MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

This is the first of the vegetable track. And we have an awesome speaker today named Ana Heck. Ana works at MSU and she comes to us to talk about pollinator stewardship for farmers, gardeners, and growers. It's all yours now. Fantastic. Thanks Ben for introducing me. My name is Ana Heck. I'm an Apriculture Extension Educator here at Michigan State University. I work a lot with beekeepers, and I also work with people who want to support pollinator health. And that includes people like farmers, growers, gardeners, and the general public. All MSU extension programs are open to everyone. I'm going to get us started with a guessing game. I'm going to show you a photo, and I would love for you to guess. Is it a honeybee? Is it a bumblebee? Is it an other bee? By other bee, I mean it's a bee, but it's not a honeybee or bumblebee. Is it a fly or is it a was The whole point of the game is that we'll get some of them wrong, but it's fun to try to guess. Here we go. Showing a photo, what do we think this insect is? All right. Good. I'm seeing some stuff. Come through the chat here, honey. Good. All right. Yes, this is a honey bee and it is on a blueberry blossom. How about this one? All right, I'm seeing a few guesses for wasps. Yes, this is a wasp, but there are a lot of people in Michigan who see these and think they're honey bees. Good job for those of you who knew that this one was a wasp. All right, How about this one? Good. I'm seeing some guess. Thanks for guessing. All right. So I have a couple of guesses for flies and a couple for other bees. Sometimes when people see this green color, they don't know that it's a bee. But bees can be all different kinds of color, including this really pretty green metallic color. This is a green metallic swap bee and some of you knew that. Thanks for guessing. All right, what do we think about this one? Honey bee, bumblebee, Other fly was oh good. We're getting lots of different guesses here. I've seen fly, wasp. All right. So this is actually a fly, it's sometimes called like a flower fly or circuit fly. And they some clues that it's a fly that flies tend to have big eyes and short antenny. There are a lot of flies that have this mimicry where they have the same color or pattern as many of our bees and wasp with this yellow and black stripe pattern. They have this mimicry. They look like bees or wasp, especially if you're not looking at close, but they're actually flies. Another thing you might notice is that bees tend to have hairier bodies than flies. But we'll often see flies visiting flowers, we'll go for the nectar. But even though it's yellow and black, it's a fly, it can't sing. All right, What do we think about this one? All right, Lots of guesses here for bumblebee, Very good. What do you think about this one? Yeah. All right. All are catching on. This is another fly, very good. How about this one? A little hard to see. I know I saw guesses for other fly, and this is another in the Drena species group. How about this one here? Very good. This is another one here. Honey bee or fly. This is another fly, another one again. Look at those really big eyes, short and tinny. But definitely just by the coloration, it does look like a B. What do we think about this one? All right, I'm seeing other bumblebee, This is a carpenter. Carpenter bees do look a little bit like bumblebees. They're pretty similar in size and body shape the bigger bees. But Carpenter bees tend to have a black abdomen. The segments of the bees are the head and then the thorax is in the middle, and then the abdomen. With a lot of our bumblebees, we'll see some striping on their abdomens. This is a carpenter. What do I think about this one? Very good. So this is a was how about here? Very good. This one. This one maybe a little bit tricky because you can't really see very easily. All right? I'm seeing lots of different guesses here. This is a bumblebee, I understand you probably can't see very well, But a clue that it's probably a bee is that it has so much pollen on it. Bees have branch hairs that the pollen clings to. Sometimes. If you see a lot of pollen on an insect, that's a clue that it might be a bee. All right, What do we think about this one? All right. Good. I didn't check everyone. This is my last one. It's a trick question. It wasn't any of the options I gave you. It's actually a hummingbird moth. I think it's really cool because it still does have that mimicry of the yellow and black stripiness. It may be to some predators, looks like a beer was. But if you look closely at it, we can see that it doesn't really have that same body shape as a has that moth like body. Thank you all for guessing, for participating. The things that I'm planning on covering here are the full pollinators in enhancing crop yields and the life cycles of common pollinators. We're going to talk about the difference between a pesticides toxicity and risk debes. We're going to judge a pesticide application risk debes from the toxicity and residual toxicity sections of the label. And we're going to take steps to reduce poisoning of bees in high exposure scenarios. A lot of this presentation comes from a national group of people who work on managed pollinator protection plans. That includes people like me, who are extension educators, people who work in the department of agriculture and other roles to support pollinator health. And then some of this work also comes from our work specifically here in Michigan on our pollinator