Ologies with Alie Ward - Native Melittology (INDIGENOUS BEES) with Krystle Hickman

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Honeybees get all the attention, but native bees are the underbugs to root for. Photographer, author, and National Geographic Explorer Krystle Hickman shows us the wonders of indigenous bees through her lens focused on conservation of bees and their habitats. She covers their lifecycles, tunnels, turrets, fuzzy butts, frat house cuddling, and sexual dimorphism. We also chat about taxonomic fisticuffs, bee hotels, the mustard blight, monocultures, the teeniest livestock, and how to appreciate and photograph all of the marvels you’ve been overlooking. So grab a sunhat, order her deck of native bee flashcards, fill up your water bottle, and let's stare into the bushes to meet some tiny new friends. Get Krystle Hickman’s gorgeous native bee flashcards, Native Bees of the Western United States, Volume 1Links to Krystle’s workFollow Krystle Hickman on Instagram and TwitterA donation went to No Canyon HillsSign the petition for No Canyon HillsMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy:, Aperiology (MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY), Melittology (BEES), Spheksology (WASPS), Kinetic Salticidology (DANCING SPIDERS), Entomology (INSECTS), FIELD TRIP: How to Change Your Life via the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Delphinology (DOLPHINS), Xylology (LUMBER), P-22: The Life & Death of an L.A. Cougar , Chickenology (HENS & ROOSTERS), Acaropathology (TICKS & LYME DISEASE), Diplopodology (MILLIPEDES & CENTIPEDES), Dipterology (FLIES), Myrmecology (ANTS) Encore, Sparklebuttology (FIREFLIES), Forest Entomology (CREEPY CRAWLIES), Scorpiology (SCORPIONS), Lepidopterology (BUTTERFLIES)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media and Mark David ChristensonTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's that suitcase that you haven't unpacked yet. Alliward, this isologies. You're here. I'm here. We're here. The bees are here. The bees are everywhere. But in the US, 18 states have declared

that their state insect is epismaliferra, the honeybee. Here's the thing. That's not native to this continent. It's a European honeybee. It was imported for wax and honey and pollination. Every honeybee you see in the US is feral. What you imported for wax and honey and pollination. Every honey bee you see in the US is feral. What you may not know about are the native bees. The ones that have been here for eons, yet none of them are state insects. So today we'll meet them.

And within an hour you're going to become the kind of person who is obsessed with indigenous bee species. So this episode started in my backyard over a year ago when we decided to pair up with my old friend David who runs a native plant nonprofit in LA fast forward 18 months and we have this thriving, buzzing hill of plants and David mentioned a native bee expert he knew and I begged her to hang out with me and before I knew it. She and her camera were here, making memes. What kind of was that one? It was a Helipdis tripod, Titus. It was a little sweat bee. A sweat bee, no.

Wait, she's back. She's over here. She's right here. Oh, she's flying away. Okay. Oh, now she's on the stem. Yeah. Maybe that's a good place to. So thisology is Indigenous Melatology.

It comes from the Greek word for B. So if you know anyone named Melissa, their name means B. And you may remember that we did a Melatology episode in 2018 that was wonderfully informative and charming. It touched on some native B species. It also covered a lot of apis, malifera, and backyard beekeeping. So we are returning to the topic of B, but this time with a more focused lens with a photographer and educator or conservationist, she has been a TEDx speaker.

She's a 2023 National Geographic Explorer grant recipient. She's an author and an advocate for these native creatures and their habitats. She also just launched a deck of flashcards, all about native bees. And in some of the audio, I decided to use some outtakes from this interview because I got a super sneak peek at the deck, which is for sale now,

and we'll be shipping later this month. So we'll sit down with her, but first a quick thanks to everyone supporting this show at patreon.com slash allergies and submitted questions for telling a friend and for rating and for wearing allergies merch from allergies merch.com also you know I read all your reviews including this fresh one from an unpronounceable string of consonants I think it looks as though it was typed with the smear of an

elbow but they said thanks to this podcast I was able to respond to my therapist telling me don't drink out of a fire hose. With a full explanation of dolphin reproduction, I love that so much, they say. As do I. Okay, go grab a sun hat, fill up your water bottle, let's stare into the bushes to meet some native bees and learn about their tunnels, turrets, fuzzy butts, sexual demorphism, taxonomic fisticuffs, beehôtels, the mustard blight, monocultures, the tiniest livestock, and how to appreciate and photograph all of the marvels you have been overlooking.

With native, melatologist, Crystal Hickman and my pronouns are she-her. Let's get into it. Now, were you excited about photography, the outdoors, bees, bugs? What was the door that opened for you? All of that? Sweet. Yeah. It's weird to say this, but I feel like I came kind of like

pre-programmed, because like everything I was really into is like a toddler I'm doing now as an adult. That's dope, that's amazing. Yeah, so I was obsessed with my mom's camera. We had rose bushes on the side of our house. And I used to stare at the ladybugs and the honey bees in there for hours. And I remember one time there was a snake in our yard

and I was so excited to see it. I really love insects, photography, all of it. And it just kind of came together. I think as an adult though, I kind of got away from it because it wasn't a career. So I went to college for something I wasn't even interested in and then I started working these office jobs and I just kind of left with no backup. I had a little money in the bank but I was like I'm

gonna do every single thing that I'm interested in and I'm just gonna see where it goes. Oh that's great. Yeah. What was that day like when you decided, a fuck this job I'm leaving? I mean, it was very slow going. I was like, I felt like for a little while I was getting dumber. Yeah, like I just, I felt that.

Yeah, I was just sitting, I was like literally, I remember I was looking at my schedule and I could predict what I was gonna be doing every single day for the rest of the year. And I was just like on autopilot and I was like, I am so sick of this. And the first thing I did though, it was like art because I'm also really into art. Wait, she draws too?

So I actually picked up a pin while I was sitting at the desk and I just drew, I think it was a dog. And then I was like, oh, let me just keep drawing. And then I kept drawing. And then it was like a month of me just drawing every single day from the show skins that I was obsessed with. So this was a darkly comedic British TV series about teens and college students. And it came out in 2007 and it is heavily steeped

in what's known as the Indy Sleece culture. An era of DJs and sideswet bangs and chunky jewelry, there was carbonated, caffeinated malt liquor options, and this show featured some well-written subplots about mental health and disordered eating and frustrated sexuality, and at a time before everyone had face filters on their social media. So, skins was co- was created by Brian Ellsley and Jamie Britton. And Crystal, as a fan of the show, started drawing portraits of the series' actors, starting with a character who usually wore a fedora, which I'm sorry, that was just, that was groundbreaking for the era.

The guy at the store said, I'm the only guy he's ever seen pull it off. And then after I finished drawing, I put in a video and put it on YouTube, and then I found the creator online, and I sent the video, and then with an a month of me starting to draw, he hired me to work on the show.

No, yeah. What? Right? And I was like, oh, hey. So for quite a while, I was just doing a lot of art. Like it kind of took off. Wow.

Really well. What a shoot, your shot moment, right? How glad are you that you just went for it, you know? It was so random and I was like, oh, someone wants to pay me for the end of my favorite show. Yeah, I came here originally for acting, so I wrote and directed my own short film. And then I was just following every single path.

So I did the same thing with the bees. And it kind of linked to the artwork because I wanted to get a camera where I can take original photos for my artwork, but then also photograph bees because I've been drawing everything like based on other people's photos. And I was like, I want to take my own photos.

Oh, that's a great point. So Chris will pick up photography by taking source photos for her ink drawings. Yeah. I think so much we don't think about that is how much we use photo references, but having your own must feel like it really, really yours. Yeah, and like I started creating like really strong messages. At the time I just met this girl, we did a talk together, and she was one of the founding members of Black Lives Matter. Oh wow. Her name is Shamel,

so she had a fro, and I saw a picture of her like, at a Black Lives Matter protest, and I told her she looked like Angela Davis. And then she's like, hey, I actually know her, do you wanna meet her? Yeah. And I'm like, I think it was maybe less than two weeks later, I met her, the stars aligning. Right?

It was very random. Yeah, so basically we recreated that image of like, Angela Davis with her like fist up. So she came to my apartment and I put like a whole backdrop up. So she was in ballpoint pen and then I used black spray paint for the Black Lives Matter logo slash name. Oh my God. And then I did a custom frame where I put I think 44 people

who had basically lost their lives in like activism. I've been working on one forever. It's a chicken. My friend brought her chicken over to my place. Oh, lucky. And I got one shot of the chicken looking directly into the camera. Oh, wow. And that's the one I'm using.

Oh. What's the chicken's name? Honey, thank you. I needed to know. When someone has a pet chicken, you need to know what they name it. Oh, yeah, yeah. And that piece features a live chicken standing

on a dinner plate as a commentary about eating meat. And also, if you want to know more about chickens, we recently did an entire chickenology episode. It was a two-parter. Also, after we recorded this, I pulled up the 2018 timelapse video of Crystal's hands with nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen, rendering a

photo realistic and stunning portrait of the black Panther character Challa, which was shared tens of thousands of times on social media, including by the late Chadwick Boasman who added Crystal Hickman, your pen work is incredible. Thank you. I watched this video, this time lapse video of her making this art, and it was so stunning, the gorgeous. I started crying, which was very embarrassing because I just met her, but it was absolutely gorgeous.

