,
right, Because one little thing goes wrong with the engine, it's down.
But with nature there's a lot of capacity. So plant communities are obviously
shifting all over the place. It was only fourteen thousand years ago that this
area was tundra, a glacial maximum, and so it's it's okay with a
lot of chain and because of the way the systems work, there's all this
complexity. So there's one thing we want to build back in that complexity into
our used environments too, so we have those buffers. It's a backup plan,
right, That's what you mentioned in your tongue there. It's good to
have as many backup plans as possible. That's why you need biodiversity. The
massive biodiversity is a fucking backup plan should one or two things get knocked up
by saying invasive pathogen or something else. Yeah, and you just I mean,
just look through history. How we think that we can solve something by
removing a species or adding in a predator like mongoose into Hawaii or something like
that. Oh, that'll take care of the rats. Oh, sorry forgot
that. They are going to eat all the native species ground nesting species too.
So the difficulty is if you just you know, shrug your shoulders and
say nature is going to take care of it. Well, maybe it will
for a while if you have a lot of natural enns and they're in pretty
good shape. But now, as you mentioned in the Maryland area and a
lot of other areas, we're kind of reaching the point where almost every natural
area has to be consciously sustained and maintained stewarded, right, because the invasives
are so bad. Yeah, and there's fire regimes. I mean, I
saw that native smilax what do they call it, greenbrier whatever. I don't
know to comment, but it takes over because it was adapted to fire.
It's got these big tours. It's a native. Yeah, so its technically
can't be invasive, but it can be very aggressive. And if fire isn't
maintained, if you just let things, there's no stewardship there. Yeah,
shit goes anyway. That's I mean, that really runs on the idea humans
are part of nature. Yeah, yeah, it's really So what we should
be concentrating on probably is both working out some of these taxonomies in life history.
So you just need people looking around and saying, oh, look this
bee was here and now it's not. Oh there's a so andrena rennie is
a door of the species of tree that you're trying to bring back, because
it's basically like the panda bear of trees. Right, they're not thinking about
all the other creatures that are associated with those trees. They don't really even
care about them per se. But they should because, for example, the
bee is probably a really effective pollinator of Castanea, which requires, if I
recall it has to be outcrossed with at least another another plant. Yeah,
they flower, the male and female flowers. Supposedly they're self fertile. I
don't know about that, but certainly the male flowers go off before the female
flowers. They're protandrus and they and if you're in one of these orchards,
which they people seem to conveniently plant with their back crosses, you can see
that the flowering isn't all at the same time, so you're getting that naturally.
How cool is it to have one thing called a andrena rennie that only
runs between the chestnuts versus bees. Was like, oh, look there's a
chestnut. I'll take some pollen, but now I'm going to go to a
different plant or something. I think just from a philosophical perspective, it's cool
too. I mean, it's you want the greater perspective, You want to
be aware of everything that's going on. It's so fascinating, it's so cool
these things evolve together. Yeah, what else? What else? Yeah?
And what else is there too, and that specialized relationship that we're not aware
of yet. Well, that's a core core principle of how we should be
thinking about living on the earth is that everything is of equal value. Let's
call it that way. So you know, there's no like, well we
like the species, we don't like that species. They're all essentially philosophically have
the same internal or the same value, just as every person does. Right.
No one argues, well, I guess they do sometimes right, that
different populations are not as good and right, Yeah, so every everyone has
the same rights, so the same thing would be true in a way at
a core value if you're thinking about morality. And then it hasn't really been
built into ethics platforms, but that everything is equal and then you can but
that doesn't resonate necessarily with people, but the but fundamentally and philosophically, that's
where you want to be working from as a conservationist. Yeah. And then
but the next level that people get is like, you don't even know what's
important? Right, We know so little, And that's why we need to
continue these investigations because we find things that are actually and that's why it's that's
why it's arrogant to hear that old grandpa being like, this is a lot
of iya to study this. It's like, man, you have no idea.
You had no idea about any thes like there could be something that down
the line of this relationships, down this domino trail of relationships that eventually has
a great impact on your life. You know, it affects you. And
I just think I got a friend who's obsessed with with diesel engines. He
was like preparing them, you know, he was worked for the railroad for
a while to do with you, and I never got it, but I
was like to see him. He wanted to know everything about how these engines
worked and it was just fascinated by it. Every little piece and that machine
had an integral part. And he was just yeah, I just love it.
I'm just so And you could tell it was like the same way I
am with plants but about engines, and I was you know, it's like
the same mentality. It's like, well, that's going to be the person
you want, you know, around when it comes to issues that affect that
machine. Like he understands every component of it. We need to understand every
component of these intricate living systems, you know, in case shit goes awry
in any way that you know, we need to figure out. Yeah,
just I do we need to foster the obsessive natural history people and you know,
maybe even give them a job. But but those I'm going to agree
with you. So you can look at it as diesel engines and then lots
of people have these kinds of paths, but in natural history, the people
who are really doing the high end work there, it's not a job.
It's like their lifestyle wherever they go. So that's what it's like with me
and plants. It's like, yeah, wherever they go, they're like,
I see you later, I'm going to go for a walk. And they're
looking for their critter group and they're collecting at home, they're collecting on weekends
or looking or observing, and I naturalist is a nice new place where that's
being fostered, whereas before it was you know, really you had to be
very self motivated and kind of have much more a realization of what was available
to go out. Like when I was a kid, which was a long
time ago, in the sixties, you know, we got to watch Wild
Kingdom and at night as a special thing, and that was very inspiring.
But it was like, I don't know anyone like that. Those are super
special people. And you know, I grew up in a blue collar neighbor
hood and there was you know, my I was my parents were in it
in Lewisdale on the edge of Washington, d C. And so it was
like, well, okay, that's cool, but people, you know,
Jim jumping on a back of a crocodile and wrestling it like those are I
never could be that, Like that is not accessible to me. I can
never become that person, you know, and because I have zero models surrounding
me, and now I think, you know, there are you know,
one of the good things about social media and media is kids in particular can
find their group online and so like I've got a thirteen year old who volunteers
at the lab is one of the is one of the best firefly experts in
Maryland. He and another kid now so he's maybe not a kid, but
still, you know, they know more than almost anyone else. And they're
like curating the the Maryland Biodiversity site and that's so cool. And how you
had access to information if it wasn't you know what I mean? So I
think that's that's one of the positives these days, is you because of your
cell phone, you can find people, whereas before it was like when I
did it, it was through the library and then just through kind of persistence
that I expl here. All right, quick story. So I would go
to the library and I'd check out one of the two copies of birds of
Maryland District of Columbia, which was a technical thing, but I was that's
what I was interested is birds, and so I'd have one out and at
some point it's like, I need to buy a copy of these because I
don't want to go to the library every two weeks. And so my dad
said, well that was printed by the government, the government printing offices in
DC. When you call them, so I called them, they said out
of print. Then someone else mentioned that they thought one of the authors,
Chan Robbins, lived in the air and I thought, okay, famous ornithologist
lives in Washington, d C. Looked him up in the telephone book.
There was Chandler S. Robins. I wrote him a letter because I wanted
to buy a book from him. I figured he had a stash in his
basement and he wrote back, well, he didn't write back because it wasn't
the chandler s Robins, it was his cousin, and his cousin forwarded it
Chan and then Chan wrote me back, and his wife invited me to the
Maryland Ornithological Society meetings game on. And I still work where Chan works at
the production at Research Center. So yeah, but it was a lot of
it was a lot of. Yeah. I remember hanging out in libraries if
I wanted, if I wanted to use the Internet, I had to go
to the library. We didn't. I mean, I was on the road
all the time. It's not the internet. You guys what slide rules?
Yeah, exactly. Oh god, I know what is the microfe or something.
It's how you did. You didn't have calculators even like I'm old,
so you've retained your youth though, sir, you look great. Okay,
So let's so let's talk about I guess going back to specialization tomatoes. Yeah,
or I didn't know that you mentioned something that. I mean, I
know Solanum the genus, which is fucking huge. It's one how many different
sections that aren't it. It's like Euphorbia there's like eight hundred spees or something.
But uh, they're pooricidal anthers. You know, instead of you got
a anther, it looks like a banana. Instead of splitting, you know,
longitudinally, it's just got a little hole at the end of it.
All solanums as far as I know them, pepper shakers, right right,
Yeah, I'd like to use the analogy of the cereal dispenser at the roadside.
