Alana Pindar : 00:02 One thing that I'm a huge advocate about is bringing biodiversity into our backyard, and that's one of the major things that we can do to help support not only bees, but other pollinators as well. And we have to start to get away from these beautifully manicured lawns with really no bio-diversity in them. Josh Moran: 00:23 You're listening to the Why & How podcast, produced by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph, where we look to answer the big questions in agriculture, food, and the environment through casual conversation rooted in research. Josh Moran: 00:43 Well, Jordan, how are you today? Jordan Terpstra: 00:44 Hey Josh, I'm good. How are you doing? Josh Moran: 00:45 Doing great, thanks. Jordan Terpstra: 00:46 Thanks for having me back today. Josh Moran: 00:47 Oh, always. Always nice to be in the presence of good company. Jordan Terpstra: 00:50 So who are we talking to today? What are we talking about? Josh Moran: 00:53 So today we're actually talking to Dr. Alana Pindar, a bee biologist at the University of Guelph. And to highlight a bit of her work, Alana's has got quite the list of achievements. Co-authoring a significant paper on responses of bumblebees to climate change, and our guest has actually also won a prestigious award, the Webster Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Science. So to call her an expert is pretty much an understatement. So thanks for being on the show. Alana Pindar : 01:16 Thank you for having me. Josh Moran: 01:17 So before we get started, I'll just ask you, could we get a quick Coles Notes on what we're going to be talking about today and what you're researching? Alana Pindar : 01:24 We're going to be talking about how important bees are. How many species we have in Ontario, how many species we have in Canada, what their important job is, and what we can do as a society to help safeguard their important job that they give us for free. Josh Moran: 01:41 Now, before we dive right into that, I know you're actually not originally from Ontario, so I'm kind of curious as to what drove you towards the OAC and the University of Guelph. Alana Pindar : 01:49 You're right, I'm not originally from Ontario. I was born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and when I was young I was always fascinated with bugs. In fact, I was the child that kept bugs in glass containers, and I was the child that would throw these bugs at siblings all the time. So my brother actually has fear of insects because of me, and so the irony of that is quite funny. Alana Pindar : 02:20 Yeah, so I grew up in Cape Breton, and I spent the summer chasing butterflies all along the Bras d'Or Lake, and I took that passion and I did an undergraduate degree at Acadia University. And when I was at Acadia I got an internship with Agriculture Canada and I was working with somebody who was studying pollinators. And when we wrote in the field, I noticed that he wasn't really sampling the way that I would sample, and I started asking a lot of really interesting statistical questions. And finally at the end of the summer he turned to me and he said, you need to go to graduate school, these are questions that you should be asking research questions. So he pointed me to York and I did my masters and my PhD with Dr. Lawrence Packer, and then I came to Guelph here to work with Dr Nigel Raine as a postdoc. Josh Moran: 03:17 And so before we go any further, what is a postdoc? Just because some of our listeners might not know what a postdoc is. Alana Pindar : 03:23 So a post-doctoral fellow is someone who is studying under a faculty member or a professor at a university after they get their their PhD, their doctoral degree. Josh Moran: 03:36 Very cool. So was your PhD, were you focused on bees, or was it all insect? Alana Pindar : 03:40 No, it was focusing on bees. I was actually looking at the impact of controlled fire and what impacts controlled fire disturbances have on bee communities here in southern Ontario, particularly in oak savanna habitats. So High Park is an oak savanna habitat, Pinery Provincial Park is an oak savanna habitat, and we did some controlled burns in Pinery and also in Turkey Point. Josh Moran: 04:04 What sort of findings did you find from that? Alana Pindar : 04:06 So what we found was that within zero to two years after disturbance, like fire, a low intensity fire rolls through different habitats, bee diversity will actually peak. So it will increase significantly. So what that suggests is that bees can tolerate different types of disturbances. Now we need to find out what is that threshold or that limit to particular disturbances that they can actually tolerate. Alana Pindar : 04:34 Obviously if a really hot, hot fire, particularly the ones that we see out west in BC, if they happen, those are really, really high intensity fires and they happen over a really large area, they're going to have a