So she was already finding success and acclaim in the art world, but she started picking up more and more skills and you will learn that that is kind of what she does. She is one of those people that is just good at everything. You got this camera, so you were making art and you thought, I want a camera that maybe I can shoot people and bugs and nature. How much googling did you do to find a camera? So much. Because I was doing beef photography with my cell phone for two years. Like I was saying, I pick a lot of hobbies and like I try to go through with all of them. I wasn't sure I was going to stick with this one. So I wanted to know I was going to stick with it first. So after I knew that I was, I did so much googling and I was trying

to decide between Nikon, Cannon, and Sony. And then I ended up picking a Nikon D500, okay, which is a crop sensor lens. And this was was before like mirrorless was like really big and I just YouTubeed the crap out of this camera because I was like, oh, this is a great camera for making small things look large You don't have to crop as much and I absolutely love this camera and it was a camera that I knew I was gonna have to grow with I didn't want something I would outgrow. Yeah, cuz it was it was pretty expensive too It was like the most expensive piece of equipment I'd bought. When you had two years of cell phone B pictures down,

were you using like olio clips or what types of lenses or nothing? Really? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, like my old photos, people thought I actually had a camera. I mean, you did, it was just part of a phone, right? Yeah, sure.

Yeah, I think like honestly, cell phones, especially when you're like learning how to use a camera, you can take better pictures with your cell phone. Yeah, and for more on macro photography, I will link our whole episode on it. It's called Appareology and it's with Joseph Saunders. That'll be in the show notes. Just a life of bug portraits awaits you.

Did you find that, oh, you really liked taking the pictures, having those source material, and then also getting that practice of like getting out and looking for them too? Yeah, I really enjoy the process of just going out into nature. I think that's like one of the main reasons why I keep doing this. Going out to places where there's no cell phone reception, it's just kind of you and whatever you're doing. And I also feel like a lot of times in nature, just nothing revolves around people, which is really nice.

So you can't really be like selfish in nature. And it's just, I don't know, it's kind of like therapy or like meditation. I bet. The idea of getting out of your head and getting off of your phone is so hard to do literally unless there's like no service. Yeah. Or you've dropped your phone down a while. I mean, yeah.

Which is expensive. Oh, you've done your phone down a while. I mean, yeah. Which is expensive. Oh, you've done that? No. Oh, I think so. It was funny when people come back from camping or something and they were, yeah, it's great. I had no service. Yeah.

It's amazing, too, because the longest trip I've ever been on was a 10-day trip. I was in the Trinity Alps. It was like two years ago now. And it was just so interesting coming back because all of this media that I could zoom before, like really regularly, I didn't realize how negative it was. Just, it's really refreshing.

That's why I try to go out somewhere every single day. And I'm so happy. And I also, like, everyone around me, also, I don't know if I'm just attracting people who are happy or like what exactly, but everyone's super positive. It feels like when you know that you're doing something you really like, it's that enthusiasm is really infectious. People want to get on your team because it's clear that you like what you're doing, you

know, which is great. And then you never know. The bees might be talking to each other about you and just in general. I mean, they could be, you know, general buzz of buzz town. That buzz about the top. That's the worst thing. That was that. Now, you liked Lady Bugs as well on growing up and other type of bugs. What was it about bees that really just gotcha? I wish I had like a really definite answer. I just say that I liked all

insects, all bugs, but the thing that got me specifically into looking at bees was this, there's this quote that's attributed to Einstein. I saw it on Facebook. It says, if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. It was like no more bees, no more man, no more pollination. So it turns out the quote's not real. I was gonna say that, doesn't it? Yeah, and it's like, it's funny, because like now, when I actually I actually think about it I'm like that doesn't make any sense Also Einstein never said it either someone just put like Einstein's name on it and like the 90s. Oh, God So that got me into I was like I want to save the bees because I was like I love insects I love nature so I was like I'll get involved at this because you know, it was an idea

I wanted to follow through it so I followed through with it and then I was doing that for quite a long time And then I accidentally took that for quite a long time. And then I accidentally took a photo of a native bee. Accidentally, accidentally. I was looking for honey bees. It's funny too is I photographed the native bee on mustard. So it was super, super invasive. Which is just, I think, it's really funny.

Especially the history of why mustard is so prevalent in California from what I understand, like, missionaries would just kind of throw it behind them on their path. Yep, West Coast missionaries led in the 1700s up what's now the California coast by a Catholic priest named Junipera Sarah tossed out invasive mustard seeds as they went along this El Camino Real or the Royal Road that connected all the missions, creating what was described as a ribbon of gold in their wake, and botanists have even broken apart the Adobe bricks and the missions, and as time marched on, they were able to see more and more mustard seeds within these mud bricks, and they could trace the spread of them. But what is the issue with mustard flowers? You ask? Well, it's choked out indigenous plants,

and thus animals. And, just like he left a week of highly invasive weeds, Junipera Sero also believed that indigenous people could be modified to suit religious aesthetics. And, according to one book into the West, the story of its people, indigenous populations were punished for the sake of salvation. The missionary said, Junipera Sarah also said at one point that,

so long as they were converted beforehand, their death could be seen as a joy. So California nature lovers, when they see the sunny yellow fields of wildflowers, ee-e- don't know that a lot of it is mustard, and it's anything but native. And the El Camino Real Root in California is still commemorated with these rustic roadside bells along the highway shoulders,

but recognizing the face of Junipera Sarah might be harder because many statues of him have been beheaded in recent years. So thanks for the genocide and all the mustard, dude. I was actually at a farm last week, and they were using mustard as a cover crop. No. It was just fields and fields of mustard. I was like, oh my gosh. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I mean, and it's funny because until you learn that it's invasive,

you just think, oh, wild flowers. Yeah. And they're so yellow. Isn't this nice? No, I love a native plant so much that in the past year, Jared and I have enlisted the help of one, David Newsom, of a nonprofit called Wild Yards Project, who has made our dry backyard full of invasive weeds into this thriving pollinator garden and a critter habitat. And because of him, I see the hillsides of LA so differently.

I really appreciate native, untouched, or reintroduce native species. And also, before this, I had never cringed at a flower. And now I do. One of the funniest conversations I have is just ask him, like, what do you think about? And then just name any invasive plant

and then just sit back. It's like those rants are so good to hear. They're so impassioned. And when it comes to native bees versus the European honeybee that we're accustomed to, most people don't know that honeybees in at least in the US are feral, right? Yeah, I call them just like flat out invasive. At this point.

Yeah, it's really frustrating too, because like people mix up facts between honey bees and native bees, and also you see all these things about save the bees, and then there's a honey bee. At World B Day, I had a fair, I had a booth, and it had all of these people so happy about supporting the honey bees. And I realized after a while,

it probably wasn't the best place to throw out facts about native bees. It's just interesting that science has become so debatable when there's really solid facts about what's happening and people still want to debate you. So they saved the bees campaigns. You might see in America, well, they're usually focused on honey bees, which are completely introduced species in America that are still used, obviously, as farming livestock. So each hive has around 30,000 workers who farmers take to different orchards and fields

for pollination services. So a save the honey bee's campaign in the US is kind of like a big, well-funded push to breed more feral cats. And granted, backyard beekeepers do rescue feral swarms, which is kind of like, I guess, homing straight kittens, which is fine by some people, not fine by others. But the biggest issue facing bees

isn't the loss of livestock bees, but really monocultures and habitat loss for all kinds of creatures, including native bees. But like a positive thing I've seen at least in California is there's a lot of farms that are actually starting to farm including native bees. But like a positive thing I've seen at least in California is there's a lot of farms that are actually starting to farm alongside native ecosystems. Really? Yeah.

Since when? I started seeing it within the last five years. Wow. I don't know if I should say farm stain, but I saw so many native plants, specifically I was looking at this tomato field and I actually took a lot of photos of there. Yeah, native bees. They also have a lot of birds. They have a lot of butterflies, so it doesn't just encourage native bees, but it's like anything that's in that ecosystem.

So instead of relying on this one invasive pollinator, you have like a whole ecosystem of creatures that will pollinate your plants for you and they'll do a better job. Without the need to truck them around. While Crystal is originally from Omaha, Nebraska. She is beyond fluent in local native species. We're in California now. And you are also making a very cool product for native bees of the Western United States. Yes. Which we will touch on in a bit. Putting a pin in that, because it's very exciting. But when it comes to different habitats, how many native bees are out there,

like thousands of species? Yeah, so in the entire world, there's a little over 20,000. Oh my God. Yeah, in the US, there's a little over 4,000. Okay. And last year, someone actually counted in California. So there's 1,643 as of last year in California.

So we have more bees in California than in some countries. Nuts. I mean, we have so many different climates too. I'd say specifically, I'll just stick with California, is that we have a Mediterranean climate. And Mediterranean climates are really unique just because we get winter rain. We're next to large bodies of cold water.

We normally have like mountains and like a desert. But Mediterranean climates take up only about 2% of Earth's land, but they also have about 20% of Earth's biodiversity. Wow, so we're in a crazy just biodiverse hotspot here. And I think that's one reason why I absolutely love documenting not just bees, but nature here. What's happening to their ecosystems. Because land loss is just a huge factor in the climb of bees. So I started taking landscape photos of areas I've been visiting because I realized even just after going for five years, there's so much development happening. There's people living close by.

And even within if there's neighborhoods within a mile, there's people are starting to do fired abatement. And it's destroying areas that I've been visiting, or I've been looking at old records, and I want to visit them again, but there's like a university building there now. Crystal says that she once spent two years trying to get a photo of a particular bee on its niche favorite flower. And then she went back a week or two later, only to find that the whole area had been bulldozed. Why? Why though? And when you say fire abatement, what exactly does that mean?

