Meet Prof. Nigel Raine Descriptive Transcript

Summary: Prof. Nigel Raine discusses the importance of bees to food production and describes his current research on bees and pollinators in Ontario.

0:00 - 0:03
[Music plays; White screen fades in to show University of Guelph logo; red and black text appears]
Text: :60 Second Snapshots
Meet the Profs of the Ontario Agricultural College

0:04 - 0:33
[Screen changes to video of Prof. Nigel Raine speaking in a hallway; University of Guelph logo and white text on a black box fade in at bottom]
Text: Prof. Nigel Raine
Rebanks Family Chair in Pollinator Conservation
School of Environmental Sciences
Nigel: Something like one in three mouthfuls of food that we eat are dependent on
[Music fades out]
the unmanaged pollination services of bees alone.
So that gives you some indication of the importance of these
[University of Guelph logo and text fade out]
in providing the food that we eat.
And that's not just the food that we eat as humans, that's also goes into feedstock and into meat production as well. 
So there are far-reaching effects of pollination services.
So they're really central to agriculture and something we need to think about in a sustainable agriculture framework going forward at the central plank of that.
0:34 - 1:07
[Screen flashes to video of Prof. Nigel Raine speaking in a hallway]
Nigel: One of the major research initiatives we're working on in my lab at the moment is actually to monitor wild pollinators across the province of Ontario.
So I'm often asked the question, "How are the native bees and native pollinators doing in the province?" and it's really hard to give a satisfactory answer.
So we're trying to monitor the biodiversity of those pollinators and look at how that varies across time and space.
And the idea is we'll be able to look at trends in those those species and those guilds of pollinators and be able to inform policy as to how we can enhance pollinator conservation
[Music fades in]
efforts across the province.
1:08 - 1:12
[Screen fades in to show OAC logo on a white background, red website link]
Text: www.uoguelph.ca/oac
[Screen fades to black]