Native Melittology (INDIGENOUS BEES) with Krystle Hickman

Oh hey, it's that suitcase that you haven't unpacked yet. Ali Ward, this isologies. You're here, I'm here, We're here. The bees are here. The bees are everywhere. But in the US, eighteen states have declared that their state insect is Epis malifera, the honeybee. Here's the thing that's not native to this continent. It's a European honeybee. It was important for wax and honey and pollination. Every honeybee you

It was a Holicus tripertitis. It's a little sweaty, sweaty you know. Oh wait, she's back. She's over here. Sure, here, she's flying away. Okay, now she's on the stem, you know, may mean that's a good.

Place to So thisology is indigenous. Melatology comes from the Greek word for bee. So if you know anyone named Melissa, their name means b and you may remember that. We did a Melatology episode in twenty eighteen that was wonderfully informative and charming. It touched on some native bee species. It also covered a lot of APIs malifera and backyard beekeeping. So we are returning to the topic of bees, but this time with a more focused lens, with a photographer,

My name is 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 as like a toddler, I'm doing now as an adult.

That's dope, that's amazing.

Yea.

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 like the lady bugs 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, like all of it, and it just kind of came together, I think, like as an adult, though, I kind of got away from it because like it wasn't a career.

Oh that's great.

Yeah.

What was that day like when you decided, 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 thought, Yeah, I was just sitting I was like, literally, I I remember I was looking at my schedule and I could predict what I was going to 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.

Yeah.

And the first thing I did, though, 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 mm hmm. 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 two thousand and seven, and it is heavily steeped in what's known as the indie sleeze culture, an era of DJs and side swetbangs 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 in a time before everyone had face filters on their

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 sam the video, and then within 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?

Yeah, it was so random and I was like, oh, someone wants to pay me for that. It's my favorite show. Yeah. I came here originally for acting, so I wrote and directed my own short film and then I was just

Oh, that's a great point. So Chrismal picked 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 yeah, having your own must feel like it. It's 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 Shammeel.

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 want to meet her? Yeah? And then like I think it was maybe less than two weeks later, I met her the Stars a line, 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. 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 like name, Oh my god. And then I did a custom frame where I put I think forty four 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

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 named. It 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

So much?

So much because I was doing b photography with my cell phone for two years. Like I was saying, I pick a lot of hobbies, and like I tried 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 D five hundred, okay, which is a crop sensor lens.

When you had two years of cell phone b pictures down, were you using like oleo clips or what types of lenses or nothing?

Really?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, like my old photos, like people thought I actually had a.

Care I mean you did. It was just part of a phone, right, yeah, actually.

Yeah, 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 Epieology 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 the 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 or you've dropped your phone down a well I mean, yeah, which is expensive.

Oh you've done that? No oh I think.

So it was funny when people come back from like camping or something and they're like, yeah, it's great, I had no service.

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

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 clearly 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 a general they could be you know, general buzz above town.

That buzz about that's the worst thing.

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 would just say that I liked all insects, all bugs. But the thing that got me specifically into looking at bees was this. Uh 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 quotess not real.

I'm just gonna say that, doesn't it.

It's yeah, And it's like it's funny because like now when I actually think about it, like that doesn't make any sense. But yeah, also Einstein never said it either. Someone just put like Einstein's name on it and then like the nineties. Oh good, 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 with this because you know, it was an idea I wanted to follow through with.

Yeah.

It's funny too, is I photographed a native bee on mustard? So it's like super super invasive, uh huh, 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 seventeen hundreds up what's now the California Coast by a Catholic priest named Junaparaserra, 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 of the missions, and as time marched on, they were able to see more and more mustard seeds

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, yeah, so I mean, And it's funny because until you learn that it's invasive, you just think.

Oh, wild flowers and they're so yellow. Isn't this nice?

Now?

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 reintroduced native species. And also before this I had never cringed at a flower,

Mm hmm.