They're like, oh, there's plants here. These can catch on fire. So they go at least two inches into the ground, cut down all the plants and the roots. So they don't go back. They did it all over the Santa Monica Mountains and they're supposed to just do it like a mile from houses, but this area was like more than a mile. But yeah, it's completely destroyed. There's so many creatures that not a lot of people are looking at and they're disappearing and they don't really negatively or positively

impact people, but I think just the fact that they're here is good enough reason to protect them and preserve them and just value them as something that's important. Because I feel like a lot of times people value nature as it revolves around people. Right. Yeah, exactly what can it do for us. Yeah. And what about these native bees? I know of orchard bees and mason bees. There's sweat bees. There's sweat bees. There's sweat bees. Can you take me through some of the different types of native bees?

And like, if let's say, you know nothing about native bees. Oh, so the smallest one, smallest known bee, actually, in North America. It's called a Pradeeta Minima. And the very first time I saw it was actually on a neighborhood sidewalk in Apple Valley. So that is a desert town about 100 miles east of LA, which is right on the edge of the Mojave Desert and the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains, is home to some very specific and elusive critters,

such as Perdita Minima, which is a tiny amber-colored native fairy bee, whose name means lost one. On an Apple Valley sidewalk? Yeah, and thisB is very small. It's about two millimeters is slightly under that. It's about the size of a letter on a quarter. Oh my God.

The largest B I think is in Indonesia. It's a mega Kylie, which is the resin B. That one's about two and a half inches. Whoa. Yeah, so it's pretty big. So yeah, they range from those sizes, known sizes. But yeah, colors, they come in blues, greens, purples, black, orange, just like a full rainbow red colors. Yeah, bumblebees are in there as well. Bumblebees are in there as well. Yeah, so where we are in Southern California

there's about like five or six different species. They actually have pretty big size ranges as well. I think they go up to about 20 millimeters, I think. I'm not really good at converting to inches. No, no Americans are. 20 millimeters is about three quarters of an inch. I got you. I absolutely love bumblebee. I think bumblebees are a great native bee to start with just because they're so large. So they're also kind of harder to ignore. Yeah. I feel like that's a great gateway B. Why bumblebee is so cute and stripy. I found a 2014 study called defining the color pattern phenotype in bumblebees, a new model for evo-devo. And I had to look it up because evo-devo means evolutionary developmental biology in cool

science talk. And this paper said that black bands are the most commonly occurring on bumblebees because when paired with other colors, especially yellow, you get a sassy bold contrast that scares the beekeepers out of predators. It's too cute, it's too stylish, it's intimidating. This is a not smart question, but do native bees tend to have stingers or is that mostly just a colony defense for honey bees?

Yeah, so all female bees have stingers. Okay. Even bees called stingless bees, they actually have stingers too. But that's tough, that's fucked up. What's up with that? So they're called stingless because I think it's really hard for them

to sting people, so that's kind of like, you know, nature or centric around people. Yeah, all female bees have stingers. And bumblebees, too, they actually come in more colors. They do? Yeah, so you'll see even in Southern California, the endangered one here, Bombas Crotchye, if you look at the back of their abdomen, they have an orange stripe.

And then some of them have white on them as well. And I think there was a variant found in... It was probably Arizona, that was all black. Ooh, it was really cool. And there are carpenter bees. Yeah, I love carpenter bees. I love carpenter bees too. They're giant.

Yeah. Giant. And the ladies tend to be black. The males tend to be like a golden color. One species is golden. Okay. Yeah, so that's the Valley carpenter bee. And that's actually my favorite carpenter bee.

Yes. Learn enough about native bees. And you too can have a favorite Carpenter B. The genus is xylocopa, xylocopone and copa like cabana. And there are 500 species of Carpenter Bs in 31 subgenera. And I found that out from a pest control website, which did not amuse me. I think the males are just so funny. So they like stake out a spot,

and they're like, this is my spot. I'm gonna wait for any like females to show up, drive off any males, and if you stare at them too, they try and like kind of follow your around and act really like big and tough, but they don't have any stingers, so they can't do anything. But yeah, I think they're so cute. And yeah, that's they're so cute.

And yeah, that's actually the biggest bee on the west coast. Oh my gosh. I mean, they're so hard to miss. Yeah. Now, Australians can post about their native amygdala bomba formus, aka the golden-haired mortar bee, or teddy bear bee, but the similarly golden and adorable male valley carpenter bees are also called Teddy Bear bees due to high rates of squishy fuzziness and excruciating acts of adorability. And days after this interview, I took my dog Goblin for a walk and I stopped in front

of a neighbor's native Mallow in the yard and found myself just in raptured and shocked to see a male valley carpenter be sleeping in a blossom. His whole big hairy butt hanging out. And as I got it crystals flashcards later, she showed me more sleeping bees and flowers, a rather sleeping bees plural in flower singular. Look how beautiful these are. Oh my gosh. And now this one was hanging with a friend. Yes, so sometimes they sleep together. So these guys are sleeping. These are so awesome. Also in the deck, a gorgeous shot of a stripey little mason bee, the male of which has, as crystal calls them, tiny pop-eye arms,

which they use to gently pull the antennae of their lover, covering her eyes as they do the nasty. You can call them Megalichile Fidellis or a horn-faced leaf cutter bee. Oh, this is the one I was thinking of when you were talking about colors because this is the only Megacyle with yellow on the abdomen. So you can actually idea it from species to species by the color. I just kept shuffling through this beautiful deck, this veritable who's who in indigenous melatology. Longhorn bees? Look at this agile longhorn bee. Yeah, they call it very longhorn for a reason. Is that still but it's still the same number of sequins, right?

So this one has 13, the other one has the females have 12, but yeah just just longer ones. Oh my gosh. Oh, many fairy beads. So that's the smallest snow and bee in North America. So this is the one that would be on like sumac or toyon. So that's the male. Okay, this is the female. And the male is like follow behind them and like flap their wings and try and get their attention. And they're way they're really different colors, right? Yeah, they're really different colors. There's a size difference. So it's four.5 to 5 millimeters. I would have thought at first glance that was a wasp.

A U-Form mini fairy bee? Yeah, that's the male. Are you pretty big? Yeah. And these are really temperature specific, too. So if you go at different temperatures, you'll see the male or the female or both. So they really come out when it's hot.

Yeah, and they harass the females. So it's like really nice when you just see the females out taking their time. Do you have you ever been somewhere in A to B? No, no, yeah. I don't know. I never have you. When it comes to native bees, in terms of people going up to them and photographing them, you had one on your finger earlier today. Yeah. Do you ever have to bust any flim flam or try to talk any friends down about, like, don't worry just because it's a B, you're probably not in a lot of danger. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I feel like the first thing everyone asks about these is, am I gonna get stung?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, and then, like, the sleeping male bees, they can't sting you. Oh, that's right. Yeah, and they don't bite either. Oh, OK. That's good to know. Yeah.

So I mean, I feel like if you're out on like kind of a cool jury day or early morning late evening, and you can put your finger out, like a lot of times they will just climb on. There's really nothing to worry about. You told me earlier that if you see a native bee sleeping in a flower, it's probably a guy. Yeah. She's taking a nap.

Yeah. Taking a load off. I think it's very surprising to think of bees taking a load off and taking a nap and sleeping in a flower because so often we think of bees having colonies or hives or nests. So when it comes to native bees, where are they? Like where are they sleeping?

Where are they hanging out? Who div roommates? What's going on? Yeah. So, you know, it's funny because I feel like that's like very honey bee centric again. Yeah. Because people are like, Oh, they're in a colony. Oh, there's a queen. Most bees about 90% of them are solitary. So they live by themselves. And about 75% of them are ground nesting. So that's the females. They just create a burrow, or they live in a cavity in the ground. But yeah, male bees, a lot of them, you'll find them sleeping in flowers

that open and close with the sun. I think it's so cute to think of like, female bees like digging a burrow and living under there, and dudes just being like, I'm just gonna crashy. Yeah. If you have like a sunflower, you'll find like a lot of melastotus that longhorn bees, like males, hanging out, sleeping together there. Oh, that's gonna crash. Yeah. If you have like a sunflower, you'll find like a lot of melastotus that longhorn bees,

they're like males hanging out sleeping together there. Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, it's funny too, because like during the day, they're all competing with each other for like female attention, but then at night they all just huddle together. Cuddle puddle with my boys.

They're not the frat house. Yeah, they are in a frat house. What are their life cycles? Like how long do they live? Well, some that I see here, this spring come back next spring or is this it for them. So it depends on the bee. OK.

Carpenter bees of native bees as far as I'm aware are the longest living ones. OK. So I know the females, some of them can live like a year or two. Oh, OK. There's a lot of bees that will spin like a month above ground as an adult and the other 11 months

they're underground developing. And then there's some bees that can have two different generations in a year. There's some bees that you'll only see as an adult for like a month. And do you have any idea why some bees are called mason bees or carpenter bees or sweat bees? What are some of the stories behind their names? So mason bees because they construct things. carpenter bees because they basically act like carpenters with wood. Sweat bees will land on people. I'm sure other animals as well and they'll actually lick up the sweat and salt perspiration from people. So yeah, they're kind of named after what they do.

Oh my gosh. I didn't realize that sweat bees were ever licking me. Yeah. But chances are we've been licked by sweat bees. Yeah, chances are. Wow. Licking up, baby. Licking it up. Crystal also told me that some ground dwelling native bees like East Coast Minor Bees, A.K.A., Chimney Bees, and Sand Dwelling Digger Bees, and the West Coast Globe Malobee

or Diodesia Diminuda make little tunnels at the entrances of their burrows. And I needed to know why, and according to the U.S. Forest Service, it's a big ding-ding mystery. So the Forest Service reports that diadasia bees surround their nest entrants with a turret or a chimney, the purpose of which has long been debated. They write, do turrets one, help keep brain or soil out of the nest, 2, help females recognize their nest when they return from foraging, or 3, discourage enemies.