protection plan. We're going to start with understanding our pollinators a little bit better. Bees can vary greatly When people think of bees, they maybe think of honey bees or bumblebees. Our bumblebees are pretty big. We have a lot of bees that are really tiny and probably hard to notice unless you're looking for them. They vary quite a bit in their appearance, which is something that we just saw through the guessing game. And their colors, their behavior varies quite a bit as well, depending on the species. Sometimes, when we think of bees like honeybees, bumblebees, we know that they live in a colony, as a group. But many of our species of bees are solitary. They're not living in that big group or family together. Their effectiveness as pollinators can really vary. We have same with their floral choices, some of our. We'll visit a lot of different kinds of flowers. For example, honey bees are considered to be generalists, so they visit lots of different kinds of flowers. It's like they're not very picky eaters, whereas some of our bees, like squash bees, tend to prefer, specialize on certain kinds of flowers. And sometimes if there's a bee that prefers a kind of flower, it's often better at pollinating it, and their nesting locations vary as well. I'll ask another question that you can put your guess into the chat. How many species of bees would you guess? We have here in Michigan. Any guesses? I've seen some of the names on yours. I know some of you know. All right. We have some well informed people here. We have about 465 species of bees here in Michigan, which is a lot of different species. We'll talk a lot about honey bees today, but that's just one of our species in Michigan. Lots of other species, many of which are solitary and make nests and stems in the ground. But I do really like asking that question A lot of times when I ask people how many species of bees they think we have in Michigan, they'll give me guesses like eight or 20, and they have no idea how much pollinator diversity we have in Michigan. Here's what it looks like, an example of our stem nesting, our soil nesting bees. Many species of bees will create tunnels in the ground. That's where the female bee will lay an egg on top of some pollen. That egg will become a larvae, and then that larvae will start consuming the pollen. And then that bee will develop and it will emerge as an adult. This is an example of a life cycle of many of our solitary The mother be e isn't meeting the offspring. Bee is as adults. So this is a pretty common, I think a lot of times it's pretty easy to not even notice some of our solitary bee species because they're not living in huge groups. And because sometimes they're pretty small in size and you have to know what you're looking for in order to see these tiny holes in the ground. As I mentioned earlier, they have branch hairs which the pollen clings to, which makes them really effective pollinators. Because the bees will visit flowers collecting nectar and pollen as they're going from flower to flower. They'll also move pollen, That's what allows for the pollination of many different kinds of plants. That movement of pollen from one flower to another, nectar and pollen for their food sources. There's lots of different insects that will collect nectar from flowers, but bees are the ones that really need the pollen for food as well. We'll talk a lot about honey bees today, especially because we'll be thinking a little bit about pollination and managing pollinators. We'll talk about the honey bee. Here's an example from the hive, where we have some sealed brood. That's the pupil stage of development, like the cocoon or crystals stage for other insects. Then around that, in the hexagonal cells in the comb, we see lots of stored pollen. Again, pollens really an important food for bees. It's important for their growth and development. We can see that because they store the pollen really close to the developing Es. All right. We have another guessing game here. I would love for you to guess how many hives is this? Is this 14 or 12 hives. All right. I see a guess for one and then some guesses for four. All right. Good guesses. This is four hive hive is normally just going to be a stack of boxes. The colony is going to live in a single stack of boxes. The colony refers to the group of bees. The hive refers to the structure, the home where the bees live. Beekeepers often interchange those words, but each stack is going to be a hive. And then each stack is going to have a single honey bee colony in it. And the commercial cop, pollination, and commercial honey production and migratory operations, it's pretty common to see four or sometimes six colonies or hives on a palette. And that allows the beekeeper to load the palettes of hives onto semi trucks and move them around the country, around the state, depending. All right. So we're going to this is a commercial beekeeper yard where we see hives on palettes. We're going to do a little toward through one of the hives. If you look at a single hive, we typically have a cover. We have some boxes below, which is where we expect the queen to be laying. Since the queen's laying in the bottom boxes, that's where we expect to find the developing bees, the egg, larvae, pup, and then the emerging adults. And they'll source some pollen there too. Then the top boxes are normally where we expect to have honey. Bees will store honey also throughout the hive, but they'll put a lot of their surplus honey in the top boxes. All right, We're looking at