lot more destruction than our low intensity controlled burns that we have here. So that's the next step is now to actually see what what happens there. Josh Moran: 04:57 And so we're using this word biodiversity a lot. How would you define biodiversity? Alana Pindar : 05:02 I would define biodiversity as the difference in species that we have in different areas, and the number of these species that we have. Josh Moran: 05:12 So it could be like we have our dandelions, and we have our vegetable garden, and we have our trees. And so in an urban space that could be fairly biodiverse? Alana Pindar : 05:20 Absolutely, it can. Your backyard can be diverse. I mean it all depends on what you plant and how many different species you have. Josh Moran: 05:28 Very interesting. And you said bee diversity, I know when I think of bees, and probably a lot of people as well, we always kind of associate it with one type of bee, particularly maybe honey bees. So now you said over 900 species, correct? You study sort of that realm. Can you tell us a bit about the diversity of bees and kind of what there is to that? Alana Pindar : 05:48 Yes, so it is a common question that I get all the time, is how are the honeybees doing? And they are a separate entity. They are included in that 900 count, but we do have, as you said, we do have close to 900 different species. A lot of them actually nest in the ground. Alana Pindar : 06:06 So a lot of people think that bees are in hives, bees are nesting in trees, and that's not necessarily the case. The bees like dry sandy soil. So a lot of the times they're right in front of people and they don't even realize that they're there, and their backyards are actually really good nesting habitat for them. Alana Pindar : 06:26 Now there's also a group called cavity nesting bees. Cavity nesting bees are bees that nest in a pithy twig. So something that I like to tell people all the time is hydrangea bushes, and everyone has a hydrangea bush or you've seen a hydrangea bush. There's tons of them here on campus. They're really good nesting substrate for bees because they have dry pithy stems. So you will find in the spring a lot of bees nesting in these different types of of vegetation. Josh Moran: 06:58 In our conversation before we started the show, you said that people often see an anthill and assume that it couldn't be something else. So I was wondering, are there ever any pollinators nesting in these areas? Alana Pindar : 07:16 Right, they can be. So a lot of the time that's what we're looking for when we're looking for nesting substrate for ground nesting bees, that's what we're looking for. And a lot of the time if you don't see an ant coming or going, it's probably a pollinator that's in the ground. Josh Moran: 07:35 And you said hydrangeas was one. I was wondering, can the length of your lawn when you're mowing that, say for example, in your own backyard, could that actually affect the amount of bees you have present? Alana Pindar : 07:48 Yes, absolutely. So speaking of lawns, one thing that I'm a huge advocate about is bringing biodiversity into our backyard, and that's one of the major things that we can do to help support not only bees but other pollinators as well. And we have to start to get away from these beautifully manicured lawns with really no biodiversity in them. Alana Pindar : 08:09 So a lot of the time we have to start to think, do we really need all this grass? If you do need all of that grass in your yard, maybe we can start thinking about having different species of plants in the actual grass understory. One of the things that I like to point out to people is that clover is really good for different insects. It's all over campus right now, the little white flower. That is providing food to different pollinators. So instead of having just blades of grass, maybe plant different different species like clover, that would actually be more beneficial instead of just having blades of grass. Alana Pindar : 08:57 The other thing to do in the springtime, is a lot of people like to get rid of their dandelions. Josh Moran: 09:03 Yes, that's a big one. Yeah. Alana Pindar : 09:05 And there's no need, because they're gone within a couple of weeks. So there's really no need. The only reason we're getting rid of them is because for some reason we think that they don't look very good. And we have to start to get away from that as a society, particularly homeowners, that our yard is not messy because it has different species in it. It's actually good to have different species in your yard. So I really, really, really suggest that you just leave the dandelions, because the dandelions are the first food for a lot of pollinators when they're emerging from their nests. Jordan Terpstra: 09:41 Do you hear that, dad? Josh Moran: 09:44 Oh, that's awesome. Jordan Terpstra: 09:46 I've definitely always been an advocate for keeping dandelions. I find it's very