Yeah, you know, ship motel or whatever. But but uh,
anyway, the point is, so this being that they're buzz pollinated. Because
poorricidal anthers are inherently buzz pollinated, they need a specialist pollinator. So honey
bees are not really efficient pollinators of tomatoes. Huh uh, No, they're
not. And so in greenhouse, well you can't really put honey bees in
greenhouse anyway. Okay, so the dog just just tripped the wire and the
the mics came off. But anyway, so, okay, we were talking
about specialist pollination of tomatoes, and so honey bees don't really they don't do
the buzz pollination that that well oh wait, let me I think that.
Yeah, they're get your MinC that's right. So what so what how are
tomatoes pollinated that in a commercial let's let's back up for a seconds. So
a wide variety of plants, including a lot of Irricasian shrubs and things use
need to be buzz pollinated to effectively pollinate. Right, They still can be
pollinated without by insects that are not doing buzz pollination, but that's the system
of design to do that, and it's not really a like many bees in
western hemisphere do that, and they're not necessarily specialist. So bumble bees which
are not specialist bees, they can't be right because they're out throughout the year,
they do buzz pollination. But also specialists do buzz pollination, So on
vacciniums, there's a whole series of bees that are specialists, and they also
buzz pollen. Right, And if you look at the anthers of any of
the members of Eric Casey that do this with a hand lens, you can
see the little poor at the end, and if you hold a tuning fork
up to them too the right frequency, it'll cause those That's how they often
did or something similar mechanically. And tomato production and greenhouses. So yeah,
so the you know, the basic story is I understand it is bees unhinge,
whatever that means their wings and just vibrate their muscles and it cause it's
like singing the right you know note, so like your tuning fork. And
then the pollen comes out and they gathered up. Okay, there we go.
All right. So so we were talking, Yeah, we were talking
about salina pollination, buzz pollination, and tomatoes. So and you were saying,
bumble bees generalists. A lot of different groups of bees are capable of
buzz pollination in eastern North America. I don't know the exact ones. Bumble
bees and a bunch of the andrena are obvious examples. And but it's not
like porcidal anthers. Doesn't automatically mean that a specialist bee is going to visit
you if you define it as I only go to tomatoes, right right right.
But let's say you're like a commercial you got no interest in botany or
bees an stuff. You're a commercial tomato grower. Honey bees are not going
to cut so what do you gotta what do you have to do to get
these? So people now in terms of uh what and again my understanding is
tomatoes can self, but if you want really like bigger and more tomatoes,
then you need to bring in a pollinator. Obviously that has to be true
because people are paying good money to purchase colonies of bumblebees, which now can
be raised year round in warehouses. So bumblebees as opposed to honeybees, and
they use the native bumble bees or European ones well, so complicated answer.
So in the United States you can only use Bombus impatience and other native species
that are now being developed out west, different species. There was some messing
around as usual with moving bumblebees between the continents. Bombas terrestris of different species
in Europe is used for the same mean when you say you can only use
you mean legally like per regulation. Yeah, but there was some moving of
bumblebees around when they were trying to develop this, and there wasn't again this
sort of notion that would be a problem. And we got a series of
bumblebee viruses at least that seems to be the most logical conclusion on the patterns
that we see and the virus showing up at that same time that it was
brought in from these visitations across the Atlantic, five bumble bees moving back and
forth Tasmania, and there's European honeybees down there we were like a Cradle Mountain
National Park in Tasmania. They got European honeybee. They also have European oh
but yeah, I will say they also have European bumble bees. So does
New Zealand, so does now throughout South America, and they have problems.
There's problems with that, both in terms of disease vectors for these pathogens that
are crashing some of the native bumblebee populations. The only endangered species on the
books in the lower forty eight that's a bee is Bomba saphanus, which was
one of the most common bumblebees, but the pathogens took it down and now
there's only two populations remaining. And then there's a another bumblebee. I don't
know how this works, but they haven't found it in years that is basically
extinct out west. Same problem. What was do you know much about that?
The Rusty patch bumblebee that was endangered in Illinois? Really yeah, Bombas
alpinush So that's one of the So the Four Corners area Iowa, Illinois,
Wisconsin, Minnesota is it the Four Corners But that's where Bombas alphanus. That's
the biggest population of remaining Bombas halfinus, and weirdly, they often end up
in cities, so Minneapolis has populations and there's but they're in the countryside too.
There was a spot in Rockford there was a prairie, little Bellbull prairie
that they've so fucking obscene. It's like it's like something out of a Simpsons
cartoon. It's so cynical. But they demolished this prairie to build like a
landing strip for Amazon so people can get their fucking inflatable dolls or whatever dumb
shit there were, or you know, the fucking Sharper Image kettle. Yeah,
I guess, so they demolished it for it was insane, like there's
no you guys couldn't pick another fucking spot, you know, and this huge
flat state it was obviously wastelam. Yeah, there's no houses, fucking so
ship for brain man God and that that bee was there. But I guess
it's been popping up, like someone told me it popped up in Evanston too,
And so what took what took this down? This was a pathogen or
what? Yeah, so not absolute, but all the vectors of evidence points
to the I said, of European pathogens that were likely showed up in America
because they were moving bumble bees back and forth. Damn, this is why
we don't move shit around. I don't meet invasive species deniers too much anymore,
but they're still out there. You find a lot of them in like
permaculture community who don't haven't really learned ecology yet, you know. Yeah,
it's usually because and the reason you hear that is there's sort of a shallow
understanding, right the problem with this it's got bees on it provides. That's
another thing I want to ask you, mister sam Is. So we we
talk about you hear that ship all the time. Are you here like this,
Well, this plant we shouldn't get rid of it. It might be
a basive, but it's provided it's got bees on it. It's fucking eighty
percent honey bees. And then you look at it and you're like, well,
well wait, our native plants produce flowers too, Why is this better?
There's it's got all these other things. It's invading habitat and who cares
if it's producing a little bit of nectar or colin benefit? What about our
native plant? Is it true that native plants generally work better with the native
insects because they've evolved him as opposed to Yeah, Doug telling me it is
another good person to look into you. In fact, you should talk and
I tried to. We've reached out to him. I don't know if he's
just super busy or if he's just doesn't like the crime beaze. Maybe he's
he cold shouldered us. Oh, really interesting, who knows? I like
Doug. He I think he's just so busy. Yeah, that's what I
think. He's really on call because he's written sever I mean, it's Chicago
a tang. I think people don't like me and to be fair somewhere though
they might not. But but you know, it's always a little more inflated
in my you know, I know anyway, But well, Doug's from New
Jersey, so not that I'm saying, but the way, so it's the
same thing. So Doug is looking at plants through a lens of caterpillars,
moths, and butterflies mostly mods, and then I'm looking at plants through a
lens of bees, and many other taxonomic groups will look also at plants like
leafhoppers highly specialized on our native grasses. And the thing about invasives is when
you look take your little lens out, you look at your marvel butterflies and
lepidoptera, and you'll see that they, you know, there's almost nothing on
them like there are there might be some like bagworms on some of the weird
leland Cyprus, but then a pest kind of operat And then you'll look at
the bees and it's like, oh, yeah, they're bees, and maybe
a lot, but they're all, you know, honey bees and a couple
generalists of the native species. They're not supporting. They're attracting, but not
supporting species. And so they're one taking up space that could be occupied by
something that is providing a valuable component to the native environment. And then also
a lot of the species of native plants are the only source of food.
Let's call it for a whole suite of native insects, so they can't be
like, well I was on chestnut, now I'm gonna, you know,
work on you know, ilanthus. So it just doesn't work like that.
But you can still find things critters. But if you're not looking at it
at any depth, then ilanthus, you know, it blooms, it's got
bees come to I don't you know that? And it's like, uh,
you know, a tree that is growing somewhere pretty tough, So maybe we
should just embrace right right now. It's the main host for what's the flying
sucking in the insect that I can't just came in. Oh lantern, Yeah,
lantern fly that everyone hates. Yeah, so you know, on and
on yeah, yeah, And it makes complete sense when you think about it.