Investigation of this mystery continues. They say, thank you, US Forest Service, for lending the appropriate amount of eerie gossip vibes in that science communication. You get it, I love it. What about when it comes to ground nesting, if so many native B.S.R. ground nesting, what's going on with garden chemicals and round up and all this stuff?

How are they doing with that? So chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, that's a really big factor with bees in urban areas, decline in the species. And what's really interesting too is a lot of times the way these chemical companies advertise to stop harming bees, it's only directed at honey bees. So they'll say to spray in the evening because they're like, oh, well, the bees aren't out, but the bees are in the ground and you're spraying on the ground.

So it is a really great way to kill native bees. Yeah, so if you want to create a native habitat in your yard, one of the really positive things is you don't really need pesticides or herbicides. If you have a native habitat, it'll be like a healthy biodeverse ecosystem or it'll be self-sustaining, which also means you're gonna have a lot of those things that you consider pests in your yard like a healthy biodeverse ecosystem or it'll be self-sustaining, which also means you're gonna have a lot of those things that you consider pests in your art, like aphids, like thrips, millibugs, things like that, but then you're also gonna have creatures

that will naturally control the population. So yeah, it helps sustain bees as well by just planning native. Just a shout out to zerceessociety at zercees.org, which I have been pronouncing zerxes for five years publicly. Until this week, when I met a lovely entomologist who works for zercees, Namiara, who David Newsom brought around, and although I was in my backyard looking at bugs with her, I thought maybe I was in heaven. It was the best. So zercees.org, they have great maps and lists.

Theodore Payne is a foundation. That's another great resource for native plant guidance. And you can also follow David Newsom's work at Wild Yard's project because he's great and he pulls together and amplifies so many experts, many of whom have a lot of indigenous knowledge. Just in case you're hungry for more biodiversity in your yard. Oh, speaking of hunger. What are the bees eating?

Adult bees consume nectar, developing bees consume pollen, and who's feeding them? Typically, it's the female parent bees. Okay, but then there's also bees that are kleptoparasites. They're like cuckoo bees. Uh-huh. So they'll go into the burrow of their host bee, the lay-and-egg in there, their egg will hatch. It'll either kill the egg or the larvae of the host, she's in the needle of pollen. I remember these photos of Cuckoo bird chicks hatching and just immediately, instinctively, balancing the host bird's egg on their back and like a wrinkle little testicle with a beak to an a barbell squat move to just plunk the host bird's egg out the side of the nest.

And then these chicks just grow bigger and bigger. They're towering over their unsuspecting host parents who are struggling to feed them. So, do kuku bees love that kind of drama? So, there's no real taking care of them. So, it's basically the host bee or most B's that are non-cougu B's. They'll actually just lay the egg, they'll provision some pollen, they'll close up the burrow interest, and then they'll leave, and that's normally like after they may be constructed a few burrows, they'll actually pass away. So they're basically like taking care of themselves

as they're developing. So they leave their egg with like a care package, like a swag bag, whatever. And they're like, when you wake up, Mama left some food by. Is it like tandem parking? Is it stacked? It's like tandem parking. Yes. Yeah. And what's interesting too is so some bees have kind of like, I call it like condo living. So there's a sweat bee called an agapostoman, a male of interest. It's a green sweat bee. And multiple females will have a burrow with like one entrance, but then we'll have their own little apartment in there. Oh. So then they'll have their own little section where their babies are developing. Oh my god. Yeah, it's funny too. I found a burrow one time I was so happy. There was one female like guarding the entrance and she was using a little clump of dirt and she was like repositioning it to like hide the burrow entrance

and then other females were coming and going and they were moving it but it always completely hidden. Wow. How do you find burrows? It's completely dumb luck for me. Yeah. Like sometimes I'll just see them go into there and I'm like oh there's a burrow. Other times I've just seen them land and I'm like oh my gosh you're starting to dig and I'll just hang out there. I think it was two weeks ago. There is this bee. It was a deforeya and I've never seen a deforeya burrow before and I was so excited. Deforeya is a genus with 160 different species of the small, short-faced, glossy little sweat bees, which you might mistake for a fly unless you're're Crystal Hickman, or you have her flashcards. She took like seven minutes to dig,

and I was waiting for her to come out, but I think she took a nap. Oh. She took like a two hour nap. So I was laying at an Air Force base in the middle of the road, and I was really hoping no one would come by. And I was like, what is she doing, or did I miss her? And then she finally came out like two hours later.

Oh my God. But while I was laying there, it was so cool. There was a wasp that came by Dugaburo. Left came back with a caterpillar, buried it, and then flew off and started making other burrows. And then I started seeing these other, like, ground nesting bees, they're called callyopsis. So they hide their burrow entrance.

They basically make like a kind of a funnel shape. And then they cover it with gravel, in this case gravel or dirt. And they basically just dive through the gravel or the dirt. So you never see the entrance. Oh wow. And I started seeing them coming in and out of those. And then I got video footage of like one coming out,

which I was like so happy about. I got photos of the dephoria when she was leaving and I was like thank god because she took forever. Do you ever have to edit your own voice out of your videos? Oh yeah. Talking to the bees, gasping at the bee for sure, for sure. And like also I have really bad allergies so I get like the sniffles so there's some of my videos where I'm just like, like that over and I'm like, God, that's so annoying. But yeah, it's sniffles a lot. We're gonna need a box of tissues.

What types of soil do they tend to prefer? Do they tend to prefer drier areas where they can burrow and not get flooded? Or there's some that want like a piti swampy area? It's all different kinds of soil, honestly. So that's one good way to actually find the bees. So there's a bee that I'm looking for. I'm going to find it next weekend.

It's called a nomia. It prefers alkaline soil. Nomia is another type of sweat bee, and they're kind of chunky with fuzzy stripes and this grayish white, pearlescent coloring. They look like if a silver SUV had a big round face and hair, but was tiny. And there's over a hundred species of these all over the world, and they're ground nesting. And also they're very good at pollinating alfalfa. Thanks, Nomiya.

So if you want to find that, be good at alkaline soil. There's a microanthopher that just will nest in everything. So you just kind of look for the flowers. There's ones that nest on the side of hills. There's some that nest in like the sand and beaches. It's they're all over the place. And when it comes to the pollen and the nectar, do they have a preference for native flowers versus invasive flowers or they like it's it's got a little bit of water and sugar, I'm down. Do they have certain plants that they can really only thrive with?

I've found most native bees seem to prefer native plants, but that doesn't mean they'll exclusively go to them. Okay. There's a lot of bees that are generalist pollinators that will visit like just about anything. Personally, I think for the last two and a half years, I've been looking at a lot of specialists. So they'll visit maybe one family of plants,

some of them even just like one species of a plant. So it can be like very, very specific. So that's why a lot of times, if you want to look for a very specific native bee, you look for the plant. And I do kind of a cheat. Like I'll go on I naturalist. If I'm like, I'm waiting for this plant to bloom, but I don't want to drive like three hours into the plant. And I do kind of a cheat. Like, I'll go on I naturalist. If I'm like, I'm waiting for this plant to bloom,

but I don't want to drive like three hours into the desert. So I'm waiting for someone else on I naturalist to find it and like, oh, it's out. So then I go there. And do you ever have be scientists who are working with one specific bee? Like, are they ever doing that to you? Where they're like, well, you waited

till someone saw the plant. And then they're waiting until they're really, well, you waited until someone saw the plant, and then they're waiting until they're really good native beef photographer invited. I just feel like tell us what you found. Yeah, so I work with a lot, I don't know if I'd say work with, but I'm in communication with a lot of militarists who work with just like one genus of be

or like subgenus, because I don't do any collecting. I just, I ID everything through photos. So some of them, like the way they do their science, which I think is still really beneficial, but they, they want to collect specimens. And like some of the bees, there's one bee I got last year. I think most labs don't have specimens of this. Like they'd never seen it in person. So she wanted me to actually collect them. And I was like, I'm not collecting this because I saw three of them. But yeah, I feel like a lot of militarists at university are just really happy with photos, really happy with observations, or even like behavioral observations.

So the videos must come in handy for that. Oh, yeah, the videos are great. Yeah, I've been doing so many more, except two cameras now. So like I'll leave one out for video. And then I'll go around for the other one for photography. It's funny too, because if you think about the way that science has been done for so many hundreds of years, we needed the dead specimen and we needed someone with a field journal to describe it.

But now, having obviously that it wouldn't have the DNA or something, but just with the way that technology is, you can capture so much more. Yeah, I 100% think we're in a place now where we don't need to collect the same way we were before. I definitely value like the all of the information that we're getting from the metologists who've spent the years and decades out there collecting. I feel like the way that you capture insects, you're so good at your photography, so amazing. Thank you. And it's such not only a boon to scientists, but also to people who don't yet realize that they're about to fall in love with native bees.

And tell me a little bit about the deck that you put together. Oh, I'm so proud of this. So I've been working on it since 2019, so I'm just finally done. But yeah, people were coming up to me with so many questions and I was just repeating myself over and over again.

And I started teaching classes about how to IDBs. And I was like, you know, I feel like it'd be great if someone could just have something in their hand where they could like learn this themselves. So there's also plant relationships in here as well. So if you want to start attracting these bees, you can actually plant these plants, and this bee might show up.