fascinating, something about humans, that they appreciate certain flowers, they could be yellow, but there's these weeds or these wild flowers that are absolutely gorgeous and could fill a whole lawn. And it's just so interesting that it's just kind of the human psyche, that thinking that we need to have just these these lawns. So I'm assuming, because it will obviously take time for people to change their minds, I'm assuming a big component of that would be just doing outreach and kind of informing people. Alana Pindar : 10:16 Absolutely. Jordan Terpstra: 10:17 Do you do a lot of outreach in your work? Alana Pindar : 10:19 I do a lot of outreach to my work. I do a lot of going to different garden meetings and different societies, and I also like to go into different schools and talk to children about it. And they're probably the most important people to talk to so they understand, and their generation understands, what is biodiversity, and how they can start making changes at an early age. And a lot of it is not to be afraid. Alana Pindar : 10:49 Bees have a really bad, bad reputation that they're going to get you, and that's simply not the case. If you let them be, no pun intended, they will be fine. They're not going to sting you. They're just out searching for food, the same as university students on campus. They're probably out searching for food at the UC too. It's the same thing, so let them go. They're fine. Josh Moran: 11:16 Now, I'm curious. Pollinators nowadays obviously undergo a lot more stress as we sort of verge towards urbanization and we kind of eliminate this biodiversity. What would you say is the most common challenge that bees face today that they may not have faced a hundred years ago? Alana Pindar : 11:35 I would have to say that the biggest challenge that they face is the bad rap that they've been given. And until we really, really, my colleagues and I, start to convince society, as much as we possibly can, how important they are, maybe slowly the larger problems and the environmental stressors that they're facing, maybe they will start to decline and decrease a little bit by impacting them. Alana Pindar : 12:00 But I think the biggest problem that they have is they still get a bad rap and people are still afraid of them, and they don't want any insects at all, really, in their backyard. How many times, I'm sure you've been to a backyard, and people have swatted things to go away, or how many times people have said, oh my goodness, the bugs are bad, right? That translates to a small kid that they're bad and that we don't want them there. And that's not true at all. Alana Pindar : 12:27 So we have to really pay attention to what what we're doing. Josh Moran: 12:31 It's the small things that can make a big difference over time. Alana Pindar : 12:33 Exactly. Jordan Terpstra: 12:34 And you said, with this implication of a continued decline, I'm just curious about what would happen. What would our food system look like if we continue along a path, well, a bad path, where we lose more and more pollinators? Alana Pindar : 12:47 So this is one of the things that I bring up when I'm in classrooms all the time to connect to students, because they need to understand, and really we all do, but they really get it when I start to ask them what types of foods they really, really like. So tomatoes, you like tomatoes? Jordan Terpstra: 13:01 Love tomatoes. Absolutely. Alana Pindar : 13:02 You like tomatoes. Cucumber? You love cucumber? So all fruits that have a flower are pollinated by bees. So apples, blueberries, cranberries. We're talking about our food security, and we're talking about all of our important fruits and vegetables. Alana Pindar : 13:20 Coffee is pollinated by bees. And when I tell adults, they're just like, I might not have coffee? And all of a sudden now you're talking their language, and, okay, you want me to start paying attention? Chocolate also needs some sort of insect pollination. Without it, we may or may not be able to sustain our crop yields for these particular crops. Alana Pindar : 13:46 So it's important when you tell a kid that coffee is pollinated by bees and bees are in decline, it matters. It matters to my seven year old. Jordan Terpstra: 13:57 And sometimes when you hear the science, it's kind of hard to actually kind of visualize the implications. So when you bring up things like, wow, you're going to lose blueberries, you're going to lose cucumbers, you're going to lose tomatoes, it really does put a face to it. Right? Alana Pindar : 14:10 Absolutely. Jordan Terpstra: 14:10 And it's a super important thing to stress, I think. Alana Pindar : 14:13 Absolutely. So a lot of times, and one thing that we also like to stress too, is our cattle industry is also impacted big time by the loss of pollinators, because alfalfa is pollinated by bees. So if we don't have alfalfa, we don't have feed for our cattle industry. So there