And when it comes to native bees versus the European honeybe that we're accustomed to. Most people don't know that honey bees 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 honeybee at World b Day. I was at a fair. I had a booth, and like you had all of these people so happy about supporting the honey bees, and I realized after a while, like it probably wasn't the best place to throw out facts

So, these save the bees campaigns you might see in America, well they're usually focused on honeybees, which are completely introduced species in America that are still used obviously as farming livestock. So each ive has around thirty thousand workers who farmers

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 see the 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 their 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

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 twenty thousand, oh my god. Yeah, in the US there's a little over four thousand. Okay, and last year someone actually counted in California sixteen hundred and forty three 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 two percent of Earth's land, but they also have about twenty percent of Earth's biodiversity. Wow, so we're in

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 in their roots so they don't go back. They did it all over the Santa Monic 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 positive

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. 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 perdida minima. Okay, and The very first time I saw it was actually on a neighborhood sidewalk in Apple Valley.

So that is a desert town about one hundred miles east of la which is right on the edge of the Mohave Desert and the snow capped San Bernardino Mountains. Is home to some very specific and elusive critters, such as Perdida minima, which is a tiny amber colored native fairy bee whose name means lost one on an Apple Valley sidewalk. Yeah, and this bee 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 bee I think is in Indonesia. It's a mega kaili, which is the resin bee. 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.

Bumble bees are in there as well. Bumble bees 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 twenty millimeters. I think I'm not really good converting to inches.

No, No, Americans.

Are twenty millimeters is about three quarters of an inch.

I gotcha. I absolutely love bumblebee. I think bumble bees 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 bee.

Why bumblebees is so cute and stripey. I found a twenty fourteen study called defining the Color Pattern phototype in bumble Bees 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 bumble bees because when paired with other colors, especially yellow, you get a sassy, bold contrast that scares the bee cheebers

Yeah?

So all female bees have stingers. Okay, even bees called stingless bees. They actually have stingers too, but that's stuff that's fucked up. Yeah, so they're called stingless because I think it's really hard for them to people. So that's kind of like, you know, nature centric around people. But yeah, all female beats 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 CROTCHYI.

And there are carpenter bees.

Yeah.

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 bee. The genus is Xylo copa xylo like xylophone and copa like cabana. And there are five hundred species of carpenter bees in thirty one subject and I found that out from a pest control website, which did not amuse me.

I think the males are just so funny mm hmm. 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 you 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 uh yeah, that's actually the biggest bee on the West coast. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I mean they're so hard to miss.

Yeah.

Now, Australians can post about their native Emigilla bombiformis aka the golden haired mortar bee or teddy bear bee, but these similarly golden and adorable male valley carpenter bees are also called teddy bear bees due to high rates of

Yeah, 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 popeye 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 fidelis 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 mega kylie with yellow on the abdomen, so you can actually id it from species two species the color. Wow, I just.

Kept shuffling through this beautiful deck. This veritable who's who in indigenous melletology long horn bees. Look at this agile longhorn bee. Yeah, they call it. They can very long horn for a reason. Is that still but it's still the same number of segments, right.

So this one has thirteen, the other one has. The females have twelve. But yeah, just just longer ones longer. Yeah, Oh my gosh.

Mini fairy bee.

So that's the smallest known bee in North America. So this is the one that would be on like Sumac or toy on. So that's the male. Okay, this is the female. And the males like follow behind them and like flap their wings and try and get their attention, and they're wait, they're really different colors then, right, Yeah, they're really different colors. There's a size difference, so it's four and a half to five millimeters.

I would have thought at first glance that it was a wasp, a U form of mini fairy bee.

Yeah, that's the male or you goodb 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 stung by.

Name to be?

No?

No, yeah, I never have you there 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.

Ye.

Do you ever have to like bust any flim flam or try to talk any friends down about like, don't worry just because it's a bee, You're probably not in a lot of danger. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like I feel like the first thing everyone asks about bees is am I going to get stung?

Yeah?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

And then like the sleeping male bees they can't stand you.

Oh that's right.

Yeah, and they don't bite either.

Okay, that's good to know. Yeah.