And then you could learn to identify yourself. There's photos of the males, the females, any variants, the times of year that they'll show up. There's photos of the males, the females, any variants, the times of year that they'll show up. There's also winged Venetian because you can IDBs to like genus or sub genus, just from the photos of their wings. There's a taxonomy and just like little facts about them in there as well. And they're in a little box so you can keep them in your backpack, you can keep them in your car. And I love the idea too that you have something that you can, when you're not even out looking,

you can just study and share. And I think that's such a good idea. Did you have to try to limit like, okay, how many cards am I gonna make? How big is this deck gonna be? Yes, oh my, that was so hard. That was so hard too. So I was originally starting out with like,

oh, let me just do like the 40 most common bees. And then also I realized what people were observing wasn't necessarily the most common. They were just the largest. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So initially the 40 most common, 20 of them were bumblebees. And I was like, that's a lot of bumblebees. Yeah. So I actually, I started using a bunch of different references talking to a lot of different like, militarist and just, that's where I kind of came to the conclusion, like, oh, it's not that there's actually this many bumblebees,

it's that people are seeing them because they're so much larger. So I ended up going through a bunch of different records and I just started looking at different genera that people would commonly observe in their gardens and the desert on mountain ranges, planes. Yeah, it was really hard to pick the 42. And I stopped at 42 because 42 B species

equal to 100 cards. And I was like, I'm done there. Uh-huh. So I called this one volume one. I'm thinking about doing a rare B one just for California. You started working on the project in 2019. When did you launch it on Kickstarter? It was March.

Yeah. First, I think it was really successful. And it was fully funded. Yeah. Like boom. The first day I can't remember how but it hit like I was like, oh this is gonna be funded. What an exciting day. Yeah, and to know that there's an audience of people who are like Very stoked about this. Yes. Yeah, like I'm getting a lot of messages like people are very excited because I put out a thing that like I got the the final samples for the flashcards. So, and yes, her deck is 100 lovely green cards with super detailed full-color macro photos of

the bees and facts aplenty. Again, it's called Native Bees of the Western United States, volume one, and you can order yours. There's a link in the show notes. You can get them now, and they'll be shipping in the next month or so coming up soon. Also, for every episode, we don't need to a cause of theologist choosing. And this week, Crystal asked that it go to No Canyon Hills, which is a nonprofit in LA attempting to conserve a large swath of the Bredugo Mountains, which is Fernandino Tatavium and Gabriolino Tongvaland, and an out-of-state developer wants to tear up 300 acres of oaks and native plants and animals to build luxury homes and is threatening local ecology.

And it's even crucial habitat for L.A.'s threatened Cougar population, including La Tuna Puma, hashtag La Tuna Puma. If you listen to the P22 episode, you know that's kind of a big deal to have a Puma in the area. So you can support their fight to stop this development at nocanionhills.org. You can also sign the petition there. It costs you no dollars to do it. Again, that is nocanionhills.org. That is linked in the show notes and thanks to sponsors of the show for making that donation

possible in Crystal's Honor. Okay, so if you're a patron of the show, via Patreon.com suchologies. For one hot dollar a month, you can submit questions, and I may read your beautiful name with my filthy mouth, such as this common question asked by Rachel Swenson, Kaylee Jones, Kelly Shaver, Nick McCasht, A. Z. M, Great Dayn Lady, and Lindsay, and Storm and the Ariel Mapper want to know how can we attract native bees to our yards? Biggest thing, plant native plants. Native plants. Yeah, and also I really encourage this, I really want to start getting into this soon.

I encourage people to create native landscaping bridges. So it's not an actual bridge, it's just encourage your neighbors to put like a small area of native plants as well. So these, not just bees, but native creatures have areas to travel between. And it helps increase the biodiversity of these creatures as well. Oh, that's a great idea. I hadn't thought about that either. Again, while the arts project.org, great resource, you can follow David's work on social media and all the people he amplifies as well as the US-based zircees.org.

But what if you are not in the United States, such as patrons, Steven Moxley, and some bee lovers from Deanna Nanda, Josie Chase Renee Dykstorm, and fellow Aussie? Tisha Kut wants to know if you have any native plant ideas for places like Australia, or people all over the globe, obviously you're not going to be like, in Melbourne, none of this. Because there are people listening to this in so many countries. What's the best way to find out what to plant? What I always recommend is going to native gardening stores or locations.

A lot of them now have websites where you can actually put in your zip code and find plants that are native to exactly where you are. I'm sure that applies in other countries as well, but yeah, instead of going to these large stores, just visit your local garden stores and ask them. Again, zercees.org covers a US in case that's interest. And this next question was asked by truly hospitable patrons, Andrea Delvin, Gretchen Schroeder, Beauty and Banks,

Jenna Kongden, Gretchen Schrader, Katie King, Becky this Assy-Cee-Gress scientist, Rachel Swenson, Josie Chase, and Ariel Van Sant. Be hotels. Are they actually helpful? I have a be hotel that was a gift in the art. Couple Mason bees went in there, but I don't know that I'm even up keeping it well, so feel free to go off. The floor is yours.

I'd say they're more helpful to people than they are to bees. I compare it to, this isn't a one-to-one comparison, but I would say they're helpful to bees if you clean them out regularly. A lot of bee hotels aren't designed to be cleaned and it's kind of like, again, not a one-to-one comparison, but it's like if you have a doghouse outside, your dog lives in it 24-7

and you've absolutely never cleaned it out, your dog can get sick. The same thing can happen with bees. So it's always good when you have a bee hotel to make sure that the openings in it, the columns are the appropriate size for the bees in your area, that you can take them apart and clean them.

There's a lot of YouTube videos that actually have instructions on how to clean these out and disinfect them. Listen, I know you know how to YouTube be hotel instructions, but maybe you're operating a forklift, maybe you're feeding a baby donkey, maybe it's not a good time. So I looked it up for us, and I watched a video with aggressively upbeat stock music, and I harvested some steps. Okay, so in mid-September, remove these used read or tubes from your beeholtal.

They should be filled with mud plugs and tiny sleeping babies and cocoons. Then you take your razor blade into the front and into the tube and you twist it and that'll split the tube. Usually there's like a bamboo read or a straw. So now there's split in into and you can see across sections. So you can remove and sort the cocoons. You take out the pollen and any debris, remove any pests. And you can even wash your mason beacacons in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes. If you like, you dry them off. You put your cocoons in a B-safed, which is like a cardboard box inside a metal box with air holes.

Keep them safe, let them breathe. You want to layer some paper towels in between them and then you place the bee safe in the fridge till about February and then you can put them in the attic of your be house or a drawer if it has one. Hopefully that drawer has a hole or two for some egress. They're gonna wake up, they're gonna emerge when mother nature beckons them with warm weather and flowers and horniness. Also that it has comes with a drawer because female bees can actually control

whether or not they're laying a male or female egg. So they'll typically lay male eggs closer to the entrance of the burrow and females closer to the back. So after you're finished cleaning them out, you don't wanna put them back in the cavities because you might put them in the wrong order. You want to put them in a drawer that's in the B house and they'll just close or exit when they're supposed to. But yeah, if you have a healthy native ecosystem, you don't need a B house. The B house is that I

do recommend if you want to get one, uh, we B house on Instagram. It's W E E B E. It's designed to be cleaned. It comes with a drawer, I think they're great. Also, I was like, why are male be such mama's boys? And it turns out that they are laid closest to the exit so that they can come out first and then they can sit outside, biting their time for the ladies to emerge, kind of like an awkward prom date with slimy palms waiting at the bottom of your staircase. Also, they may use this time to try to kill each other,

giving females fewer options, which is romantic to bees maybe. Also, with all this be hotel talk, I do wanna read a question from a patron, Ariel Vansant, who said, I managed to finally attract Mason bees. I've had a little house for them for years, and I never had any takers.

This year, I noticed a swarm of them by the house and they filled it up. I got them two more houses and those are all full too. Now what do I do? Do I keep adding houses? Do I need to tend to them? Okay Ariel, first thing you should do. According to experts, it's throw a fucking party because that rolls. Also get the bee hotels with the removable straws or the reads. You

want to clean it in the fall to make sure that there aren't pollen mites or beetle larvae or earwigs in there snacking on your baby convention. And overall, I say if the Bs like it and there's a need for it and you like it, you become a real estate baron in B hospitality. And are the things that people worried about with honey bees like mites and colony collapse disorder? Are those threats to native populations as well? So different mites, but yeah, at a bee hotel, you can have my infestations there. So colony collapse disorder comes from veroamites, where honey bees will get like a veroamite will like basically latch onto a developing honey bee. So that actually can spread to bumble bees. So there's some honey bees that are carriers, but they're not

physically impacted. So basically a lot of honey bees are in urban areas. So they'll actually visit flowers and they'll infect the pollen with the deformed wing virus. And it's been found that bumble bees will actually visit those same flowers. And it's been found that bumblebees will actually visit those same flowers and since they're collecting pollen, it's developing larvae, they're developing bees that are eating it. So we're seeing bumblebees with tiny wings as well.

And a way to combat that, besides not having honeybees around, is to plant more plant diversity. So it's less likely that these bumblebees will develop these small wings. How in general do native bee-offician autos and appreciators feel about beekeeping in urban settings? Like people with hives on top of Brooklyn apartments and stuff, what's it feeling on that? I'll just say the people that I talk to, it's not super positive.