goes your dairy, and there goes the cattle industry. Alana Pindar : 14:34 So it is a domino effect, and it is an ecosystem service that we take for granted. And in a study that was done, I think, in 1998, we actually quantified how many, not myself, but obviously different colleagues around the world, quantified how many different mouthfuls that we eat are because of bees. And it's one in three mouthfuls of food you take is because of pollination. That's pretty substantial when you think about it. Jordan Terpstra: 15:05 It's a huge implication. Josh Moran: 15:07 And kind of getting back to just kind of what the, a lot of folks think. So a lot of folks would think crops, then they obviously would think honeybees, too, right? So can you elaborate a bit more on the importance of our wild bee populations and how they affect a pollination for our crops as well? Alana Pindar : 15:23 Right. So one thing that I would like to bring up, it's not just crops that we have to think about. So wild pollinators actually pollinate close to 90% of our floral resources that we have. So we're talking about our biodiversity in our parks, in our provincial parks, in our national parks, in our backyard. This is aesthetics that we're talking about, and something that we know is closely related to mental health. So if we don't have our flowers because their pollinator is gone, think of how depressing we're all going to be, because all of that beauty would be gone. So I like to bring that up, that it's not just our cropping systems that we have to think about. Alana Pindar : 16:04 But for wild pollinators, we know that they do a better job than the honeybee in particular crops. We still have a long way to go in terms of trying to figure out what wild pollinators are pollinating particular crops. And that's one thing that Dr. Raine's team here at the University of Guelph has been working on, myself included, in blueberries in Nova Scotia. But we also have to try to figure out where different species are in each province, and we're just not there yet. Josh Moran: 16:39 Something that I find interesting, you brought up blueberries, so it reminded me, it makes me kind of think of the pollinator business, and Jordan, you actually wrote a paper on this, where they're taking colonies and they're bringing them out to various locations and they're using them to pollinate certain plants where these pollinators aren't typically found, right? And one of the issues they say is that they're not getting a full amino acid profile. So distressed diversity, it's important in a sense that they actually get an even diet, as well. So you need to have as much biodiversity as possible, right? Is that the idea? Alana Pindar : 17:13 Right, you're talking about honeybees. So yes, again, we all need a a balanced diet, and it's the same thing for any insect really. So what's happening is that a lot of honeybee colonies are being transported from Ontario to other parts of the country to help with the pollination services of that particular province. So for an example, with Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia produces over 28% of Canada's fruit and berry production. That's well over Ontario's 15%, but we don't have the number of species that are here in Ontario. So in to make sure that those crop yields are up to par, farmers are renting honeybee colonies from Ontario, big producers in Ontario, and they're shipping them to other parts. Alana Pindar : 18:04 Now the problem with that is that if you put anybody in a tight close quarters and you have a cold and you sneeze, nine times out of ten, I'm going to get the cold too. And that's what we're finding a lot with honeybee colonies, and that's one of the biggest problems because they're having bad health. They have bad health in particular situations, particularly being on a truck for three days, and then they get out and they're sick. Then they're spreading diseases now that they might've picked up in Ontario and they're bringing them to other provinces that maybe didn't have them in in that particular instance. Alana Pindar : 18:43 And the biggest problem is that, and for instance, if you think about Newfoundland, Newfoundland as an island, and so in Newfoundland, they do not bring in any type of managed pollinator for that reason. Because once their biodiversity is gone, it's gone. They are an isolated island in Canada. And it's a very important thing to start to really think about because once we start really managing that island improperly, we're going to lose that biodiversity a lot faster than we can replace it, because of things like climate change that's happening. Josh Moran: 19:23 As you mentioned, climate change towards the end, I'd imagine that also has a pretty profound effect on pollinators. Can you comment on this? Alana Pindar : 19:31 So, as you said in the introduction, I was second author on a pretty substantial paper that actually