So I mean I feel like if you're out on like kind of a cool dreary 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, just 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 they're hanging out? Who dip roommates, what's going on?

Yeah, So you know, it's funny because I feel like that's like very honey bees centric again, yeah, because people are like, oh, they're in a colony. Oh, there's a queen. Most bees, about ninety percent of them are solitary, so they live by themselves, and about seventy five percent of them are ground nesting, so that's the females. They just create a burrow or they live in a cavity in

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 melisotis, the 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 a frat house.

Yeah, they are in a frat house.

What are there life cycles?

Like?

How long do they live? With some that I see here this spring, come back next spring or is it for them? So it depends on the bee. Okay, carpenter bees of native bees, as far as I'm aware, are the longest living ones, so I know the females some of them can live like a year or two. Oh okay.

There's a lot of bees that will spend like a month above ground as an adult and the other eleven 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 the 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.

My gosh, I.

Didn't realize that sweat bees were were ever licking me. Yeah, but chances are we've been licked by sweat bees.

Yeah, chances are. Wow, lick it up, baby, lick it up.

Crystal also told me that some ground dwelling native bees like East Coast minor bees, a gay chimney bees and sand dwelling digger bees, and the West Coast globe mallow bee or Diadesia diminuta, make little tunnels at the entrances of their burrows, and I needed to know why, and according to the US Forest Service, it's a big dang dang mystery. So the Forest Service reports that Diadesia bees surround their nest entrance with a turret or a chimney,

So chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, that's a really big factor with bees and urban areas, the climate and 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 honeybees. 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

Just a shout out to Zercesociety at zercees dot org, which I have been pronouncing xerxes for five years publicly until this week when I met a lovely entomologist who works for Zerces named Yara, who David Newshim 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 Xercees dot org. They have great maps and lists. Feed or Pain is a foundation that's

Adult bees consume nectar. Developing bees consume pollen.

And who's feeding them?

Typically, okay, 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, they'll lay an egg in there, their egg will hatch, it'll either kill the egg or the larvae of the host species and then eat all of the 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 wrinkled little has to go with a beak doing a barbell squat move to just boop 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 cuckoo bees love that kind of.

Drama, so there's no real taking care of them. So it's basically the host bee or most bees that are non cuckoo bees, 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 maybe 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. Bye. Is it like tandem parking?

Is it stays like tandem parking?

Yes?

Yeah. And what's interesting too, is so some bees have kind of like i'd call it like living. So there's this sweat bee called the nagapostuman mele of interest. It's a green sweat bee, and multiple females will have a burrow with like one entrance, but then they'll have their own little apartment in there. Oh so then they'll have their own little like 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 was completely hidden.

Wow, how do you find burrows?

It's completely dumb luck Yeah 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 Duphoria and I've never seen a Duforia burrow before, and I was so excited.

Dulforia is a genius, with one hundred and sixty different species of these small, short faced gloss see little sweat bees, which you might mistake for a fly unless you're Crystal Hickman or you have her flash cards.

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, dug a burrow, 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 Caliopsis

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 daphoria when she was leaving, and I was like, thank god, because you took forever.

Do you ever have to edit your own voice out of your videos 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. Are there some that want like a peady, swampy area.

It's all different kinds of soil, honestly, So that's 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 the nomia. It prefers alkaline soil.

Nomia is another type of sweatye and they're kind of chunky with fuzzy stripes and this grayish white perlescent coloring. They look like if a silver suv had a big round face and hair but was tiny. And there's over one hundred species of these all over the world and they're ground nesting and also they're very good at pollinating alfalfa thanks nomea.

So if you want to find that bee, you go to altline soil. There's a microanthopera 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.

M h.

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 are they like it 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 pollenase 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

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 the really good native be photographer binds it and then they'll tell us what you found.

Yeah. So I work with a lot of I don't know if i'd say work with, but I'm in communication with a lot of militologists who will work with just like one genus a B or like subgenus because I don't do any collecting. I just I idea everything through photos. So some of them like the way they do their science, which I think is still really beneficial, but they want to collect specimens and like some of the bees. There's

Said, the videos must come in handy for that.