I'll also say I feel like there's so many honeybees that are getting out into nature. I literally spend time in the middle of nowhere in the desert and there's just honeybees everywhere. Sometimes I'd step out of my car and I just hear this hum. And it was like the only flowering trees around would just have swarms of honeybees and you would see less native bees when the honeybees showed up. I think like a great example.

If you go to the Channel Islands, I'm gonna go pack. I'll just say Santa Rosa, because that's the one I've visited. There's no honeybees. How did that happen? They just didn't make it out there? There's no honeybees,

but there's like the diversity of native bees there is just crazy. Wow. Yeah. What a great place to shoot. Yes. Yeah. I actually, I went there looking for a specific species of bee for my book that I'm working on.

I found it and I was just, but also while I was there, I was like, oh my gosh, there's so many native bees here. Oh my god. You were in a book. Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm working on a ABC book and based on it's like bee. So it's California bees and every single letter in the book is a different species or subspecies of B. Yeah, so they're in different environments like there's the pretty to minimum, the sidewalk, there's one on an island, there's one on top of a mountain, there's also stories about them, like what's happening to them after fires, competing with honey bees, after fire or bait mint. Yeah, there's I think eight bees right now where they're the only photos of living representatives of their species. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. How does that book come out? Well, I'm hoping to get all of the photos this year. I actually got a grant from Nat Geo on that one. That's amazing. So I'm really excited and it's like really super validating. Does that mean that they publish it? Hopefully.

Literary agents of the world reach out to Crystal Hickman. I'm looking at you, WME, UTA, CAA, scoop this lady up. That's gonna be a great book. Yeah, it's gonna be a coffee table book. Ah, I love it. So I was gonna self-publish it. And I applied for the Explorer's grant last year and I was like, there's no way

because there's so many people applying for this. Actually, it was the same day my Kickstarter was funded, was the day I found out I got became an explorer. And I was like, this is amazing. Were you like suddenly believed in astrology? Wait a second. It's so weird. The stars aligned. How did you celebrate? What do you even do? Well, like, I called like three of my militarist friends and like just freaked the hell out. It was really validating and it's kind of like a bucket list thing because I've been, I've wanted to be a national geographic

since I was like six. I mean, it's the dream. It's the dream. It is. Can you imagine you and Omaha by the Rosebushes knowing like, oh, yes, you're gonna get an electronic message that says, yeah, like we love the work here. Yeah.

And I love that you had to really ask yourself, like what was missing in your life that you wanted to get back to and that you let yourself go do a bunch of things to see what felt like. Yeah. And I think it's like really good to just do things that you just might be really bad at just because they pop into, because I feel like that everyone has ideas that pop into their head, but they don't like follow them through. Yeah. But I also feel like it is kind of like a privilege to be able to follow things through because

I was only able to actually do that when I started making more money because I feel like a lot of time you can't do your hobbies if you're like concentrating on money or like paying all of your bills. Yeah. I do feel like very privileged to be able to follow through with my hobbies and then actually turn my hobbies into a career. That's just insane. And on top of that, that it helps other people learn and gets them inspired.

And also the freaking beasts. Yeah. Like win, win, win. It is. And yes, well, sometimes she might get a sun rash from the desert elements or lay her body down accidentally upon thousands of biting ants. I hope that she always sleeps easy knowing that she's helping save the bees who need her the most. Speaking of sleeping easy. On the topic of be hotels, Kent Durvin wants to know they say,

I have drilled holes in scrap lumber untreated and it seems like a lot of sizes get used, but when should I redrill or discard them? What I always recommend is instead of just using like the bare holes that you drill, I would only drill sizes where if you have like a paper straw that could fit into them. So I would always put paper straws into them and then when they're closed up, take the paper straws out, unwrap them, clean up the cells, and then if you can get a drawer for a view hotel, I wouldn't store them inside because it would

probably throw off when they would be closed, just put straws in there. But yeah, it's kind of hard to do with like some people dro, really, really tiny holes. So I'd maybe just like, personally, I would just avoid those. Because it really technically isn't beneficial to the bees. It's more so for people. Oh, this is another thing too. And this is a mix up between like honey bees and native bees. People put water out for bees.

That's for honey bees. Oh. Yeah, so if you put water dishes out, you're gonna be attracting more honey bees to your yard, not native bees. What about fountains and things like that? Same? Yeah, so a native bee, and that's actually in my cards too,

and you could go through them, but it's like basics for bees. Like you don't have to do this, you don't have to do this. But yeah, native bees get all of their hydration from plants. I didn't know that. Yeah, so. Yes, I checked into this, and honey bees drink water on hot days, because they need to take

it back to the whole colony and they air condition the hive by drinking, spitting at the door and fanning it with their wings, acting like a swamp cooler. Native bees do not do this, but butterflies sip on water too, but typically it's the salt and the minerals that they're after. However, having a water feature, like a little burbling solar-powered fountain with some kind of moving water can be attractive to all kinds of local wildlife. So you have to decide if you want an aquiscape that brings all the bees to the art, as well as other creatures like birds and frogs and mammals. Yesterday I saw a big-ass coyote broad daylight in my driveway, lapping from a watering can that I used to catch our HVAC condensation.

And per-a-wild life conservation protocol, I hazed it by screaming at it for its own good. And I felt like a real bitch, but keeping them scared of humans saves them from cars. So I'm a bitch with a purpose. Now on that note, a lot of folks, KJ, Macnut Cookie, Yakenyan wanted to know about conservation. And KJ said, this might be a super question, but is the decline of native bees related to the decline of butterflies? I noticed the growing absence of butterflies ever since the bees in my neighborhood disappeared when it comes to habitat. Is it just they're both evictions of the same thing? I would say it's kind of a complicated question to answer,

but it's also not a stupid question at all. I would say they are connected. Land loss is up until I think like two or three years ago, was the biggest factor for the decline in bees, but it's also a huge factor for a decline in a lot of creatures as well. Now its climate change is actually number one. And these are things that are impacting all of nature.

So I wouldn't be surprised. I don't really work with butterflies, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same things weren't impacting both of them. And we did have questions about that. First time question, Oscar, a lot of bearabash. And Oliver Kellis wanted to know how are the native bees affected by the climate crisis? And is it the extreme weather, is it the nesting spaces, is it the food sources?

Lotta also said, my grandma has salicopa, violatia, visit her garden every year and just wanted to say how pretty it is. Oh, okay. So that's the carpenter bee, which one was it? What's it, the salarina? I think it's salicopa, salarina. I think that might have been the old name for that bee. Oh, okay. Oh, that's the Carpenter bee, which one was it? Was it the Sanerina? I think it's Silicope of Sanerina. I think that might have been the old name for that bee.

Oh, okay. Oh, that's good to know. I think they had a species name change like four years ago. A rebrand of Sanerina. Yeah, a rebrand. It seems like a big deal to rename a species, right? Oh my god, it happens a lot. It really, it happens a lot.

How come? So, okay, a lot of reasons. So, okay, for example, sometimes if it's like higher up in the taxonomic table, I guess, sometimes let's say there's a militarist working in California and then there's another one working in Nevada and let's say one of them has, I did, the species, this name here,

but it's the exact same species in another state but it has a different name but it's because these two people aren't working together so it has two different names or it could be someone just found a male here and a female here, and they didn't know that they're the same species, so they have different names. Or a lot of times now, there's like barcoding being done with DNA testing, specifically with bumblebees. It's happening a lot where they're like, these two species look really similar.

They could be the same species, or they could not be, but there's more genetic testing that needs to be done. I actually have that listed here a lot. It's just it's all over the place, but yeah, taxonomy is like ever evolving and changing and it's just yeah, I've started noticing like the same things happening with plants because of their relation to bees. I'm looking at plants a lot and I'm like, well, this the name keeps changing. Yeah. I didn't even know that they could do that. That's really fascinating. I'm also trying to figure out, I still don't understand who decides that it officially has changed and then everyone's like, okay. Yeah, especially if someone's like, oh man, I named that after my professor.

Yeah, and I've seen people release papers where they're like, no, these are all the same thing now and then people don't agree with them and they're like, so it doesn't change. I guess, I don't know. What else they do? The arm wrestle? Have a dance battle then people don't agree with them and they're like so it doesn't change. I guess I don't know what else they do. Did the arm wrestle? Have a dance battle? I don't know. I don't know. I just kind of go along with whoever says like, oh, it's changed out.

Okay. So typically names will get changed when someone realizes that they have some kind of double up situation or if a species gets oopsie daisied and put into a different genus. And remember, when Linnae into a different genus. And remember, when Linnaeus proposed the genus species naming model, everyone thought that there were just plants and animals. They were like, what's a fungi? There was not a DNA sequencer that you could plug into your electronic laptop for genetic IDs in the middle of a rainforest.

So things are still a little wiggly, taxonomically. And I am so certain that scientists have punched each other like kangaroos over the stuff. I can practically taste the blood on my teeth thinking about it. And that's gone on for years, according to the dusty 1988 publication New Insights into the Nature of Science by philosophy professor William Bechtel, who put the following ponderings to paper. He wrote,

It is often those most similar to your own, but are your most serious competitors, and against which you struggle most. This is exemplified by the fights between scientists over names. Naming an entity is one way to mark your idea of that entity, letting someone else's name be attached to the same entity may signify that you have lost out to someone else. Which is a good thing to remember when you hate someone and you don't know why. Are they too much like you?