looked at the impacts of climate change in North America and Europe at the same time. And it was the first time that we really got a good sense of what's happening, particularly for bumblebees. Alana Pindar : 19:47 So what we did is, I think there was 12 coauthors on the paper, and what we did is we took all kinds of data from North America and Europe, and we wanted to see over the 20th century what's actually happening with our bees. So we wanted to see, are they tracking climate change? Butterflies track climate change. They move from the southern part of the world up to the north. We can see that we're starting to see a lot more higher diversity in our butterflies. So we wanted to test to see if over time, and with the introduction of anthropogenic climate change in 1976 kind of as our baseline, are we seeing that bees are actually tracking climate change? Are they moving north? Alana Pindar : 20:32 And what we actually found is they're not. And what I like to actually think of it as and describe it as, everyone knows what a vise, right? You have the top part of a vise stay still, and it's the bottom that moves up. We like refer to it to what's happening with the bumblebee populations as the ecological vise. So what's happening at their northern limits, they're not moving, at their southern limits, it's getting too hot for them to actually be there. And what's happening is their distributions are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Alana Pindar : 21:06 And that's different than the butterfly, because the butterflies' distribution, the top limit is moving up and they're still at the bottom. So their distributions, in some cases and in some species, are getting bigger. So bumblebees are not tracking climate change. Alana Pindar : 21:22 So what that means, particularly in North America in areas like Florida, which has a really big agricultural sector there, we're going to be losing pollinators, and that's going to happen in different areas if we keep going on the track that we're going. So climate change is a major, major contributor to what's happening. Jordan Terpstra: 21:43 Okay. So it's kind of like a crowd gate in a sense. Alana Pindar : 21:45 Yes. Jordan Terpstra: 21:45 So you'll see a greater- Alana Pindar : 21:47 That's a good way to think of it. Jordan Terpstra: 21:50 Sorry, bringing me back to the dairy farm. For those of you that don't know, a crowd gate is used in cattle typically. I'll talk about it in terms of dairy. So when you're bringing cows to get milk, you take them out of their stalls and put them in a holding area, and there's a gate behind them that actually pushes them towards the milking area. So that's what a crowd gate is. That's kind of where my mind goes as an aggie, I suppose. Alana Pindar : 22:13 That's exactly what's happening. That's exactly what's happening. Yeah. Jordan Terpstra: 22:17 And as you kind of shift further north, will you find a greater concentration in certain areas that are in the northern most, or will it be relatively spread across this area where it is bearable? Alana Pindar : 22:27 So what we're actually finding is we're finding low abundances of these particular species. So they're not even in higher concentration. So basically what we're finding right now is that in some cases we are keeping the ecological role in communities, but we're losing the pollination services. So we're losing the abundances of these species, so how many species we normally would find. Historically, you could have found 122 individuals of one species, where today you're probably only going to find 50. Jordan Terpstra: 23:03 What's the mechanism that allows butterflies to track the climate change, but bees or bees are unable to, why would that be? Alana Pindar : 23:09 Right. So butterflies have a tropical origin, right? So they have the traits to withstand hotter conditions. Bumblebees originated in temperate climate, so North America and in Europe, they don't have the genetic component to actually withstand these hotter conditions. Alana Pindar : 23:33 And the other thing that we really don't know, particularly for climate change now, is how extreme weather events are really impacting our pollinators. One thing that I'm sure you guys can comment on that I've been hearing very much since I arrived here in Guelph is how bad the spring was. It was cold, it was rainy, it was not a very good spring. That is deemed an extreme weather event, because it's not normal to what we normally have. That is going to impact our pollinators. Josh Moran: 24:09 And so you use the spring as an example, because it was very wet and it was very miserable. When will you- Alana Pindar : 24:16 And so think if you were only a millimeter big. If you were miserable, think how miserable they were. And they have a really big job to do in the spring. They are needed to pollinate. Apple orchards are pollinated in the spring. Blueberry crops are