Oh, yeah, the videos are great. Yeah, I've been doing so many more because I have two cameras now, so I'll leave one out for video and then I'll go around for that 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 one hundred percent 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 millitologists who've spent the years of decades out there collecting.

I feel like the way that you capture insects, you're so good at your photography is so amazing, and it's such not only a boon to scientist 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 twenty nineteen so and 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 idbes, and I was like, you know, I feel like it'd be great if someone could just have something in their

There's photos of.

The males, the females, any variants, the times of year that they'll show up. There's also wing vanation because you can IDBs to like genus or subgenus 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 outlooking, 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 cars am I going to make?

How big is this deck going to be? Yes?

Oh my god, that was so hard. That was so hard to So I was originally starting out with like, oh, let me just do like the forty 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 forty most common, twenty of them were bumble bees, and I was like,

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 twenty nineteen. 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 very excited because I put out a thing that I got the final samples for the flash cards.

And yes, her deck is one hundred 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

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 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, Wild the Arts Project dot org great resource. You can follow David's work on social media and all the people he amplifies as well as the US based zercees dot org.

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 like these large stores, just visit your local garden stores and ask them again.

Zercees dot org covers the US in case that's of interest. And this next question was asked by truly hospitable patrons Andrea Delvin, Gretchen Schroder Beauty and banks Chenna Congden, Gretchen Schrader, Katie King, Beggy the Sassycgrast, scientist Rachel Swinson, Josie Chase, and ril vnsand B hotels Are they actually helpful? I have a B hotel that was a gift in the art. A 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. Okay, 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. Okay, A lot of bee hotels aren't designed to be cleaned, and it's kind of like, again, not a wonder go in comparison, but it's like if you have a doghouse outside, your dog lives in it twenty four to seven and you've absolutely never cleaned it out, hm your dog can get sick.

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 b hotel. They should be filled with mud plugs and tiny sleeping babies and cocoons. Then you take your razor blade into the front end of the tube

Also that it comes with a drawer because female bees can actually control whether or not they're laying a male or female eggs, so they'll typically lay male eggs closer to the entrance of the burrow and females closer back. So after you're finished cleaning them out, you don't want to 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 bee house and then they'll just be close or exit when they're supposed

Also, I was like, why are male bees 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, biding their time for the ladies to emerge, kind of like an awkward promptate with slimy palms waiting at the bottom of your staircase. Also, they may use this time to try to kill each other,

So different mites, but yeah, a b hotel, you can't have my infestations there. So colony collapse disorder comes from varroa mites. Honey Bees will get like a roamite will like basically latch onto a developing honeybee, 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 urban areas, so they'll actually visit flowers and they'll infect the pollen with the

How in general, do native bee aficionados and appreciators feel about be keeping in urban settings, like people with hives on top of Brooklyn apartments and stuff. What's the 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 honey bees that are getting out into nature. I literally spend time in the middle of nowhere in the desert, and there's just honey bees everywhere. Sometimes I'd step out of my car and I'd just hear this hum and I was like, the only flowering trees around would just have swarms of honey bees, and you would see less native bees when the honey bees showed up.

There's no honey bees. How did that happen? They just didn't make another there's.

No honey bees, 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 from 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're worrying in a book.

Yeah what Yeah. Yeah, I'm working on an ABC book and it's 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 bee. Yeah. So they're in different environments, like there's the pretty to minimum on the sidewalk, there's one on the island, there's one on the top of a mountain. There's also stories about them, like what's

Oh my god. Yeah, 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 Heckmann. I'm looking at you, wme Uta Cia scoop this lady up.

That's going to be a great book. Yeah, it's going to be a coffee table book.

Ah.

I love it. So I was going to self publish it. H And I applied for the Explorers 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.

Be Careful Explorer. And I was like, this is amazing.

Where you like suddenly believed in astrology, where you're like, wait a minute, it's so weird the stars aligned. How did you celebrate? What do you even do?