here, This is what it would look like if we were looking down into one of these boxes. Again, a lot of the honey we expect to find in the top boxes. Honey is really important for bees as a food source. They collect nectar from flowers. The nectar has a lot of moisture in it. The bees bring the nectar back to the hive. They fan it and dry it out. And once the moisture levels low enough, that's when we consider it to be honey. That's normally around the time when the bees cap it off with bees wax honey bees need honey as a general food source. The forgers are flying long distances, they need that sugary food. And then it's also really important for survival over the winter. In the winter, honey bees will survive as a colony by flustering and generating heat, by moving their muscles and shivering. And that's what they need, the honey, in order to generate that energy. But honey bees don't know when they have enough honey for winter. They will keep storing honey in their hive as long as they are healthy and the environment allows for it, which is why beekeepers are able to harvest surplus honey. Here we can see that again in the hexagonal cells we have nectar that's being stored and dried out on the bottom. Then once it's dry enough, the bees will cap off those cells with the wax. That's normally around the time when we start calling it honey. All right, here we are. Next, going to look in the broot chamber and look at a frame of developing bees developing. Here are in the pupil stage. Again, the cells have been kept. We have the queen, we have the drone, which is drones are males. We have one, at least one drone here in this photo, but there are many drones in the hive. And then we have several workers. All right. Here they are, side by side. Worker, drone and queen. The works, most of the colony is going to be workers. They are female. For honey bees, they have a barbed stinger. If they, the stinger will get caught in your skin or wherever they're stinging and that tears part of intestines out. Worker bees will die after singing the drones which are males, don't have a stinger. Normally in the summer, we expect around five to 20% of the colony's population to be drones, which are male. The colony raises drones in the spring and then they kick out the drones in the fall. We don't really expect to have drones surviving in the colony through the winter. Then there's normally just going to be one queen in the hive. The queens have a stinger, but it's not barb, so that means that they don't die after stinging. It's very uncommon for humans to be stung by a queen bee. I've been stung many times by honey bees. I don't think I've ever been stung by a queen bee, but it is on my bucket list. I think that would be cool. All right, here we have a picture of a queen that's surrounded by worker bees. The workers will feed the queen. They'll tend to her, they'll spread her scent or pheromones around the colony. Sometimes when I talk with groups of kids, they think that queen bee must have the coolest job because she gets to boss everyone around in the hive. But that's not really the case. She's not giving orders to the bees, but her sent lets the bees know that she's there. And that helps regulate some normalcy in the colony. Really, the job of the queen is to lay eggs. In the summer, she can lay over 1,000 eggs per day. And here in this photo, you'll see that she's laying an egg In each one of these cells, those eggs will develop into larvae. The larvae are fed by the delt bees. The delt worker bees have a gland in their head called a hypochongiogland, where they can produce food to feed the developing larvae. That's really one of the areas where having pollen available is important for feeding the developing larvae. Those larvae will grow and develop and once they're old enough for their cells to be kept off, they'll give off a chemical signal that lets the adult worker bees to cap off their cells with wax. And then the developing bees will begin the pupation stage. For worker bees, it's 21 days from when the egg is laid to when they emerge as adults. All right, here's a picture of our drones. Our drones have pretty big eyes. Again, they don't have sting areas. Their main goal is mating with new queens. When a new queen emerges, she can only mate within the first couple of weeks of her life. Even though yeah, they can live and lay for multiple years. Drones will leave the hive. They'll hang out in an area in the sky called the drone congregation area with drones from other colonies. Oftentimes they will wait to see if a new queen comes by from mating flights. New queens will mate with dozen or multiple dozens of drones. Then queens have a special organ called the spermatheca, where they're able to keep firm from that mating flight so that they can lay, fertilize eggs for sometimes years after mating. If the drones are successful in mating, they will die after mating. If they're not successful, they normally just return to the hive. The drones do typically fly a shorter distance from the hive than the queens for mating. Normally, we don't expect much inbreeding. Normally, new queens on their mating flights are hopefully mating with drones from other colonies. Not from their own colonies, not from their own offspring. Here's a drone next to some worker bees. You can just see for comparison. Then we get to our worker bees. Our worker bees have a very appropriate name because they do lots of different jobs. The jobs that they do depends on their age. The knees of the column. That's a