pollinated. All of these major, major crops are pollinated in the spring. If you didn't go outside, do you really think that they're going to do it? Josh Moran: 24:37 Yeah, probably not. Alana Pindar : 24:39 Right. Jordan Terpstra: 24:39 Yeah. Josh Moran: 24:39 And so, yeah, you kind of answered the question I was about to ask, but will we notice the impact that this spring had right away? Jordan Terpstra: 24:47 Especially on horticultural crops? Alana Pindar : 24:49 Maybe. I think, yes, farmers should see a decline in their yields. I know in particular in Nova Scotia, we've had a lot of significant frost events. Last year was a really bad year for frost in Nova Scotia, and close to 60% of the blueberry crops in Nova Scotia did not make it. So that is a massive, massive amount of a decline in a crop for a province that relies so heavily on that key economical crop. Jordan Terpstra: 25:23 I hear a lot from a lot of people that I know in the agriculture community, there's a big saying of, oh, there's never been a year where we haven't gotten into the ground. There's never been a year where we haven't taken something off. And yes, it's a good outlook to have, but in a lot of ways you don't want it to be used as something to push an issue back, right? So to actually address it and see, oh, this is occurring more and more often, it's almost more so a step that you need to take in terms of moving forward, rather than looking at it and saying, ah, it'll just work itself out next year. Alana Pindar : 25:59 Right. And I too have heard that from people in the agricultural industry, and I understand where they're coming from. I get it. One thing I like to point out to them, though, when I was growing up in Nova Scotia and in Cape Breton, I remember driving through agricultural land and just having our windshield plastered with bugs that have obviously succumbed to the windshield. But just think of how different that is now in terms of the loss of biodiversity. How often have you pulled over to clean your windshield in the last five years and cleaned the dead splatter of bugs off. And that low abundance is the loss of biodiversity. So when you start to think of it in terms of that, yes, you may be having a crop that... I forget what the saying was that you had said. Jordan Terpstra: 26:56 Oh, we'll always get them in the ground, and we'll always get something off. Alana Pindar : 26:58 Right. So we will always get something off, but is it going to be to the quality and to the standards that we had 10 years ago? No, probably not. And that matters. Jordan Terpstra: 27:09 Yeah. And you named it back, you said for your study that you did on climate change, 1976 was your baseline year that you used, correct? Alana Pindar : 27:17 Yes. Jordan Terpstra: 27:18 And to think, and in terms of history and the overall history of the world, that's a really, really short period of time to undergo such a loss in biodiversity. Alana Pindar : 27:28 Massive. Jordan Terpstra: 27:28 And it's kind of scary in a sense. Alana Pindar : 27:30 It is. It's very scary. It's very scary. Josh Moran: 27:33 So we've been talking mostly about bees, and you made some mention of butterflies. Do you do other work or do you do other research with other insects that are pollinators as well? Alana Pindar : 27:41 I don't. I stick to bees. I've always been passionate about bees. So yeah. No, I don't. I have enough work to keep me busy with just the bees for now. Jordan Terpstra: 27:54 I can imagine. Alana Pindar : 27:54 But that doesn't mean that in the future I'd like to do it. It just means for now I'm just going to stick to one group. Jordan Terpstra: 28:03 I could imagine it'd be a bit overwhelming. Alana Pindar : 28:04 It can be. It takes a long time to learn how to identify them. They're pretty small, and not everybody can do it, and it takes a long time to be trained, and I was lucky enough to be trained by the top experts in Canada. Yeah. Jordan Terpstra: 28:19 Very cool. Do you have like a favorite bee? Alana Pindar : 28:21 I do. I like Megachile latimanus. It is a cavity nesting bee, and it has four teeth, and it likes to eat leaves. So you can Google it so you can see the photos. Jordan Terpstra: 28:33 Does a roll them up and use the- Alana Pindar : 28:35 It does, yeah. Jordan Terpstra: 28:35 Very cool. Alana Pindar : 28:35 Yeah. Jordan Terpstra: 28:36 Nice. Alana Pindar : 28:36 Yeah. Josh Moran: 28:37 Sort of to tie back to making your own home pollinator friendly, something that I see every now and again are what they referred to as bee hotels. I was kind of wondering what your opinions on that would be? Alana Pindar : 28:51 You don't need to provide bees with habitat. They will find their own place to live. What they need is food. They need food from early spring to late fall, and a lot of people will plant flowers in their garden and will plant a vegetable garden with only enough to be substantial enough for