I mean, who knew that eighty million years of separation between Europe the
European continent in North America would mean that, you know, each one of
those contents has its own specialized ecosystems that all relate to each other, but
not to other, you know, the one across the ocean. I mean,
uh, it's you know, it's been developed over one hundred and twenty
five one hundred and twenty million years. Like something complicated is going to happen,
and you can't just like it's not legos. Yeah again to use the
car analogy, and I think I'm going to start doing that more because that's
the easiest way, you know, for like the lowest common denominator for people
to understand it. You can't take a piece from a Honda and try to
put it in a Chevy. It's not gonna it doesn't work, like duh,
Like that's like completely obvious to a lot of people who are, you
know, ecologically illiterate. But it's the same with ecosystems. You know,
it's they're not and are not part and not supporting the many, many complex
systems. They're breaking it apart. And so what do you do you,
I mean, do you see more people doing the this that, like the
killer long thing with your yards get rid of their their grass here being like,
well, we want to support pilonaires And maybe they don't really understand the
native thing at first, but then they eventually get into it. Like that's
a couple I interviewed that just changed the lag. They were like, we
just wanted to have gardens. You know, those guys were great. I
was actually shocked that worked. But good for them and that. But now
they're all about natives too, and they're like, yeah, we want to
take this out. It's not like they have the great mertle. I want
to take this out. It's not really made the way to really get a
measure of that, because of course, both you and I probably don't talk
to the average person an awful lot to get you know, we're not doing
surveys of the mentality, but is you look at nursery providers, like the
commercial nursery groups and the commercial garden centers and things, and you're seeing native
plant sections come in. You're seeing them that the growers have a have people
now who are are developing their native plant line and you and so I've talked
to that groups now and then they basically said, like, yeah, twenty
years ago, there was zero, like there was no interest in It was
all about, you know, the usual suspects in terms of what what's got
thrown. Maybe a couple of them have a have roots in native speace,
but that was just an accident. Right now, it's a conscious effort to
use grow and for a lot of people, it's like they're beginning to get
the message that it's important to put native species back into these environments. And
I think probably the people you talk to might have mentioned that there's now bigger
legislation where the state has h I don't know what, at well level mandated
the use of native plants within municipalities and oh yeah, yeah, I know
a friend of mine in Miami just did that in his little neighborhood. It's
they can't the city can't plant anything except natives, now, which is fucking
great. I mean, that's incredible. I'm not even sure what they would
plant anymore. Like Miami has had certain bee species and those that might be
one of the places that we can't find some of these bees but are so
devastated there's nothing left. Yeah, well, right, good to Fort Lauderdale,
Miami, and you have like good luck finding anything native. It's all
and it it's something that could be native. It's just mode to an inch
of its life so that you don't get, you know, an alligator coming
up on you or whatever. Yeah, but then you have to go to
the Everglades, which have their own set of problems. Yeah. Yeah,
I just I laugh because I hear this shit and it's just so shit for
brain to me. I mean, I that's an ineloquent way to put it,
but you know what I mean, it's just so, you know,
like the mowing thing, like just people just love the most and people just
it's like a thing you do. I think a lot of suburban guys that
probably gives them a sense of duty in an otherwise maybe empty life. I
don't know. I don't know, but but yeah, we went to Lauren's
Natives, which is in Elacott City, Yeah up here, and it's fucking
She's like, we can't keep up with the man we're running. I mean,
it's fucking great to hear. It's like Jesus Christ, that's amazing.
So I'll jump in on the mowing thing. So, you know, there
is this interest now and doing flipping lawns and putting in a pollinator garden and
things. But the you know, a bigger impact area for people to look
into involves working with municipalities, maybe some legislation kinds of things, and that
is mowing regimes. So the if you look at transmission lines, you look
at road sides, utility lines. So the utility companies are almost always like
nobody wants them, right, they don't want them in their backyards. So
they're very responsive, usually responsive to the surrounding owners and a lot of times
what they hear is mowing, like we want it to look like our suburban
backyards. So and then municipalities, for a variety of reasons, haven't quite
got onto that dandwagon of native plants. And then when they do, they're
like, well, at our headquarters, we put in a native plant garden,
you know, and that's good because it probably was a million acres of
lawn and at least one acre is not. But the bigger picture is stop
mowing in the middle of the growing season because you're basically whatever could be growing
there is mowed down, like you're mowing down all the flowers up. Shift
to these areas that have to be kept open to a winter mow. So
that that means working with the contractors, That means working with the communities and
saying, look, we're going to do a big pollinator effort, which is
something that people are more and more aware of and have positive feelings about.
And our effort is going to be huge. We're shifting to winter mowing.
We will produce on unbelievable acreages and impacts and native plants and bloom and pollinator
species and by the way, a million other kinds of things because we're just
going to not mow them down. And I don't think that's a I think
a aha for people because they think I have to plant to do this.
This this whole thing about native plants and pollinators and gardens and saving them means
I have to go plant something, and true good, but it's really difficult
to plant things in any kind of acreage. Thing. And many of these
transmission lines are going through poor soils, crappy areas. They are full of
uncommon repressed plants and propagules that if you stopped mowing, or I mean stop
mowing in the summer, would perform miracles. Yeah, rare thing. You
find a lot of cool native perennials coming up in these, like the milk
weeds or the less bit these I see less but these on the freeways here,
that that pee, that leg that's mostly Lesbidisa cirica or whatever, which
is the I don't know, Korean Lesbidesa's super invasive. Oh my god,
there aren't natives. But you usually have to go to the extreme edges like
super drowdy sandy to see someone brought that over just in a garden. You
know, it's used commonly still. I think you can buy like a million
pounds of it for your cattle ranch. Jesus Christ. But it's a really
tough plant, like it'll live in sod as a repressed little being that is
just waiting for you to stop mowing it all the time. Oh god,
and alters the soil chemistry. I got you guys have an invasive one on
here. I was thinking it was cuneata. The damn that's wow, it's
it's a nasty oh my god. Well anyway, yeah, I guess there
was another thing you stated in that Ted talk was that the big issue for
wild bees is and pesticides is primarily habitat loss. Like the whole neo the
continoid thing, that's the neocontinents, that's all that's mostly affecting honey bees or
what well, so neo nicks as they are often called. But pesticides in
general are an impact where you have bees and the pesticides cross paths, so
in suburban areas. Yes, one of the big problems now are all the
mosquito companies that come and sort of work off the hypochondriac like every mosquito is
carrying xecovirus, going to kill my darlings, and the neighbors are doing it.
So whereas formerly that was a subsidized floral environment in my opinion, where
you had a lot of bloom in the summer when it declines here and as
good for pollinators and at least the generalists now it's a question mark because of
that. What was good for pollinators? What do you mean, well suburbs,
Oh yeah, yeah, flowers in the summer want flowers. Now what
they were is variable. But you know, there's all this new interest in
native plants and stuff. So what kind of problem is it when you have
your quarter acre lot filled with native plants but your neighbors all spray for mosquitoes
and those these are not like I'm only staying here though, it's the spray
is drifting over, so I'm going to move out saying that that's the thing
I mean. I saw that at a at a big box store in Texas.
There were these uh yeah, fuck, what the fuck? You just
nuke the You just nuke the surrounding biosphere with right, Well we did that
during DDT. What a great chemical. When you spray it, everything is
dead and it's cheap. So you did every two weeks you would spray r
orchard. Everything died and then oh darn it. There are these other consequences,
God, this biosphere collapse, Man's right. Other So, but to
carry on the pesticide conversation, if you look in where other pesticides are being
sprayed, Yes, sometimes there's a problem like mosquito control kinds of things also
very unknown as to what the impacts are. But a lot of the other
pesticides are in agricultural crops which are generally really poor for pollinators to begin with.
Some need pollinators, or like soybeans, if you have pollinators, your
crop increases. So we can make arguments that you should try and minimize that.
But the if you look at what bees are in those environments, they're
basically crow and sparrow bees like those As a species, those bees are going
to be fine. You're not getting bees of conservation concerned because the area is
so altered already that it's completely mastered. Like corn, soybeans will have bees
in them, but it's just the toughest of the natives and a bunch of
invasives and so yeah, so they get sprayed. Not good nothing, you
know, you don't want to see anything die. But as at a species
level and a conservation level, it doesn't matter, right, So what matters
are these residual natural areas, whether it's a strip or a prairie or a
roadside, and those are largely not sprayed. But everything else is problematic.
You know, from invasives to lack of fire, lack of disturbance, and
you know, the list goes on. Too many deer in the east,
or what do they eat? They don't eat invasives. They because invasives are
invasive, because they taste bad. They are eating all the natives, right,
And you know, it goes on and on, and then we dissect
the habitats up a whole lot. But a good thing though bees native bees
number one, very good dispersers, and number two they're small. They don't
need a lot of acres. So your backyard can be a great place and
sustain some really uncommon populations. And we can go to weird, little wooded
habitat islands in DC and other places and we'll find all these vernal bees,
you know that you would think would be not there because it's a sea of
suburbian what'snal bee for anyone listening, so vernal spring and they're usually using it.
So in the east, you know, the dominant theme to habitats would
be deciduous for us. And then on the eastern shore you get a good
conifer component, which is really a disturbance component, but circling back and more
acidic over there, but the spring bee community is very distinctive, so some
of those bees are generalists, some are specialists on these spring blooming plants.