concept called temporal polyethysm, which means that the bees progress through different kinds of jobs. The younger bees are going to do the work inside of the hive. They'll feed the developing bees, and they'll tend to the queen, they'll build. The worker bees have glands in their abdomens where they can produce little flakes of bees wax, and that's how they build that bees wax. Then the older bees are going to forage for four things. One is nectar, one is pollen, one is resins. Bees will bring resins back from trees into the hive and they'll use the resins to seal a little Nixon crannies when it's in the hive, we call it Propolis. Other than just sealing off little areas in the hive, there's also been a lot of research into how the Propolis has antimicrobial properties and it is important to the colony health then water. Honey bees also need water. That's another thing for us to think about. Is our bees needing access to clean water. The nectar and the honey has a lot of sugar and carbohydrates in it, and the pollen has lots of protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. All right, we talked a little bit about reproduction in terms of the queen laying eggs, but we think about honey colonies as a super work. We think about the whole colony, this group of bees, as being an animal organism. The way that the super organismism of the honey bee colony reproduces is by splitting itself. Oftentimes what we see is in the spring colony will make it through the winter and then they'll start raising new queens. The older queen will leave with about half the bees, and they will first hang out close to the hive, and that's what we call a swarm. Sometimes it's either hanging up a tree branch or a fence post, or something close to the hive. At this point, the colony or the swarm is looking for a new hive location. They're looking for cavity. Because honey bees are cavity nesters, the scout bees will go find a good location. If they find a good location, they'll do a dance that tells the other bees the direction and distance of that new location. After a few hours, a few days, the whole swarm will leave and move into that new location. That's their natural reproduction. And they leave behind some developing queen cells for the new colony. Here's what some of those developing queen cells look like. We have on the right a queen that's in the pupil stage of development. And then on the left we have an empty cell. Because a queen has emerged, the colony will raise multiple queens. Then oftentimes it may be the first queen who's out that gets to be queen, leave some developing queens for the bees that are left behind in the hive. This is something that is maybe helpful for you all to know, as people in Michigan, that beekeepers generally try to collect swarms when we can do so safely. Sometimes swarms are really high up on a tree, so there's not a very safe way to access them. But for swarms that can be safely caught, a lot of times beekeepers like to collect them. For many, it's a free source of honey bees for some of us. It's also a way to try to prevent our swarms moving into places like people's homes or sidings where it's a nuisance or expensive for them to have those colonies removed. If you do see a swarm, you can reach out to the Michigan Beekeepers Association swarm removal list. All right? And then we do sometimes have these cases where honeybee colonies find cavity in a home or structure, and then they build a nest in there. If you do come into one of those situations, the Michigan Beekeepers Association has a list of people who do cutouts, and that's the term that we use for removing honeybee colonies from structures. It does require specialized skills because you have to understand beekeeping and construction most of the time, but there are people out there who provide that service all. Then when we think about what are good conditions for bees to pollinate, there's a lot of different factors when we're thinking about pollination. We need healthy bees. We need sufficient bees, or enough bees to do that pollination work. We need good weather. Honey bees like it when it's warm or hot. Bumblebees will sometimes fly and pollinate at slightly lower temperatures. We want the weather to be good. It's not raining or super windy, so that bees can fly. Then in honeybee colonies, we need a strong population of foragers. Those are the older adult worker bees who are leaving the hive and flying again. Here's another commercial yard where we have hives on pallets, and then they're close to the crop that's being pollinated. A lot of times when people think about pollination, they really want to see honey bees on their crop that they want pollinated. But we know that honey bees benefit from nutrition from a variety of floral sources. It's normal in the case of crop pollination for some of the honey bees to pollinate the crop, and some of the honey bees to visit other flowers. That's okay, because then they're getting nutrition from a variety of floral sources and they're going to be a healthier population for that pollination. Honey bees in particular have a cool behavior called floral fidelity. Which means that a single bee on a foraging flight will keep visiting the same kind of flowers. If a honey bee forager leaves the hive and starts visiting dandelions, she's going to normally keep visiting dandelions. Or the same with like an apple blossom. That tends to be a really good trait for pollination because the individual bee on that foraging flight, visiting multiple flowers, is