the months that they're going to use them, which is normally July and August. These things are out early spring, late fall, and that's when we really have to have these things in our backyards. Alana Pindar : 29:26 You don't need the bee hotels. They will find their own place to live. Whether it's in the ground, 60% of the bees that we have nest in the ground, and then the other 20% that we have, or 30% that we have, which are cavity nesters that will nest there, they will find their own pithy stems to nest in. Alana Pindar : 29:50 And one thing that I like to remind people is we don't really have a lot of data, we have some from the University of Toronto that actually shows that you are increasing the amount of wasps in your backyard. Jordan Terpstra: 30:04 Which most people, if you asked them, probably wouldn't be huge fans of that, eh? Alana Pindar : 30:08 Right, right. So just stay away from them. Josh Moran: 30:11 And what are some of the other downsides to having wasps around bee colonies? Is there a certain competitiveness? Alana Pindar : 30:16 Well there is a competitiveness, and that's a healthy community, right? You need competition in any type of ecological community. So other than they bug you, it's fine to have them there. We just have to get over the stigma that these little things are driving us crazy because they have an ecological role to play. Josh Moran: 30:38 So we've talked about lawns and things that we can do, like keep the dandelions, keep clover. Are there any other tips, or I'm sure you get asked this all the time, what can I do to help the bees? Alana Pindar : 30:49 So, I mean, have a vegetable garden. Grow fruit and vegetables. They need to be pollinated, so the pollinators will come. They will come to your backyard, and they will pollinate your fruits and vegetables, your squash. We have one squash bee in a Ontario, it is called the squash bee. So every October when you are carving your pumpkins, make sure you thank the squash bee for doing that. It has a really important job. So plant pumpkins in your backyard and encourage more habitat for these important pollinators. Jordan Terpstra: 31:25 Gardening is a great hobby too, right? Alana Pindar : 31:27 Exactly. Josh Moran: 31:28 What about someone who is living in an apartment and they can't grow a garden, what do you tell them? Alana Pindar : 31:33 Well, you can put tomato plants in containers, right? A plant will grow in a container. And, you know, I'm sure most people have balconies, and a lot of places, if you live in an apartment and you don't have any outdoor space, a lot of towns and a lot of cities now have communal gardens where you can plant your own fruits and vegetables in a communal garden. So I encourage you to be a part of that. Josh Moran: 32:02 Is it important to cover a widespread of areas? I'd imagine with community gardens you're really in a concentrated area, in say an urban center. Would it be more ideal to have balcony gardens all across the city, or all concentrated in one area? What do you think would be better? Alana Pindar : 32:16 In an ideal word world, I'd want all of it really. I mean, I want as much biodiversity as I can possibly get. I mean, one thing that we have to keep in mind is these little animals can only fly sometimes up to two kilometers, right? So whatever you have in your backyard is probably nesting in your backyard, and they're not going very far. Alana Pindar : 32:35 And I'm being pretty liberal with two kilometers. A lot of these things really only fly 750 meters, so it's really small distances. So that's why backyards become so, so important on the local scale, is to make sure that they have it. And we also have to create diversity in our landscape so we can start to really connect the different habitats and provide these species with important substrates and the floral resources that wetlands have. Alana Pindar : 33:06 Nectar's going to be different for the flowers in a wetland habitat in comparison to a prairie habitat. The nesting substrates and the soil composition in, obviously, a wetland is very different than in a tall grass prairie. But all of that is important. So we really have to come up with what prescriptions of habitat are important at the landscape scale in order to maintain our levels of biodiversity that we have, and to really safeguard the species that we have now so we don't lose any more. Josh Moran: 33:39 You want to have a wide variety to create the best environments possible. Alana Pindar : 33:40 Absolutely. It's the same thing with your diet. You don't just eat grains all the time. You just said that you like tomatoes, and you like cucumbers, and we all like blueberries. So if we need a balanced diet, so do a lot of other animals. And it's to really start to think about how we make sure that we're providing other species that we are coexisting with what they need. Josh Moran: 34:03 And it's a lot of simple things, when