But they that community of bees just disappears. Where do they go, Like,
where are they going in the summer? Well, they don't. They've
so average bee, including honey bees, flyers around about five weeks before they're
eaten or just worn out. Tips of their wings wear off, and many
of the spring bees are out because there's a huge amount of pollen in an
actor all over the place, and also a subset or like my plant only
blooms in the spring, so they come out, reproduce, produce, you
know, babies and cells wherever they're going to do it, mostly in the
soil, and then they're done. They die, and then the young eat
all the pollen and nectar right away so it doesn't spoil or get eaten by
something else. And then they sit there until the next spring, or if
it's a fall species, till the next fall. So they just for three
quarters of the season. Mostly they're underground animals if you look at what are
you doing throughout the time period, But their active time is full of danger
and it's hard and that's when we see them. But and actually, you
know, functionally, that's when they're functioning in the ecosystem. The rest of
the time they're just they really are just sitting there, wow, thinking,
just kind of just kind of what I had when I when I was living
in West Texas for a minute, I'd see these xylo Copa californiicas flying around,
beautiful like black and almost navy iridescent bumblebee packs of means thing, as
I found out trying to get one out of my house and I had these.
I found that that they like to, you know, burrow into the
yucca inflorescences, the rods and the des delirium soto and stuff. So I
was like, I gotta go fucking collect a bunch of these. So I
brought a bunch of those to my house, just lean them against the wall
in a corner, and then I would see the bees just drilling into there.
What are they doing? How long they hang out there for? Well,
okay, so carpenter bees, everything's interesting, right, But carpenter bees.
First of all, here's a cocktail tip. Largest bee egg in the
insect world are laid by carpenter bees, and so and they're on the remember
the art of K spectrum, where you know, are our factor species are
just you know, throwing out tons of proper ules and and then K like
us, you know, we're devoting a lot of time to our offspring,
right, So they actually tend babies, and whereas almost all of the other
bees are like, here's a big lump of pollen and nectar, I lay
an egg on it, I wall you off, and they're on your own.
Good luck. Yeah, And they will overwinter in those stems their little
family groups. Every once in a while, a female will make it through
a second year, which is almost never happens in the native species up here.
They're even bumblebees. All the queens die at the end of the year.
Wow, and so. And they actually bring food to the nests and
sequentially provision very unusual. And so they each carpenter bee species has its own
jam in terms of where it lives. So in the east Eastern carpenter bees,
which is what everyone around here is used to, will drill into wood.
So it drills into the softer woods, including people's decks, which annoys
them. And but they're doing the same thing that in general, which is
they're making a set of cells with and filling with pollen and nectar, laying
an egg and then young is produced. So that but so what would someone
do, Like, what's it if you want to see these these guys in
your yard more you live out west, what's something you could do? You's
got to provide those poles for what else is good? Yeah, so I
am no expert on western Zayla copa, so you would, but if you
want them, you have to have both their food source or the food source
has to be in the neighborhood. But probably if you want them in your
yard, you would look at, well, what are they nesting in?
And I know that some of the western species are also wood nesters, So
you want a very soft wood like redwood is sort of like that's why they're
going for yucca poles or so tall. Well, the yuka species would only
be going for you. You could like give them redwood till the day is
long, and they're like, no, I'm looking for a yucca stem or
whatever. So some of them are specialized, yeah shit, so, and
some are like I'm looking for dry wood. Oh, look at the these
square things that humans have wrecked full of dry wood. I'm going to use
that right, right, can you get the suburban dad coming out to just
nuke everything? It's right, you know? All right. So a lot
of people are interested in how do I control these things that are in my
deck? I say, well, first of all, don't use you know,
soft wood, use you know, these plastic boards and things like that,
if you really don't. The second is they it takes almost forever of
them for them to do structural damage because they can't build really long tunnels.
So you know, maybe six inches or something a year, but every year
thereafter a female will go in that hole and then build a sub channel off
there. So plug them up when you see them. They don't plug up
their their exterior hole, no, but you got to plug them up.
Yeah, So your strategy is a whole strategy because there's an infinite number of
carpenter bees out there, so you can do all your crazy thing. My
brother would shoot them with twenty two birdshot, and he said it was great
fun for him, except that he would blow holes in the vinyl sighting of
his house. Well, he would shoot the bees. What the fuck?
Well, seems like I have a problem that those bees are eating my deck.
I'm gonna kill them. So what's the thing to do? Just go
plug up the holes? I got the holes. You have to realize that
you're plugging little families of carpenter bees in there, and you can't use foam
because they'll dig it out. So the best one that I've heard is a
big roofing nail which has a head that is about the size of the hole,
and you just drive it in there and then you calwk over it.
Or wood puddy what about wood puddy wood putty? Yeah, if you're using
the strong wood putty, yes, but you know they can probably dig out
of that and then throw them a bone baby till like get some luget along
get like well they go into an old log or something. You know,
it's weird. It's very difficult to find them in native trees. They obvious.
They do mostly like fallen over pine. Yeah so they But yeah,
so at the lab, I don't you probably didn't notice. We have just
bunches of old boards that we attached to the fence. We drilled them to
the side of the metal siding of our thing. We have little structures like
like a two by four, what kind of Yeah, so they drill a
half inch hole and so it doesn't And you know, interestingly, they never
make a mistake. It's not like they're in a two by four and then
they're like digging their hole and then they're like, oops, I went out.
They're always they can keep right down the middle of that. So I've
seen them in Oh they go lengthwise. They don't go with oh wow,
yeah yeah, yeah, No, the swin from underneath and then they tunnel.
So a three quarter inch board. I've seen them in signs and all
kinds of stuff. So they go for the longer what's got more depth to
it what you're say, much So I've seen them in but like if you
got foot board, if well, in other words, if it's a two
by four, they're going for the four inch, they're going for the length,
right you're saying. So whatever piece of wood it is, they're coming
in from underneath. So if you have, for example, we have shelves
let's call them outside built into the side of an overhang, and they are
made out of two way fours, and they're coming up on the flat side
underneath, and then they turn and then they run the length. That's why
I say they never like it's not like us with a drill bit like we'd
go all we would go all the way through. They're like we come in,
they know to turn, they just run the internal. But in terms
of structure, a circle going through a piece of wood is you don't you
don't damage. That's a very structurally sound hole. Let's call it to put
into wood. So you can do an awful lot of that before you basically
compromise structurally anything. And they'll keep returning to it like another one. Like
the next thing. An email comes in and she says, oh, look
there's already one. Dug. All I got to do is go on.
She's now hidden, all right, she's on the inside, so it's easier
for her to build. So that's why hole plugging is effective. One you
really don't have any structural issues then, and it takes them a lot more
work to initiate the hole. Once the hole is done, it's like,
you know it's going to be used every single year. Wow, that's so.
But the time the plug then would be what so you're never plugging somebody
in there. You're always you know, especially always plugging something in. Oh,
because they're overwintering, the overwinter in family groups, so you don't know.
But the other thing is just ignore it. Like the kinds of places
they're doing is like you're railing, which is using me out a fur or
your picnic table or your gazebo or the sawfets, depending on what you make
it. And then the worst is if you have like seedar siding that's three
quarter inch thick. And then it's not the bees that are problem. It's
the woodpeckers because they realize that they're in there and they'll just strip. You're
not going to come in through the hole. They're just going to go right
through the wood, and so they just tear. Once one woodpecker realizes this,
they will just tear out huge chunks of your sighting. I love thinking
about this. I don't know, maybe I'm an asshole, but I just
like thinking about these little critters slowly destroying someone's kind. It's kind of cute,
though it is, it's not a and the scheme of things is not
a big problem. Split rail fences, they love split rail fences. Most
people have no idea they're even nesting in there. They don't defend their nests.
So you could stick your finger up there and they're not going to like
sting you. And the females of the Virginia carpenter bee here have one of
the most innocuous stings, like a lot. So I catch tons of bees,
including lots of carpenter bees, and I've been maybe stung a couple of
times. But basically it's like, did I get stung by that carpenter bee
or not? And so and people see the male which have a white face,
No male bee has at it's that mellow. Then well, that's crazy
you had mentioned. Let's see, what are some other things I wrote some
shit down because there's a bunch of stuff in at that. What is it
that cricket? My hearing is bad, so I think it is. I
don't know what else it could be. It doesn't seem like it's any can
I do have crickets in the electrical device. But but anyway, the thing
you mentioned too was that you know, a good way to put this for
people is it's kind of pleasant. I like that obviously, is you know
why it's important to care about this stuff, I mean, especially being pollinators.