sticking with the same plant, which can help with moving pollen for pollination. Honey bees are used for all kinds of different pollination of different crops around the United States. In Michigan, we tend to be a pretty good state beekeeping, and for honey bees, we normally rank number eight for honey production. As far as states go, that's pretty high. The Midwest is generally a good area for honey production. North Dakota is the number one honey producing state. But Michigan also is a place for beekeepers because we have specialty crops that need pollination. Many of our migratory operations in the state will move their colonies to Michigan for spring, for pollination of apples, cherries, blueberries, and then later, sometimes squash melons or other crops. And then through the summer and fall, we'll normally be producing honey. Most of the migratory colonies in the United States go to California in February for almond pollination, which is the number one largest pollination event in the world. Sometimes our bees will go to the south in the early spring or sometimes they'll just come back to Michigan. Really, California drives the beekeeping industry at this point because so many colonies are needed to pollinate almonds. All right, so next we're going to jump into the pesticide part of this preventation. We're going to explain the difference between a pesticide toxicity and risk to bees. Risk in this context is the likelihood and magnitude of an adverse effect to be es, as a result of exposure to a pesticide treatment. There's two components to knowing if a is at risk from a pesticide exposure. One is the toxicity. That is, how toxic is that specific pesticide to bees? Then the other part is exposure. Here we see a linden tree or a basswood tree In bloom, it is very attractive to be, this would be a high exposure area because bees are going to be visiting this flower, that tree are going to be exposed to a pesticide if it's applied to be on the attractive bloom blooms that are attractive to bees if it's on the plants nearby. For example, in this photo we have trees that aren't in bloom, but there's lots of clover on the ground here. Any pesticide that would drift on the ground would potentially be an exposure to bees, because the bees will like to visit those clovers. Then there's other considerations as well. There's nesting materials, nests, and water. All of those can have pesticide exposure. There also are some specific considerations for row crops. I think a lot of times row crop growers don't think about exposure to bees because corn and soy are normally not pollinated by bees. But it might be interesting for you to know that we sometimes will do analysis of the different pollen sources that the bees are bringing back here in Michigan, a lot of times honey bees are collecting pollen from corn. Then another consideration is the dust that comes off of planting corn. From that seed coating can have some pesticide or neonkinoid insecticide on it, and that can be hazardous to bees. If you are planting corn, you could consider reaching out to beekeepers or talking about the planting date. Having a plan to know if bees are going to be foraging, if it's going to be warm enough for them to be leaving the hive during that planting. And how to protect them. Then another interesting thing is that honey bees will visit some varieties of soybeans for nectar. That's something that I think a lot of people don't know and it's hard to even see honeybees in these soybean plantings because of the way the plant is actually, The researchers who are setting it are doing so more with sound and listening for honey bees than just visual observations. Because it can be so hard to see bees in soybeans. But this is something important to think about. Here in Michigan, some of our beekeepers are actually speaking out soybean areas. They're placing their hives near soybean fields intentionally. Because we know that some varieties do produce nectar enough for the honey bees to make a honey crop. All right, When we're thinking about an application and the potential ways that bees can be exposed, we're thinking about a foliar pesticide if bees can come into direct contact with it, if they're in contact with leaves and flowers, or if the consuming pollen and nectar. Or if it's directly traven as especially with certain species of bees. Then we're also thinking about any drift of the pesticide off of the target in contact with the nesting materials. Many of our wild or solitary bee species are going to collect different plant materials for their nests. We're thinking about it directly onto a nest or a hive site, or into the flowers that the bees are visiting. Then we're also thinking about systemic pesticides, which get into different parts of the plant, including the nectar and the pollen. Then runoff because earlier I mentioned that water is one of the things that bees will collect they need. We're trying to make sure that pesticide isn't getting into waters for lots of reasons, but one of which is to prevent bees from becoming exposed. Bees can become exposed to pesticides lots of different ways. Some directly contacting that pesticide, having the pesticide get on them. Some of it's consuming the pesticides, eating contaminated pollen or nectar. Some of it's through the plant materials that they use for their nesting sites, or sometimes it's directly into their nests. Okay. So next we'll talk a little bit about, we'll judge a pesticide application risk abuse from the toxicity part of the