you hear it, you're like, oh, that makes sense. How did I not think of that? But the reality is that they're very similar to us in a lot of ways, and to safeguard that it's important to have similar things that we need to thrive as well, right? Alana Pindar : 34:18 Exactly. So let's stop spraying the dandelions. Josh Moran: 34:20 Yeah. Alana Pindar : 34:21 Yeah. Josh Moran: 34:22 Something that I wanted to ask from an agricultural perspective, a lot of things that I start seeing now is the, hopefully, the gaining popularity of agroforestry, where you're sort of integrating the ecosystem with the actual plot of land that you're growing, right? Alana Pindar : 34:41 Right. Josh Moran: 34:41 Like the surrounding of bush, but that would probably have a positive implication in terms of bee populations. Would it? Alana Pindar : 34:48 It does. We do have evidence that shows that if you include a buffer of wild flowers around different crops that you're going to increase the crop yields for a particular crop. The issue now, it's interesting that you call it agroforestry, we call it agro-ecosystems, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a forest component, where we're looking more for incorporating as much different floral resources as we possibly can. Alana Pindar : 35:23 So it all depends on what the farmer is looking for, right? So with the agroforestry, it's more of a wind break that they're looking for. So what I would say, with that angle, is to make sure that there are a lot of different floral resources in the underlayer that can help the bees that way, because of the trees don't need pollination from bees. But giving them the floral resources that they need in the understory would actually help them, and it would increase the farmer's yields as well. Because they will move into it, move into the field, and they will start to visit those flowers as well as the flowers on the perimeter of whatever crop it is. Josh Moran: 36:06 And when you talk about these buffer strips, which is the patch of grass surrounding the field, correct? Alana Pindar : 36:12 Yep. Josh Moran: 36:13 I'd imagine that if you have a floral base there as well, with runoff, you'd probably catch a fair bit of sediment as well. Alana Pindar : 36:18 Yes. Josh Moran: 36:18 So that's probably another beneficial application. Alana Pindar : 36:21 Yeah, it can be. Yup. Josh Moran: 36:24 So are you currently working on any cool projects that you can share information on? Alana Pindar : 36:28 So one of the things that I've been working on that's almost ready to be submitted for review is we actually wanted to try to quantify how much habitat we need in southern Ontario to maintain the bee diversity that we have in southern Ontario. I said that in Canada we have 900 different species of bees. Southern Ontario is considered to be a biodiversity hotspot for bees, so we have over 50% of the bees that occur in Canada in southern Ontario. That makes it a really important area to study, and we need to understand how much habitat they need, and it's something that's never been quantified before. So I've been working on that. And the numbers right now are saying that bees need about 7 to 8% of the landscape in order to maintain their biodiversity and their species richness for their different communities that we have right now. Which is not that much, and a target that I think the province should be able to hit. Josh Moran: 37:33 I'm just curious if you'd have any words of advice for someone who would be interested in maybe researching pollinators. Alana Pindar : 37:40 I would say get in touch with us. Get in touch with either myself or get in touch with Dr Nigel Raine, he's the Rebanks Family Chair in Conservation in the School of Environmental Studies, and we would love to work with you. And if you're passionate about it, yeah, we would love to work with you. Josh Moran: 37:58 That's great. This is a super exciting topic, and I would love to sit here and talk all day, but we are running a little bit low on time. So I'll leave you a with with one last question there, and the question is if you have any shout outs? Alana Pindar : 38:13 I would, actually, I'd like to shout out maybe to all my fellow lab mates in Dr. Raine's lab. Yeah. And all the work that they're doing. Please go visit his website, it's 1in3mouthfuls.org, and you can see what we're all doing. Josh Moran: 38:29 Cool. Super exciting. Thanks again. This was a great conversation. Thank you for having me. Jordan Terpstra: 38:34 Thanks for joining us. Josh Moran: 38:35 Until next time. The Why & How podcast is published by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph, and it's produced by Stephanie Craig and Jordan Terpstra. Recording and editing done by Jacob Hyzyk and Kyle Richie. The host is me, Josh Moran. Funding for this episode was provided by the W.S. Young Memorial Communications Grant for the OAC Alumni Foundation.