And are they your competition? Or do you just hate yourself? And are these questions you want to think about when you're listening to a podcast about bees? No. Let's move on. Well, a's move on. Well, some folks, a head family, chase dinemaker,

Felicia Chandler, Maya Rupinarin, Jenny Rounds wanted to know if there are any good field guides or good sources. And yes, there are. And one of them's called Native Bees of the Western United States Volume One, Lincoln the Show notes for that. So yeah, my flashcards, definitely.

But I would also say too, a lot of times when people start out with native bees, they try to over-idee as in try to ID them the species. I would try to figure out the family's first. So there's six families in the US, try to figure out which bee goes into which family. And then after you get the family, try and get to the genus. Because I see so many people just try to ID to species and it's like, sometimes it's a fly. Yeah, and it's just, it happens, I mean, I do understand that it is kind of difficult when you're first starting out. So I would recommend besides my flashcards. I naturalist is great.

There's this book called The Bees in Your Backyard. That's the book that I started with. And that really helped me get to families. There's also Bees of the World by Charles Mishner. It has a honey bee on the cover for some reason, but it's about like, it'll really help you with native bees. I think it's advertising. Oh, that's funny.

I naturalist, which is obviously free. There's also bug guide, which is another website discoverlife.org is another great website I would use discover life if you're Much more familiar with species and also like different body parts of bees So it'll help you like ID things to species. Well that in my as words also asked by Chase Timebucker at the head family Felicia Chandler, Jenny Rounds and Maya Rupenarene my I want to know how can be Ginners fan-learned, chiny rounds, and Maya Rupenarene. Maya wanted to know, how can be a Guinness? Learned to tell the differentbies apart,

but what key features should they look for? I think for me, I'm like, what colors it's but, which is, I mean, that can actually help you with some species. Okay. Yeah. I would say start off figuring out how to tell males and females apart.

Okay. Also, telling bees from washt and flies is a really good place to start because people keep sending me fly in wasps pictures. If it has short antenna, eyes that take up pretty much the whole head, only two wings, that's a fly. If you see longer antenna and four wings, smaller eyes, it could be a wasp or a bee. If it's collecting pollen on the back legs or underside of the abdomen, that is going to be a bee. If it's collecting pollen on the back legs or under side of the abdomen, that is going to be a bee. If you want to get more specific, you can look at the veination of the wings,

which can be really specific. Also, a lot of wasps have a ocular sinus in their eyes. It's like a little like a concave sort of niche. Some bees have that, but it's not as extreme. Also, a lot of times the way bees are sleeping, you can distinguish them most wasps perch, most sleeping bees clamped by their mandibles, but you do see some bees perching as well. A lot of times people say, oh, it's the amount of hair on the body, but that doesn't really apply.

There's so many exceptions, so I wouldn't say that one. But yeah, just carrying how they carry pollen. Yeah, actually, how they carry pollen can actually help you distinguish between families of bees. Really like some have different saddle baggies. Yeah, yeah. So some like honey bees and bumblebees, also some Prudita, they'll have like balls of pollen

on their back legs. Also if they carry it on the abdomen, that'll help you distinguish families. And tin-eye, you can tell, based just on tin-eye, if you're looking at a male or a female bee. So males typically have longer antennae. They also have 13 antennae segments. Females have 12, so if you're able to count, that could help.

If the bee doesn't have any pollen-carrying structures, it could be a male, but it could also be a kleptoparasitic bee. Ooh. Also, behaviors are a really good way to tell males and females apart. If you see a bee that's never landing, it's just kind of fluttering around a bush a lot. That's a male probably looking for a female. Ah. Or if they're asleep in a flower. If they're asleep in a flower, yes. Why are these bees sleeping so much? I know that

they're very busy, but I, especially during the day, that's one of those things where I, it doesn't even occur to me that bees are sleeping or need to take naps. Like my dog has been passed out for the last, you know, 20 minutes, but every creature needs to sleep, but do they sleep like an hour here, I went off on honor? They could, most bees sleep at night, so just kind of like the same hours of people,

but they're cold-blooded. So they need, like, it's cloudy or kind of cold, you're less likely to see bees out because they need the sun to warm themselves up so they'll be sleeping longer. It worked out in our favor though that it was overcast today. Yeah, that really helps because I didn't expect to see, I thought, oh, it's overcast, we might not see any, but little did we know that it was just naptown. Overcast days are great because it could still be warm, but the sun's not out, so you'll

also see, like we saw some female bees as well, but they were slower, so they were easier to photograph. And this actually brings me to some questions from listeners about sleepy bees, Connie Connie Bobani, Carolyn Myers, first-year-old stress-gror-store, and Julia Cape wanted to know, well, Carolyn Myers said, speaking of bee butts, because Connie Connie Bobani, I love that name'm such a good name. Talked about sleeping inside of flowers, but... Caroline, Myers wants to know speaking bebutts. Do bees really fall asleep in flowers with their cute butts sticking out? Is there a reason why bebutts are so easy to see?

Do they sleep with their butts out usually? Or is that only when they've been digging in there for pollen and nectar? I think there's this meme of a bumblebee butt sticking out of a flower. And I don't know the context of that photo, but I think it was a female, so I'm pretty sure she was nectaring in the flower and not actually sleeping.

Oh, she was just under the hood. Yeah, I think that's what she was doing, but her butt was sticking out. Oh my gosh, wait, what was the question? Do they do bee butts stick out? Yeah, do they sleep with their butts out? Usually, or probably not. They usually don't.

So normally, I can't remember what the center of the flower is called. Is it the stamen? I think so, but I'll check it out. Okay, to stop yelling at us, the circle of stocks inside a flower that are all covered in pollen, those are stamens. And the rod in the middle connected to a flower's ovary is called a stigma. And I was like, stigma? That's not the right word.

It wasn't stigma like stigma, and both the shame stigma and the flower stigma come from the same root word for a pointed stick, because sometimes imprisoned people were marked with pointed sticks like a brand. Also, there's the word stigma. It all comes from the same thing. And no, I didn't know all of this because we haven't done a flowers episode yet, which would be anthology. Is that right? No, anthology is a collection. What? Wait, okay, both anthology, the study of flowers and collection come from the same word meaning to collect. So yes, I can do an anthology of anthological facts about this stigma of not knowing what a stigma is.

That is the part we were talking about. Yeah, so normally bees sleep wrapped around like the center of the flower. Flowers that open and close, a lot of times you'll just see them like tucked in. Sometimes you'll see them kind of face up. So when the flower opens, you'll see their face first. But yeah, normally do I see a lot of bee buds when they're sleeping? I don't But yeah, normally, do I see a lot of bee butts

when they're sleeping? I don't think so. You do get to see a lot of bee butts, though, right? I see a lot of bee butts. Yeah, I get more bee butt photos and face photos. Yeah. It's funny, because bees have a lot of, like, they have five eyes.

So I try to hide from their eyes. Like, I normally, if I'm like sneaking up on a bee, even though I'm like super huge, I'll have like a piece of grass or like a stem in between us. So I kind of sneak up on a bee, even though I'm like super huge, I'll like have like a piece of grass or like a stem in between us, so I kind of sneak up behind the stem. And it like works oddly well. So all it takes is that little block of that.

Like that little thing. And I don't know how it works so well, but I do it like almost and it works so well. And then I just kind of move around it and then they don't fly away as much. But yeah, I just, I sneak up behind the thinnest things. Oh my god, that's so cute. Yeah. Nat Shafer says, every spring, mason bees find their way through a wall vent and into my preschool daughter's bedroom. These ones never seem to live long. We try rescuing them by taking them outside

or if it's totally cold by getting them fresh flowers and water, bringing them inside. But any idea, are they distorted, seeking shelter? Are they drunk? Have you heard of native bees that are that nest inside? Sometimes, any idea what to do? I have not heard of native bees nesting inside. I would double check to see if they actually are mason bees first. Okay. So they do nest in cavities.

I would look for the cavity. I don't know how they're getting inside. That's interesting. Maybe block up an entrance of some sort of... Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like a very specific problem, too. Yeah, it does. But we loved it. And yes, mason bees tend to be solitary, but if there's a nesting hole that exists, this pretty tight, many might build their own little nest within it. And not, I got some news for you. It might not be that every spring, they find their way in. They're probably their year round,

just hibernating through the chilly winter, drinking eggnog, binging skins, hoping for a make-out scene. And then when things warm up outside, they're like, what's up, Roomi? But typically, the females don't sting unless they're absolutely pissed, like, because you squeeze them, or you added them to a two-active text thread that they feel bad leaving.

But for the patrons who asked about bee swarms, I'm looking at you, Gabrielle Lingenovic and Julia Cape, you're probably seeing swarms of European honeybees, which break off into groups when the older queen gets ousted from the nest. They're like, you're dead to us. And she's like, I'm fucking out of here. And half of her subjects are like, we're with her. They leave out of loyalty or love or fear or whatever. And then that swarm is looking for a new castle

and to heal their hearts. Being like, we gotta find a new place to live man, this sucks. That's what you're probably seeing. But what if you have builder bees, carpenter bees? patrons, sunny brimsy, Valerie Bertha, Michelle Hatsko, and Mary of the Great Fruit asked about seeing them, booping them, ignoring them. Others are not fans of the carpenter bee. And for that, I offer my condolences because I cannot comprehend you. They're so cute. I want to hold tiny hands with them.

A lot of people though don't have an individual problem, Kate, Munker, Jen, Ashley Kahnun, Julie Bingham, wanted to know a little bit about carpenter bees and any way to lure them away from like a swing set or a cow. So like, so carpenter bees, I don't know if I would classify them technically as you social, they basically kind of have like a family structure inside the colonies

that they're creating wood. What I would maybe recommend doing is just providing other resources for them to nest in because they really like wood that's not treated. They love yucca, they love fence posts, fallen logs, things like that. But yeah, like a lot of times because they sort of have a community, they'll come back. But also, they don't do any structural damage.