label, right? Sometimes when people think about bees and pesticides, we think about acute toxicity, which is these really sad cases where we'll have a colony die, or most of the colony die within a very short period of time, within a few hours. This is called acute toxicity. It means bees are dying suddenly, and many are dying. Here's an example where we just see thousands of dead bees or dying bees on the ground in front of a beehive. This is something that we can see in the case of an acute pesticide kill, the bees became exposed to something that was really toxic to them. The good news is that this is something that's not very common. We don't see a lot of these acute pesticide kills in Michigan, but we do see them from time to time. The things that you're going to look for on a label, to know if it's something that's really toxic to bees, are wording like highly toxic to bees or toxic to S. That's something where you should really avoid exposure to bees because we know it's going to kill bees, or that's what we can expect. An example here in the environmental hazard section of the pesticide label is this product says this product is toxic to bees and other pollinating insects. Highly toxic to bees is more toxic to be, than toxic to bees. And then there's relatively non toxic or nothing on the label. All right. We talked a little bit about acute toxicity, death within a few hours. We do hear about these cases here in Michigan. Normally it's going to be an insecticide that's really toxic to bees that the bees that many of the bees get become exposed to around the same time. Again, this is not very common, but it's something we definitely try to avoid. What is unfortunately really common is what we consider to be chronic toxicity. We think about just repeated exposure that can impact the bee, but doesn't make the colony die out, right? It can affect bees by impairing their foraging. Maybe they are as good as navigating and don't make it back to the hive. It can make them more susceptible to diseases, can shorten their lifespan. This chronic toxicity is sub lethal effects. Normally it's not killing the colony out, right, but it affecting the S and making it harder for them. Then chronic toxicity is not considered for all of our pesticide labels. Really what we try to do to avoid chronic toxicity is avoid exposure to be es altogether. There's some times where we're not always sure if the pesticide is safe because we haven't run all of the tests. There's also sometimes synergistic effects. When different pesticides are mixed together, they can have an unintended or surprise effect on Es. Normally, our goal is just going to be to avoid exposure. We're going to try to not get pesticides on plants that are in bloom because we expect bees to be visiting those blooms. All right. Next we're going to talk a little bit about residual toxicity and the pesticide label, All right? There are some pesticide labels that will tell you how long the pesticide is toxic to be. Es, for example, it might say something like toxic to bees exposed to treatment during the 3 hours following treatment. And that gives us some pretty clear guidelines. And we can say, okay, if we apply this treatment after bees have stopped foraging in the evening when it's D and be es aren't flying anymore, it's only going to be toxic for 3 hours and the bees aren't going to become exposed to this area until the morning. That would be a way to limit exposure, but then there's some tricky language, so we'll go through that. If a pesticide dissipates overnight, if it breaks down in less than 8 hours, what you'd expect to see on the label is do not apply this product while bees or other pollinating insects are actively visiting the treatment area. That word, actively visiting, means like that bees are seen on plants. This label language means that It should break down within 8 hours. However, if we expect the putsmain toxic plants, the language we can expect to see is, do not apply this product while bees or other pollinating insects are visiting the treatment area. This is a very similar language, which is why we will go through some examples to understand this a little bit better. For example, again in the environmental hazards we might see something that says do not apply this product while bees are actively or visit treated area that actively word is there, we can assume, we can't use it on flowers that bees visit during the daytime because the bees would be actively visiting these flowers. For example, we have a field that's in bloom here. We do not want them, we don't want to apply that treatment at this time, during the day because it says, do not apply while bees are actively visiting the treated area. We expect bees to be actively visiting these flowers. Same thing here with this garden. We do not want to be applying a treatment during the day. But it would be okay to do it at night after es have stopped flying. Because the actively visiting language means that we can expect the pesticide to break down within 8 hours. And by the time the bees begin foraging in the morning, there should be a limited exposure risk. However, if that word actively is not there, and it just says, do not apply this product while bees or other plonating insects are visiting the treatment area. You should assume that you can't use it on flowering plants in the day or at night, because we expect that to last for longer than 8 hours. Don't use it until petal drop until bees are not visiting those flowers at all. You should not use it