You've got all these honey bees aren't doing everything. Obviously, You've got
specialists and you know why someone who's maybe a hunter might care about this is
that the the say birds like the game birds they're hunting, are eating seeds.
Those seeds wouldn't exist unless, yeah, these native pollinators were out there
hitting it. Like ragweed is not pollinated by pollinator, but it is a
great seed for birds. But many many helios. The still fim is the
heliat. Yeah. So a couple of interesting things. So game birds in
the East, a lot of that would traditionally have been Bob white, but
Bob White have disappeared. So used to historical accounts of the Philadelphia market being
full of Bob Boy quail for sale. You know, in the old days
you've sold whatever you shot markets and now there are no Bob Boy quail in
Pennsylvania. I've only seen one before and that was in Illinois. I don't
know if it was released. What's the deal with those? Why don't they
wide except for interestingly like Oklahoma and Texas where the cedar and mesquite have invaded
prairies and that's like super quail habitat. Now they've all disappeared. A couple
things. One we are, you know, a culture of neat and tidy.
So this is a general problem like if we can mow it, we
will. If you're a good farmer, you clean out your ditches, you
mow your ditches several times, you mow between the field edge and the woods,
and you mow the frontage and what comes in cool seasoned grasses and what's
in that field not weeds and bugs nothing. So that all in the past
was super Bobway quail habitat because you had lots of weeds. You had you
know, you'd in and clean your your road sides and ditches set once a
year because you had to do with a scythe and so it was a beautiful
place for Bob Way. But now you got to rake and clean those forests
because you don't want to be in all filthy dirty, you know, you
got to go in there. And I've seen I've seen somebody go fucking neurotic,
just like insanely everything just that's that's why I realized this is this is
borderline mental illness. And some of these like suburban landscaping. I mean,
I've seen guys and it's normally I guess women do it to it. It's
normally men really going fucking insane, like completely ecologically illiterate. Everything's got to
be it's got to look like a video game house, like something you design
in SIMS. Got to look like those house design books that you both.
Yeah, and there's like a Columner h conifer at the corners and low in
the middle, and everything else is lawn. It's such an OCD thing.
I was talking this one of the couples, who's a house. We killed
the lawn. They they've only lived there six years. But there's this beautiful
old don redwood there. You know, not native, but it's not invasive.
It was native three or four million years ago. I think it's when
it went extinct in North America. But but beautiful, just a beautiful fucking
tree and huge and just weeping and such a god. It was one of
the trees that got me in the botany like fifteen years ago. And there
I was telling them, I'm like, you guys are so lucky to have
this fucking thing here because it's such a and they're great climbing trees, like
kids love climbing out of there. This thing's got a root system that's like
you can see it's holding this slope together. It's like sixteen feet wide and
they're like, yeah, a neighbor wanted to cut it down because it was
dropping seeds on his Jesus christ man. I'm like, yeah, well he's
a nice guy. He just didn't get it yet. He's like you know,
I'm saying, but you could take that to a you know, you
can really go OCD with that, to the point where it's like, man,
well around here, you know, there's limited amounts of places to build
homes, and pretty if you're a well to do person, you just buy
a woodlot and then you clear. You're like, oh that's great, I'm
in the woods. But then they put in houses like I need some lawn.
Why is it grass growing under these trees? And then they try all
kinds of things. They take out, tear out all the shrubs, they
run things over, the trees start dying because you come pack the roots,
and then they're like they get it, like, oh there's not enough light,
so I'm going to cut down these trees, and then nothing else comes
back because the cycle is broken. You just have residual, you know,
landmark trees that were there to begin with, and you'll never get a forest
back because they basically have said no, we're not going to let you reproduce.
Yeah, I just ruined. But it's slowly the whole system. I
hope we reach a point in time where as a society we just have more
of this innate respect for living things because they're cool, not because even like
practicality. I mean, the practicality is there once you start looking, but
maybe not at first, but just that you know that we reach a point
where we're like, no, I don't want to do that, or what
might what effects might they have if we do? Like we we're moving in
that direction, and you can have a yard that is integrated back into the
surrounding system and becomes important habitat. But you know, right now the culturally
acceptable thing is to have a mode area, and if you don't, you
better have a mode strip at minimum, so it looks like whatever you did
was done on purpose, or you're going to be turned in and into the
homeowners association or the county often has ordinances. I think what needs to change
too is that it's it's I mean, if you have these guards, we
need to change so that something growing there doesn't look like the land isn't maintained.
Like there's a way like I can clearly see your spot is overgrown like
hell, but it's very intentional. There's paths through it. It's all cool
plans. I don't live on the on the front of the road. If
I did, I would mow the heck out of my where my sidewalk is.
Driver, you're a weed whacker to create intentional places. So it's so
people get the message I did that on purpose. And I'm keeping up the
cultural handshake my having these strips of lawn and I'm at the edges with my
neighbors. You know, I'm gonna we'd whack out a path along the fence
line. And then there where's and study and I can't remember where what it
was done, but they showed that basically, then the interstitial space, these
spots that are surrounded by your little mini edges, you're giving a pass on
that. Like, I don't know what you did or doing there. It
could be just let go, but yeah, you did it on purpose or
instead of I mean, I kind of hate lawn just on principle, but
like what I would do, especially because where I live it's a little dryer,
just put wood chips down, like wood chips are important as hell.
There's such a great resource, like you got tons of chips, you use
chip drop, dot com my favorite thing, reach out to arborus whatever.
But I would just that's what I would do. Put paths, make it
look intentional. Put the little signs of the fucking city leaves you allow your
pollinator garden whatever I did one of those, I put a little sign out.
I don't you know, my in my ideal pollinator sign would be like
a middle finger coming out of a bed of flowers, being like kill your
lawn. You know. But of course that's not going to run through well
with the square community, and those are the people that I want to leave
me alone. So but yeah, there's so much to intentional or just intentional,
Like this is regular beds around the house, like the foundation of house.
It has to have foundation beds. It can't be like you have wild
ass grass and forbes and everything growing right up to the edge of the house.
Well that's wrong. Well I would I through the edge of the house.
Ye're wrong. Well, I just think from like a fire perspective to
where I live, it drives out. I want to keep a little bit
of a buffer, you know. I don't want two biggest stuff. But
if if there was. If there wasn't fire, that's what I would do,
though, I would get my fucking hedge clippers. Smoke's coming through the
air, it's coming. I just cut a fire line around my house,
right well. I often burn sections here and in the spring, and then
one year it was getting late. It was like April, like I really
need to burn this place. And I used to do one section at a
time and kind of watch it. I thought, I'm going to light everything
on fire, and so I did that and at that point I just started
putting in chips. And I had chips all around this house. And then
I'm sorry, the other side of the other house beers in me. Next
thing, I know, you know, but so you started the house was
on fire, and what do you do? Gone from the place that I
wanted to burn in it? Use the chips to like walk under the house
and catch it on fire. Wow, and uh, you know, I
I get. I made it out with a snowshovel and it was rough because
it was like styrofoam under there. Extinguishers. I do have a ton of
extinguishers, but at that point it was like, first I would have a
snowshovel, is really great for stop, don't go there and at these low
level fires. So that actually did it, and then had to go back
with you know, a spray to get the little baby fires. After living
out west for twenty years, I mean, I really I realized you really
can't. Well here, it's different because it's so much more humid. You
know, you look at the satellite map of the US, it's much fires
in the summer, right, all the lightning strike. But but Natives Native,
oh, you will have natural fires in the center. You don't.
You don't because it's too wet, right, there might be small ones a
year here you can't propagate out. So you look at the history of the
region and once uh, you know, indigenous uh Native Americans uh moved in
many thousand years ago debates as to win, they burn the hell out of
everything. And that's really primarily why we have a lot of open country species,
because we had a lot of open country and if the Indians weren't around,
then there would be it would be almost all forests, right because deciduous
for that was the thing that struck me here too. And I'm glad you
brought that up because I remember we talked about that at the b leb.
But the deciduous force is the dominant ecotype here or the dominant you know eco
system. It's the prairie stuff. I mean, that's why. And you
know Europeans got to Illinois they wrote so extensively about the prairie because they'd never
seen it before. They were like, what, but even in Illinois that
was mostly a cultural prairie, like it required burning, burning, and so
Native Americans and here too, you burn because as you don't have like chainsaws,
so you cleared out the understory. I can gather nuts that I've often
thought, how would I cut my hair if I was living seven hundred years
ago? I don't have any blades or clippers, not to mention electricity.