They just do unsightly damage. Okay. So, you're a swing set or your deck's not going to fall apart because of carpet abuse? No. Oh. Well, that's great. Then, do you just got yourself a dual-purpose B hotel? Yeah, right?

Basically a self-made B hotel. I looked it up and okay, people are divided on carbon or B destruction, okay? And carbon or B's do have to chew wood with their faces. So naturally they prefer the softer stuff, your pines, your cedar, your red wood. But if you have a hardwood like oak, they may chew into it if it's decomposing a little or untreated. And yeah, we have a whole episode

called psychology about lumber. But carpenter bees, they have made foot long baby tunnels into wood. And according to a Texas A&M pamphlet that I just read, succeeding generations of carpenter bees can keep inheriting and expanding old tunnels, extending them several meters like a nepotbaby bee mansion. But is that likely? Not that likely. Also, a carpenter bee can sting you if she's a lady and if you've really enmaddened her.

And unlike a honey bee, her stinger isn't barbed, so she can just keep doing it again and again, kind of like a bottomless slot machine. And it hurts about the same as a bumblebee sting, which hurts way less than a bikini wax. So let him live. Last question I'll ask from patrons, Helen, first time question asker,

wants to know, I think I already know what they are. Your thoughts on the B movie, starring a male honeybee. Very B-bentzin. So you see Soda's build on a sidewalk and you don't drink it? Oh! He's a little bee. He's not bothering anybody.

Get outta here, you creep! Yeah, that's so annoying. You know what, don't like, it's not just like ants, like the bugs live, like all these movies. For some reason, it's always centered around male characters. They're always doing something that they never do. Right?

Yeah. It's like, I feel like once you get to know any subject, whenever a movie comes out about it, you just get really frustrated. Oh, yeah. But yeah, there's like, can you like also maybe like, just female centric, doesn't live in a hive, not a honeybee, maybe somewhat accurate

to like something they would normally do. I mean, yeah. Just like open the wiki page before. Just find a draft. Yeah. Just talk to someone else. Oh, have you seen my garden of a thousand bees? No.

Oh my god. So this guy during the pandemic was a documentary filmmaker and couldn't go anywhere because it was obviously a pandemic. He had a native like yard like yours. So he's like, let me just make a documentary about the native bees in my yard. And it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. And I recommend it to everybody.

Roll tape. In the spring of 2020, as the country goes into lockdown, outside the garden is coming alive. As a wildlife filmmaker, I knew there were revelations here that could be just as amazing as anything I'd ever filmed. These bees just go, you know. Susanna Green, first-time question asker, also, in terms of... We always like to ask, like, what's the best representation in pop culture, about what's known, how you feel about the bringing home a baby bumblebee song.

Are you familiar with it? I am very familiar with that song, and I haven't thought about it since I think elementary school. I don't really have strong opinions about it. Okay, it's a cute song. I have one child and she is a dog, so I did not remember the song, but I looked it up and it goes, I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee, won't my mom be so proud of me. I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee. Ow, it's tongue-me. And then the stances go, I'm squishing up my baby bumblebee. I'm licking up my baby bumblebee. I'm throwing up my baby bumblebee. I'm wiping up my baby bumblebee. I'm ringing out my baby bumblebee. In terms of native bee representation, what could be more memorable than a child, why did I do innocent? Smashing a bee with its bare hands, eating its guts,

and barfing them at you. So yeah, Crystal, when it comes to the PR of Indigenous Bs, we're all counting on you. We need you. I'm working on an animated short about a B. Yeah. And I'm just hired a character designer. She's halfway done with the main character.

Are you serious? And I'm so excited for it. I'm hoping to have the main three character design and then I'm going to start pitching it. And people, because I finished the script, it's like super short. That's great. Yeah. Agents holler upon her, but life can't all be nectar and flowers, right? What sucks about bees? There's got to be something that sucks about photographing them. I can already tell it's got to be either allergies, a sun rash, or getting stun on the abdomen from something.

Also, okay. So this is for the cards too. Okay. Oh my gosh. So like I was taking really beautiful, I thought beautiful photos of bees. But then I was like, you know, I realize not all of these photos are great for ID. So like sometimes I need like a complete side view of the bee, but I need them to turn their head just slightly, so I can get a good face shot as well. It would be really great if bee spoke English. So I could just kind of say like, hey, don't fly away, I just need one picture of you.

Cause I've stood by bushes before lately, I've been standing by them longer for like 15 hours, and I just need them to kind of pose slightly differently or just realize I'm not trying to eat them. I'm sure people have called you a bee whisperer so much, and you're like, I wish I could whisper to the bee since I like, over here to the left, had chin down.

Oh my gosh, yeah, no. And then like also to like sometimes when I do get that pose, their antennae is like slightly down, so it covers up the facial feature that I'm interested in. And then like also to I've noticed like when I get that perfectly and the antenna is pointed right at the camera, people are like, why does it only have one antenna? I'm like, oh, jeez. But yeah, I wish I could communicate with them better.

To be a director, like America's next-out model, but for bees, like, whatever the thing, you know. Do you know that all of America is rooting for you? Do you know that? If only you could direct. I would love that. Or if I could speak bee, like, whichever that? If only you could direct. I would love that. Or if I could speak B, like, whichever way. Which I would like. Which I would like.

Yeah, one of those. What about the best thing? The best thing? I think that would be like really personal, depending on who you're talking to. But I would say for me, the best thing about B's is that they got me back into nature and they got me into places where I think I said this

before where nothing is human-centric. Like you really don't matter there and it's just it's kind of nice when things just don't revolve around you or any other people that you know it's just you're just kind of sitting there in the moment enjoying yourself. And we just don't ever do that. Don't, yeah. But yeah, that's why I really try and go out every single day and just sit somewhere and just enjoy quiet. Well, it's inspiring me even just to take my iPhone and go out there. You don't even need attachments for your phones anymore.

But yeah, just go out in your yard. You could experience the exact same thing. Just lay on the ground. Do you get a lot of DMs from people asking about bees or showing you bees? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I get a lot of photos where people like, can you ID this or tell me more about this, but I really enjoy it.

I mean, how contagious is she? Y'all, even after we were done with the main interview, we sat and chatted for hours. I was just love hanging out. Do we love her? We love her. And volume one, congratulations on volume one! Yes! I'm excited. I have four sets coming. Do you? Yeah, I bought four. Oh, I know. I want one. But then I also know so many people that I'm going to want to give them to. Oh. And especially if I have friends who have just moved to LA when people just moved to your city,

it's so fun to get them a book about local flora or fauna to make them more excited. And I mostly do it so that my friends don't hate LA and move away. I'm like, I swear we've got great bugs, we've got great everything. Oh, we do. We do.

I have several copies of the Wild LA book for that reason where, oh my gosh, I love that book. It's a great book. We have an episode about this book and it's called Field Trip, How to Change Your Life via the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. And it includes excerpts read by the authors, including etymology, ghastly lankans. So Wild LA, excellent book, get it for everyone you know who lives near LA. I keep dead in my car with me.

Oh, it's so good. Yeah. I'm on my second batch of me. Oh, it's so good. Yeah. I'm on my second batch of them because I give them to neighbors or when people move to LA. It's a really good idea. And I feel like your deck will be like that.

I really hope so. I really, I put so much thought into it. So I really hope everyone really enjoys it and like learns things from it. Oh, congratulations. Thank you so much for doing this. This has been a joy. Yeah.

Well, anytime you want to photograph bees, you know we got them. Yeah, you do. Come right on over. You have a great native yard in your backyard. You did a really good job. Thanks to David too for that. Anytime you want to come by, it's open for you.

I love that. Thank you so much. So ask enthusiastic experts, basic bee questions, and then turn off your phone and go stare at a plant for it. Again, you can find Crystal Hickman at B-Sip on Instagram and her website and other socials are linked in the show notes alongside a very easy link to get a deck of her flashcards and definitely have a look at her photography, tell her you love her work. We are at Alligies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Allie Ward on both. We have Kid Friendly Classroom Save episodes

called Smallegies that are available in this feed, or for free at allieward.com slash Smallegies. Thank you Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas and Mercedes-Mateland for working on those. Emily White of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts Aaron Talbert admins the Alligies Podcast Facebook group with assist from Bonnie Dutch and Tandon Feltis, Kelly R. Dwyer works at our website

new L. Delworth does our scheduling, Susan Hale does so, so much including handles all of our merch, again available at ologiesmerch.com, marked David Christians and assistant edits, and Laurel McCall assisted on research for this episode a bit. Jared Sleeper of Mind Chem Media is a friend to the bees and to bees and lead editor, who we know and love is Mercedes-Mateland of mainland audio. Nick Thorben wrote the theme music, and if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. This week, oh, it's then I'll be in Philly for the week.

If anyone's going to the ISD conference, it's an education conference. I'm doing a talk next Tuesday morning. Also, this week I made a text talk about being a landlord and having to evict a single mother, but it was actually a video about a spider that I had to put outside who had made a web in our bedroom. And I was like, I gotta put it outside.

But I think some people didn't see the whole thing and actually thought that I was a landlord and I was evicting someone, which is not true. It was just a video about a spider relocation. But I worried about it and then I deleted the video just in case. But anyway, I hope the spider is thriving as are you? Okay, go look at Beats for Bye. It's a bumblebee.

It's furry. It's about this big.