at night time either. We do have a little handout that I'll show you that has that label language. So you can pull out that handout or card to remind you what language slip for on the label. But again, really our main goal is going to try to reduce high exposure scenarios. Because we don't always know if a pesticide application is going to be okay for bees to be exposed to. Even with what we do know from the pesticide language, we can start by avoiding pesticides that are known to be harmful to beat, especially if you do have some options in your pest management to look at different pesticides available. The University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Statewide integrated pest management program has precaution pesticide ratings. If you go to their website, you can enter an pesticides trade name or chemical name and it will tell you the risk that is known to be. That is a really good starting point if you want to look up cerium pesticides. But again, main goal is going to be to just avoid exposure altogether. Some steps we can take if we know we need to manage certain pests. Ideally, we're trying to do it when there's not bloom, sometimes that me. And applying before bloom. And avoiding pesticides that have a long residual toxicity. And then waiting until after bloom and trying to avoid any flowering plants that bees are visiting. However, we still want people to be thoughtful about applications after bloom, sometimes for commercial fruit pollination. What happens is bees are honeybee hives are in the area for pollination on the farm while the plant is in bloom. And then once bloom is over, the honey bees are moved out. That is helpful to reducing some pesticide exposure to the applications that are applied after bloom. However, many of our wild species of bees in Michigan will still be present because they're not managed and moved around. Then also, we know that there's honey bee colonies all around our state. Even if your farm doesn't have honey bees on it at the moment, pollinating your crops, you could expect that honey bees are going to be in your area if you have a beekeeper that you work with for pollination, or if you have beekeepers in your area, it can be really helpful to communicate with them. And they can help find some ideas or strategies to reduce pestide exposure as well. We have some really nice examples of cases here in Michigan where growers and beekeepers work together. And they talk about the strategies that they've put in place to improve pollinator health. Both by planting forage for bees, planting flowers, or reducing pesticide exposure. And that also having healthy bees can help pollinate their crops. These videos are really short, were done by the Honey Bee Health Coalition, but they feature Michigan growers and Michigan beekeepers and they really highlight the importance of having a good partnership and good communication. Really one of the best things that we can do to support our pollinators is to plant flowers. We have lots of resources on how to do that. If you go to our website pollinators su, you'll find a section on planting for pollinators. And it has all different strategies. If you're in a home or residential area, you might think about a pollinator garden. Or turning some of your lawn into flowering species for bees. If you are on a farm or have more acreage, you could consider a large scale pollinator planting. Another thing that I think often gets overlooked is trees. There's some trees that provide a huge amount of nectar or pollen for bees. One of the beekeepers I work with calls flowering trees, meadows in the sky, so they can be a fantastic source of food for bees, depending on what kind of tree they are. All right? And then another consideration to avoid pesticide exposure to bees is to mow blooming weeds. Sometimes blooming weeds like dandelions can be good sources of nectar or pollen for bees. However, if we are doing an application and we expect the pesticide to drift onto those blooming weeds, it's probably better just to mow them so we can reduce exposure, because bees won't be visiting those plants. Here's an example of an orchard where they mowed in between the plants, so there's nothing blooming for the bees to visit. So that would reduce the chances of exposure. All right, Some additional resources to help bees hang in there. Again, our website is pollinators, Do we have lots of information there? Here is the handout I mentioned where it will go through the different label language and then how steps to minimizing custom exposure. But if you want a review of what I covered or helpful handy handout that you can have with you to remind you which parts of the label apply to bees. This is a nice handout and I can put the link into the chat at the end. Here we also have some online courses that are free and about pollinator protection that cover some of the same information I covered today. And they're each worth one restrict to use pesticide credits. Pollinator protection for pesticide applicators is really focused on growers and farmers who manage bees for crop pollination. And then pollinator protection for land managers is more for people who manage lands with herbicides who have an opportunity to plant for Es. They go through topics like pollinator appreciation, pesticide toxicity, and b, pesticide labels and pollinators, and how to support pollinators. Here in Michigan, we have a pollinator protection plan. This is something that provides additional guideline and a framework for the work that we