Maybe I'm just gonna set my head on fire or something. You know,
No just long hair. Yeah, well you gotta, but but for you
got to shave. You don't want like a you know, a face full
of pubes, like a beard or something. And you you think that,
but I don't want to. I don't want you gotta you're clean shaving,
man. I get this. I can't do what I got to get,
like a little five o'clock shadow, because my skin gets irritated, you know.
So, but but either way, only shave very few days, so
yeah, I shaved freaking yeah. But but so that was yeah, so
that was all that intentional burning. But also that I mean, it's so
great because it gets rid of the fucking ticks and and chiggers, and depending
on what time of year you're burning, you know, the ticks, maybe
it does, but I think ticks are a function of high deer populations exactly.
And that's the other thing, right, because it's mostly the deer,
so there really probably wasn't I don't know that they had a big tick problem
also, and there were predators here too to keep the deal. So the
deer populations have exponentially grown in the last few hundred years because of the eradication
of predators and as just a lot of people away from hunting browse line and
many forces because no one's hunting the deer. That's insane. And not to
mention, they end up on the road. Then they get hit and you
know kill or dogs eat them eat the deer. Yeah, so just you
know, a pack of your basically residential dogs get together or feral dogs,
right, and they rent the vehicle. So it's the clean next thing,
you know, they're going out. We need more dogs killing deer in my
opinion, because they're bad out here. There's a lot of Yeah it's still
but they only get the weak and the sick, which are you know,
you have deer that are starving to death as a big form of mortality.
Right, So there's lots of reasons to look at, you know, hunting
and other kinds of deer control things. But it's also tricky. I mean,
but the tick thing is really bad out here though, huh. I
mean there's a lot of lot of ticks, but you know, yeah,
it can think of worse things, right, well, to be anti tick,
but what's up? Are you anti tick a little bit? Well?
I just think they got to be controlled, you know. That's where I
get. It's like red necks and wolves. You know, I'm not I'm
not an anti wolf. They just got to big control. That's how I
feel about the ticks. I'm like, I'm not anti ticks. You control
them with burning, you control them with you know, we were in Brazil,
we were taking ivermactin because they get a really bad bacteria down there that
the ticks spread, and so was like it was just yeah, you could
buy I remains. I was like, ah, fuck, I call it
like two on me. I'm like, just gonna fucking dose myself. They'll
drop off. But uh, probably also works. Is not that bad?
Come on? Yeah it was whatever? No, do you put it in?
Well, it's just like another one of those things I wanted to until
you find out it is bad. Right then you're like, why why have
I been doing lines of this stuff? Why have I been doing lines of
the cibermectin? You know? But uh, but no that it takes off.
Yeah. The siggers though too. The chiggers are yeah, they're bad
in some of the four. Okay, well, so there was a couple
more things we got. We got what are we looking at, like twenty
minutes? I'm not going to keep you longer than that. Actually, let
me use the bathroom real quick, take a leagain. Okay, I'm back.
Man. Your yard is so nice. I can't get over every time
I step out, and because I drank like three liters of green tea and
a coffee that I have pissed like two or three times. Sometime I step
out, I'm like, God, it's so nice that you could hear it.
There's like five different species of insects I can hear, you know.
It's like it's just there's like birds, way I want to live. Why
are more I just it always strikes me it's like more people. Why are
more people not doing this? They just don't know, like it's such a
fulfilling Well, it's a it's a it's a risk, right, it's a
cultural risk. It's completely acceptable to have a lawn, right, and anything
outside of that is you know, people are ask questions. There's also effort.
Right, it looks like a jungle out there, but I'm crafting that
every year and doing different things. I want to see a jungle, but
I want to see a certain kind of jungle, and I don't want it
taken over by invasives, pulling out some of the more thuggier natives and trying
new things. And yeah, I'm there every day. For me, it
is like and I hate, I don't I hate to compare this to like
a video game, and especially when I don't really know shit, I don't
really play video games. But it's like a you know, one of those
games like the you know, sim Earth or whatever you build your own.
It's kind of like it's like a real life version of that. Instead of
starting at a fucking screen, you're out there building these these systems and watching
what visits them and watching how these things grow and development. It's so cool.
And I want to look out the window and see that too, and
I want to not see any plastic It's like science and art. And it's
very mentally stimulating too. I mean, you're constantly learning doing that stuff.
Okay, let's talk about this. I want you to get your opinion on
I'll show you this, that b species Antho farula that was pollinating the payote
in South Texas. I've got a couple pollinators on payote, I mean the
pink flowers. You can see the payote flowers. But this Antho farula,
any idea what see? It's like huddled over there. It's probably a specialist.
So Antifarula is a be There's a couple, maybe three species in the
east. It's very very rare here, so I don't know as much about
what's going on in the west. But my impression from the eastern species is
that they specialize on things and cacti have a whole series of bees that are
specialists, and so and that does look like anthop arulas, So I'm not
going to question the id. But other than that, I can't tell you
a whole lot because it's a completely different system. If I were there,
I'd send all my bees off to a Western colleague and say here, yeah,
okay, what about this guy ash Mediella also pollinating a peote flower.
Yeah, so ash Mediella super common out west. Again, only a few
species out east, I know very little. I don't know if any of
them are cacti specialists. But if you look up Jared Fowler's Western specialist Beeka
website, he would list so. But what are these so tell me about
their life cycle though, like what do they do? Where do they go
in the winter? Where do they nest? What are they? There is
a little different so and thof Arula nests in the ground, and as do
if you were just to do itally, almost tall bees. The bulk of
the bees are nesting in the ground, and they're solitary, and the average
person is walking across or next to their nest many many times during the summer.
They don't defend them right one be why would it attack anybody? Because
it's useless. So that but ash mediella. A lot of them nest in
holes in stems or holes in pieces of wood, you know. Again,
so this is why the habitat is important, because you need that's what they're
they're living in the shrubs basically in the quote unquote brush. Yeah, so
you know it could be so most of the time they can't. For example,
ashmdiella would not be able to break through the stem wall of even a
perennial, you know, like let's say Helianthus or something like that that might
have or us crass that might have big enough. Those are very small bees
to break in and you know, have their nest where they would want to
be, which is inside there. So there either has to be some kind
of damage by a moor or it has to be locked off by a deer
or grazor or a brushog and so some mechanical means. So yeah, it
is all it gets all complicated up. So they're going for a living tissue
or dead tissue that they need to Well, nothing is going to be living
tissue, right because the plant is going to look at an invasion into living
tissue as a problem and it's going to start producing resins and other chemicals not
good. But it can be that it's looking for a hollow stem like hibiscus,
or it could be that it's looking for a pithy stem like rubis,
and depends on the species. So there's these things called small carpenter bees and
they they want a piff and they re use the pistol course is very soft
and malleable so that even they can handle it. They have to. There
has to be a break. So like, for example, a lot of
people have blackberries and raspberries in their gardens. Instead of taking last year's canes,
which you get rid of all the way down or the two years ago,
I guess it would be canes all the way to the ground, you
want to clip them about a foot up and leave those dead stumps there because
they're Seratina and several other species are going to nest in that, so leave
a little bit of stem up, leave like a foot of stem up.
Yeah, it's really common. You can basically go through and crack them open,
and a lot of times in the middle of the winter like, oh
there's a little bee nest in there. That's cool. Well, And so
those are little things where sunflower stalks, for instance, similar thing going on
there. Well, so what for gardeners and people who are manipulating their environment,
I say, you know, you don't worry about cutting down your plants,
that particularly your perennials each year because a lot of times it's like they're
getting some messages like, oh, plants, some of these bees are nesting
in my plant stems. But the reality is they're nesting in your plants,
but almost always in the cut plant stems or browsed or broken or whatever.
They need an opening. So just having a bunch of a big stand of
Helianthus that has no openings is useless for them. So the best thing you
do is just and also your neighbors like this, right, So you cut
it down about a foot off the ground, and you can move the stalks
away and set them up at the edge of the woods, so potentially more
places for bees to enter. So even if the stalk is disconnected from the
ground, still those still yeah, if you can. A fun thing to
do is to take big grass fregmighties is a good one, like who cares
about them? And my canthus argentina plume grass and those kinds of things,
and you cut them off, you know, foot off the ground again,
and then you bundle them up in every foot. You cinch them down with
wire or zip ties, and then take a handsong and cut in between very
neat and tiny bundle of all kinds of holes, different almost so it looks
like one of those be those bumblebee nests. You could the wood tube bumble
bee nests you can buy online or something like that. Those aren't bumblebeanists.
Those are mason be nests. Oh, mason bees. But mason bees are
whole nests in wood. You can do crazy whatever you want with those.
Are those legit? Do those things actually work? Those work? Bumblebee nests
never work, like one of our big fails. We're failing all the time.
So it's not that big of a deal. Which is I want to
be able to make a nesting thing. Let's call it that bumblebees will nest
in so that I can, you know, study them better and manipulate them.
It's very difficult to find bumblebee nests. Bumble Bees are incredibly common,
and we can do molecular things and see that there are many family groups out
there per acre, but it's almost impossible to find their nests. That's one
of the problems with doing studies of say Bomba saphanus the endangered species and others,
is like, we can't find the nest. Where are they, I
mean the people, where are they likely hiding? So they are let's call
them nook and cranny things. Mostly humblebees would be colonial, would be the
an easy way to explain it. Actually they're not truly colonial, but that's
definitional. Have a queen once a year and then she produces workers. End
of the year, they produce guides, which would be the the next year's
reproductives. They make the males die as usual, and then the female queen's
overwinter starts again. So the nest though, is often like an old roadent
burrow, and ah. Sometimes it's just an underground cavity. They spend a
lot of time looking for these things. Sometimes it's just a thick clump of
grass. So some species are more like that. But they're hiding them,
duh. And they have a you know, may have a good number of
workers, but they don't have like yellowjacket numbers of workers. A lot of
times you can find a yellowjacket nest by just sitting back in the late evening
and looking for the line of yellow jackets moving up and moving down. Bumblebees
no, really hard. Try to fuse dogs still really hard. Wow,
And so anyway, wouldn't it be nice? As would appear to be the
case because you can go online and look up bumblebee nest box and they're like,
here's a bumblebee nest box. Does not guarantee in the east, it
does not work. And lots of bumblebee studies never get pumblished because they put
out a bunch of what theoretically would be bumblebe nesting box and they get nothing.
So anyway, one of my goals figure out an actual bubblebee nesting box
that works. But the point is is you can cut for a lot of
the native bees. You can just cut that native invasive grass that's pampas grass.
A single female is going to look through all of those and say I
like this one for whatever reason. But you have instantly created a whole series
of choice for them, so you know how to spend a lot of time
doing this, and then the same thing with wood things. So yes,
you can buy these mason bee nests and they'll be populated. You don't need
to buy mason bees. You don't need to bring them in. You just
put them up. They'll come. They're all over the place, and you
just need drill bits three eighths, one eighth and five eighths and just you
know again if you have a really long drill bit or you can get those
better, just the you know, big box store drill bit set. Just
drill a bunch of holes in a block and like a long be the neighbor's
fence, it can be a telephone hole, it can be your porch,
all which I've you know done. Yeah, very effective. Okay, one
more, we got this one. Let's see do we looked at it?
No, we didn't look at Macrotera yet. The specialist that is macro Terra
is at least some members are again not my not my area of coverage.
If you look up again, I urge you to look at Jared Fowler's site.
How many species I'm looking at? There's like six species, three of
which have no photos for their tax on page. Wow, that's cool.
They are cacked. There's probably a lot more. If I'm mac macro Terra,
I don't know. If I naturalists does not include a species if there's
never been a sighting, Oh my god, here's sure that's your go to.
There is a place John Asher maintains a site that catalogs all the species
of bees in the world and you can look it up by country, so
you could easily, you know, find the number of macrotera in the world.
Here's a macroterrilla and it's only been observed Yeah, right in South Texas.
Lean, Well, that's cool. I don't know much about that group.
That's fucking cool. Man. Well, South Texas, you know you
have that tom al epan thornscrubub and you have that whole ecosystem just kisses into
Texas or the North America right there, and from a b point of view,
it's very understudied. There's a guy who I wanted to talk to you
named Jack Neff. He's up in the Austin area and he's sort of the
Texas b guru. How do you spell his name? I'm gonna look this
guy up. It's any Ff and his first name I think would be John,
not Jack, and I can get you his email, Okay, yeah,
please, that'd be great. Anyway, he doesn't. He says,
that's the area that we know the least about because almost none of the bee
heads aren't located there. They don't go there. Oh it's in the cut
It is, like, yeah, it's I'm living in a cutty area man.
Ironically, though, my colleague just went down to see the eclipse down
there, and you know, he went because his wife wanted to go and
he wanted to go be collecting, and so he and he's a carpenter bee
specialist, and he found three carpenter be species down there and very excited.
Oh ship cool at rare ones or what. No. And although although one
is basically a Mexican species that just gets up there with every it's not in
very many collections, but none of them are like new for the state.
But he was psyched to go back to that area. And I haven't been
in that area for years. So we ever come down there, you ever
come down, hit me up. There's a bunch of good like near the
McCallan area, like Hidalgo, and there's a lot of habit that destruction going
on, but there's still some really cool little patches. Yeah, o god,
what's the I mean? Now, it's just tracked houses. They're sprouting,
they're growing, they're farming tracked houses like no one's but that makes me
insane too, But they make me feel nuts because it's like they have no
idea, like the developers have any idea what's coming. Like it's we had
three weeks of one hundred and five degree temperatures in June. First year we've
had a sustained he heat wave like that in June, like you would I
looked at temp records that would be like like one oh five for a day,
right, two days and nineteen ninety eight something like that, But this
was three weeks of just insanely hot, like somehow you can't go outside,
like you are basically relegated. Your car becomes like a spaceship, like you're
stuck in like a rover on Mars, like a Mars rover, you know,
just like you can't exist without the AC most people can't. And we
were there in the eighties and we were doing bird surveys of the then just
beginning to put together lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Rereser Complex in this thorn
scrub, and so we would be up at four thirty in the morning because
that's bird time, and it would be still eighty and because the goal was
there, we would by nine when you know, things are pretty much done,
and I would be sweaty, but not like up here sweaty, which
is also human. I would be head to toe everything would be wet.
Well, yeah, that's what it's like. I mean, it's incredibly harsh
environment in that way, but very cool birds. Yeah. Living down there,
I've become accustomed to that. Like I was in Chicago during one of
their quote unquote heat waves. It got to like ninety five during the day,
and I was like, you know what I'd give to have a fucking
ninety five a high of ninety five degree day where I live, Like this
is nothing like you just adapt, you know, you get a good hat
where sunscreen at least on your face and your neck, and then just sweat
and just roll with it. Baggy shirt, you know. Yeah, but
you know a lot of that habitat though. You can't wear shorts. It's
just it'll slice you up. Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah.
Brown Jay's Green Jay's all this. All these cool fucking birds you don
get anywhere else. Oh God, I love those. I love those little
bastards, man, They're so cool. The chucha lockers are layers. Okay,
well, I'll let you go in a minute. But I want to
ask some of your photos aren't credible, uh huh. And we'll get to
where people can look them up later. But how do you how do you
take these? What do you do? Yeah? So they're all dead and
what they are is stacked photos. So we have a little system in the
lab. Basically we're using a you know, not top of the line camera
anymore. Canon Mark two five D was what we started with. We got
to a three and then we haven't advanced since their big sensor screen. And
we have a sled that is from Synogys. I think it's Synogyus that I
can have a little microprocessor and I can say start here and here and then
take a picture every so many mic focus. What's a sled? What do
you mean? What is that? Yeah? So the camera sits on a
sled with a little screw that can be very precisely moved, because what you're
doing is you're taking a whole series. We've taken over two hundred pictures of
one bee at very high magnification. So high magnification with the kinds of lenses
that we're using has almost no depth of field, so very little like one
intental s right. Yeah, my friend Allen does that with mushrooms. He
focused stacks, but the camera does it for him. They don't use it.
Yes, but this is maybe old school now, but my understanding is
that to do this kind of focus stacking where you're taking many, like one
hundred shots, you need to have a stable environment. And then we have
a beer cooler with all kinds of places for the flash to bounce around in,
and we have little we call them bridges with velum paper to soften the
flash. And it's a little it's basically a little, tiny, little studio
to diffuse the light. Yeah, you've used like a little chamber. Basically,
they're like wedding photographers. Yeah, and black, and there's a black
velvet curtain. So are our difference has from others, although people are doing
it now, is that it's a solid black background. We push the background
to absolute zero zero zero on the scale so that you can expand and contract
the boundaries as much as you like. And then visually you don't look at
anything but the b because no, you don't inspect the black. If you
have a light background on anything, your eye always goes to the lightest part
of the picture. So if you have a bright white background. It's kind
of looking all over the place. Then it gets to looking at the thing.