do here to protect pollinators. We have a blueberry pollinator stewardship guide, as well as the Vegetable pollinator stewardship Guide. I know many of you listening today are vegetable growers. We have a guide that we wrote that goes through the different strategies that we have to support pollinator health. All right, if you're interested in learning more about beekeeping or pollinators, you can sign up for our newsletter digest. You can go to our website, click stay connected, and then newsletter, and we're the Pollinators and Pollination News Digest. But you'll notice lots of different topics, including vegetables and other crops of e mail newsletters you can sign up for from Michigan State University Extension. We have a Youtube channel where we've had several Weminar recordings. Many of them are on the different species of bees we have here in Michigan and how to plant for bees. Again, we have some different projects that support our work. But especially we get funding from Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development for our pollinator protection plan. And from the North Central IPM Center to coordinate a national working group of people on pollinator protection. Msu programs are open to everyone. Here is my information. Again, I'm on a heck, I shared a lot of resources during this talk and I know you might not be able to know where to find them online. You can feel free to send me an e mail and I will give you the links to the resources you're looking for. If you have questions about beekeeping or about how to support pollinators, the best way to ask it is through our website pollinators at and then questions. There you'll find an ask extension form that's an easy way for us to respond to your questions. Thank you for listening and I look forward to hearing any questions you have. We already have one in there, Ana, about whether bees sleep in flowers or not in relation to, I think, nighttime, spring. I think that's when that question came in. And yeah, that's a great question. And we do have some bees that do sleep in flowers, so that's a really good thing to consider for our honey bees. We expect most of them to return to the hive and be in the hive at nighttime. But there are sometimes cases where we'll see bees, especially like male bees, on flowers, overnight. We have a question here. My family and I just purchased property and the farmer that runs our land, plants, corn and soybeans. I'm so upset to hear this news. Thank you so much for providing this information. We already signed a contract for this year with them. Should I contact a bee farmer, I hope to have a wild flower field one day. We also have 37 apple trees on our land. I think that it's really common here in Michigan. We have lots of row crops. We keep colonies around soy and corn fields, and they tend to do fine. One thing that I think is important to realize is that bees deal with lots of different issues are stressors. We've talked a lot of today about pesticides and forage because that's where a lot of our farmers and growers have an opportunity to support pollinator health. But beeheepers are dealing with honey bees having a parasitic mite in all of our colonies that spreads diseases. Beekeepers are applying pesticides to our colonies to try to manage this parasitic mite. And there's a lot of different factors that affect E health. But many of us who keep bees near conventional Ag have colonies that do really well year to year. Again, having good communication with the farmer can be helpful. But we have lots of cases of colonies thriving very close to corn and soy agriculture. But again, probably the best opportunity you have to help, especially if you're interested in having a wild flower field, is to think about flowers that are good for bees, that provide nectar and pollen for them. And having that land can also provide area for some of our wild bees to create nests. Think about creating some pollinator habitat. What about physical pesticides like diatomaceous earth? Do you happen to know if that harms bees? I do know the answer because I've looked it up before and I don't remember Ben. Do you happen to remember? No, I don't. All right. So that would be something, and we can maybe even do that together, the precaution ratings from the University of California. I'm just going to do that right now and see if we can find the enanswer for us. I'll share my screen again because secures our website. Then here you can see it says Common Name and I look through Dixoncious Earth. Here it has the rating of two or yellow, and we can see the different scales that's in between. The suggestion is, do not apply or allowed to drift to plants that are flowering, except when the application is made between sunset and midnight. If allowed by the label and regulations, that's the recommendation. Good morning. Our cover crops over the winter, helpful to pollinators. Cover crops when they're in bloom are helpful to pollinators. There are different kinds of cover crops that provide nectar or pollen, or both to bees. We often will suggest considering cover crops that provide forage to bees if that's something that works with your farm management and if you're able to kind of keep the from being exposed to pesticides, but lots of different cover crops, so some people will plant like buckwheat. That's something that can provide nectar for honey bees and other bees. There's some different kinds of clover bit trefoil. Some of those plants are nice and add it, providing additional forage to bees.