Oh yeah, black backgrounds grace especially for I do the same with with
macro photos of plants. But what what lens are you guys using? We
use the now unfortunately out of production Canon MPE sixty five millimeter one to five
X is it? Sixty five milimeter? That's it? And if you're able
to get this well again we have to stack everything. No, but I
mean just to get that up closed, like, how do you Because after
a certain point you get the lens so close to the subject it just won't
focus anymore. Well you can, yeah, so you can, and it's
not that bad because the next step we do. We have twenty X and
ten and ten X systems where we've modified. There's a great website called extrememacro
dot com I believe it's a UK place shows how to do this. You
take an old fixed whatever, non zoom lens. We use two hun are
millimeter and then you modify it and you stick a microscope lens on top of
that of certain certain kinds. And so we have ten X and twenty five
X. Our twenty X microscope lenses that really really close and can do super
tiny I'd love to get money shots and anthers like that. It's just like
so they're so fun. And also seeds are like incredible, like cacus seeds.
Oh yeah, yeah, all the little divots and everything. Culture.
If you go to our site and you learn how to use flickers search tools,
it's pretty easy. You can find. We have a catalog of well
over five thousand shots and now we're retooling. We've just literally yesterday got in
a a mirrorless camera now, the r R five. It's out of EOS
R five Canon that's out of production, but you know, meets our specs
and also our cost. God that's cool. So this isn't just a macro
lens. It's like a magnification lens that you're using too. Uh so,
yes, we have both. So a lot of our day to day is
this one to five X because I can change the magnification to frame the shot
as much as I want, so that's super convenient. But I can only
go up to five X if I want to go more. I have these
fixed ones, which you know have their own issues, but do get me
the magnification. Those are literally just a few millimeters on the subject because of
what you just talked about, which is that your working distance is minute.
Yeah, but that's okay. You know, we rejigger everything and we pour
in a lot of light and it's all on stands. And even if the
aperture is super small, I mean you guys using a big aperture, right,
since you're focused stacking, you don't need to use it. Yeah,
we don't want to. If you have a small a really small one or
really big one, you get into some weird really when you're focused stacking and
you're looking at all this detail, it you run into some aberrations refraction or
something of something. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. My
setup is just like a Nikon, just a Nikon, like a beginner DSL
because it's got the pop up flash. Use a macro lens diffuser for super
you know, low contrast light and no shadows, and then just like F
twenty two or smaller like F twenty nine ideal, but then you lose a
little bit of lucidity. Yeah you know, yeah, so we don't we
Our rule is F nine to F three point five. Yeah, yeah.
Extremes and the focused thacking is really that's really where it's at. Man,
you get some incredible photos there. There's a so our system is really derived
from actually the army, and that system now exists in modified form by a
group called Macro Solutions, I think, and they they have it setups where
you can bring them out into the field, which we never do on tripods,
and so the whole the whole sled is right there in the field.
And then you know your more problem is like you can't have a lot of
wind or something that blows around, but you can do some more interesting things,
right, Yeah, well work, So that's what I want to ask
you now too, is what's the website working? People check out your work?
Yeah, so we have our our social media handle, including the Flicker
website where you can download the originals. Is well at least the so we
do a lot of post processing. I can send those if people want,
but they're monster but the finals which will blow up to whatever you want,
and we ask you not to even contact us. We just want you to
take them. Is because we're just going to say yes always. And weirdly,
they just show up in all kinds of weird commercial places like in Walmart.
We're like that's our picture. That's our picture because they're being resold a
million times. Oh but anyway, the Flicker site is in our social media
is USGS, US Geological Survey b I m L and the Inventory Monitoring Lab,
which we actually don't use that naming or we're stuck with the acronym.
And yeah, take them and glad they're glad to have them used in any
way. You don't again, you can use them for anything. You can
sell them. A bunch of people do could like get an emblazoned on a
shirt or something at Walgreens is stuck quilt, don't laugh. In the last
year, someone said I think these are your pictures and it was a pair
of yoga pants that were completed by That's hilarious. But you're all for it
because you just want to get this information out there and have people be able
to There was another group that tracks where your pictures end up so that you
know theory. You sue them and they're just curious and they're in basically every
country in the world using them in some way, probably fifteen generations removed from
us, so mostly we don't get acknowledged, but that's okay. Yeah,
this does beautiful picture of something that you can resonate with. They're fucking They're
incredible. They're really cool. I'd love to get one blown up in like
a poster or something. You can't. They blow up nicely. They I've
seen them ten feet tall museums and things like that. I would Wantastern species
though, want like, you know, you have a lot of Western species,
cactus bees or something like that. Yeah you can. I don't know
about cactus bees, but per se. But and also if you send us
a specimen, we'll take a picture. Yeah, what's the what's the best
way to just capture it and then freeze it or something? Yeah? Yeah,
so yeah, that's the best way. You don't want it to be
uh, how do you dry it out? So? How do you dry
it out so it doesn't run. They as long as you're not in some
kind of weird humid environment or something, they dry naturally, Okay. And
so the best way would be to send it to us in a you know,
like a jewelry comes in little cotton fiber box. Yeah, just put
it in there, put two layers of cotton on top. They're very delicate
and they will dry and then things snap off and shipping address and all that's
on the website. I don't know if it is. But you can email.
Yeah, you can contact me, okay and spell your name sober one
knows how to look it up, or you get a ted typ DEA isn't
David R E g E okay, so Sam Sam driggi okay? Cool y,
Well, thank you so much, man. I appreciate you doing this.
Seek Your fucking house is inspirational too. It's so cool. Keeps me
alive. That stove thing. How long did that take you to build?
They tell everyone about the stove just put it rocket mass heater with the adobe.
With the adobe and a big like cool looking barrel. It's a fifty
five gallon drum. So the rocket mass heater is a rocket stove. So
this is way outside the boundaries for most people. But there's a rocket stove
and then there's a big chunk of adobe which includes chunks of concrete and everything
else that scavenges the heat off of the stove that normally on a wood stove,
it goes straight up the chimney that bench or whatever you want to make
it into. Right, It's very crafty because here it's like a four by
six adobe. A lot of people run a bench along their wall, and
then some people make it into their bed. Other people will just have it.
Here is a real warm bench, and that becomes the center of the
house in the winter. So my partner has one, and that's where she
is all along on that thing. She says, I don't have to go
to the south anymore because I have this super warm and it makes it sound
like a rocket, and it's more efficient, so it's like eighty percent a
gentle like a war and yeah, and you can see the fire. You
got a hole, but it's just a hole. It's like a six eight
dropping You're dropping wood and it could be anything. Scrap wood, sticks of
wood down into a hole which is made of fire brick, not even cemented
together. It's gluding clay. And the draft is so strong that it's burning
only from the bottom. And you would think it would chimney up, but
it doesn't unless you really screw up and under certain circumstances. But yeah,
so that's what I run all winter. Build this little house too. So
a friend of ours built this house. I did the one next door.
He does a much better job than I any He's like a craftsman. So
it's all out of straw bales and different kinds of clay and adobe, and
yeah, everything is recycled here in this building. You know, I get
stories about all these pieces of wood. We have a sawmill that's all silver
maple from a tree in the backyard. Yeah. What's with this little like
rounded shelf n So, yeah, it's just so it's a very three dimensional
thing, which is one of the things I like. There's depth to the
wall. It looks like it looks like the you know, like Luke Skywalker's
home in the Star Wars where they live on what's that. I forget the
name of the island the planet, but whatever, you know, I don't
know. Tattooing. It looks like the nice house and tattooing. It's it's
very getting really wonderful vibes here. Yeah. Yeah, so you can you
can sculpt it. So you can if you want three dimensional outside the wall,
you just make it out of clay. Cool. And then he's really
good. You can see from the smoothness and the lack of cracks that he
really can do the formulas right to get a non cracking surface out of what's
b if you've got to hang something on the wall, how do you You
can do it different ways, so you can use you know, standard pegs
for holes. But you know, the straw bale people have their their ways.
I mean the simplest is like those are just a nail right, just
nail right in the mud. Like if you have to hang something really heavy,
then you're gonna look at something that goes into the straw bales below right
and hangs off it. God, it's it's yeah, it's it's great,
man. Yeah, it's it's always cool to go to, you know,
go to a friend's house and see like, oh, you got a really
nice setup. Man, It's always makes it fun to go over. Yeah.
No, this is where I want to live. It's gonna be I'm
gonna be hanging out. You know. You find me here later this afternoon.
Oh yeah, you can say it later as one. I'm heading out
right. Man. All right, well, thanks so much for your time.
So I appreciate you. Bet all right, that's all I got to
have. Aggressive They pipe