Well? Like, I called like three of my millitologists friends and like just freaked the hell out.

Uh huh.

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 rose bushes knowing like, oh, ps, you're gonna get an electronic message that says, yeah, like we love the work you're doing.

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 fo 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 times 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 helps the freakin' bees. Yeah like when when 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 the hotels, Kent

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. Oh 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 b hotel, I wouldn't store them inside because it would probably throw off when they would be closed. Just put

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,

Now.

On that note, a lot of folks kJ, macnot Cookie, Yak and Yang wanted to know about conservation, and kJ said this might be a stupid 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 the victims of the same thing.

I would say it's kind of a complicated question the 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 and a lot of creatures as well. Now it's climate change is actually number one, And these are things that are impacting all of nature.

And we did have questions about that first time. Question asker Lada Barabash and Oliver Kellis wanted to know how are the native bees affected by the climate crisis and is it the extreme weathers? Is it the nesting spaces? Is it the food sources? A Lota also said, my grandma has Zyla Copa violatia visit her garden every year and just wanted to say how pretty it is.

Oh okay, so that's the Carpenter beet. Which one was it? Was it the son arena. I think it's Syla copa son arena. 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 rebrand. That seems like a big deal to rename a species, right.

Oh my god, it happens a lot. Really is 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 millitologist working in California, and then there's another one working in Nevada, and let's say one of them has idd 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 weren't working together, so it has two different names.

I didn't even know that they could do that. That's really fad.

Yeah, And I'm like also trying to figure out, like I still don't understand who decides that it officially is changed, and then everyone's like okay, yeah.

Especially if someone's like, oh man, I named that after my professor. Oh okay, yeah.

And I've seen people release papers where they're like, no, these are all the same thing now, and then people like 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 arm wrestle have a dance battle?

I don't know how they don't know I just kind of go along with whoever says like, oh it's changed now, 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 Leneus proposed the genus species naming model. Everyone thought that there were just plants and animals. They were like, what's a fun guy. There was not a DNA sequencer that you could plug into your electronic laptop for genetic idea in the middle of a rainforest. So

Yeah, link in the show notes for that. So yeah, my flash cards definitely. But I would also say too, a lot of times when people start out with native bees they try to overready, as in, try to id them to species. I would try to figure out the families 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

And it's just it, it happens.

I mean, I do understand that it is kind of difficult when you're first starting out, so I would recommen and besides my flash cards, 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 honeybee 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.

My Naturalist, which is obviously free. There's also bug Guide, which is another website. Discoverlife dot 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 Maya's words, also asked by Chase Steinbacher, the head Family, Felicia Chandler, Cheney Rounds, and Maya rup Narin. Maya, I wanted to know how can be beginners learn to tell the different bees apart? But what key features should they look for? I think for me, I'm like.

What color is it's but which is I mean that could actually help you with some species. Okay, yeah, I would say start off figuring out how to tell males and females apart. Okay, So telling bees from wasps and the flies is a really good place to start, because people keep sending me fly in wasp 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

Really, Like some have different saddle baggies. Yeah, yeah, so some like honey bees and bumble bees. Also some perdita they'll have like balls of pollen on their back legs and also if they carry it on the abdomen, that'll help you distinguish families. Antennae you can tell based just on antennae if you're looking at a male or female bee. So males typically have longer antennae. They also have thirteen antenna segments. Females have twelve, 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 like 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 a sleep in a flower, if they're a sleep in a flower.

Yes, why are these bees sleeping so much? I know that they're very busy, but I especially during the day, Like that's one of those things where I it doesn't even occur to me that bees are sleeping or yet stick naps like my dog as has been passed out for the last you know, twenty minutes. But every creature needs to sleep. But do they sleep like an hour here, one off, one on, or.

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 man, 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 like 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 easy to photograph.

And this actually brings me to some questions from listeners about sleepy bees. Connie Conne Bobunni, Carolyn Myers First Southwest, Jesco Storm, and Julia Cape wanted to know well, Carolyn Meyer said, speaking of bee butts, because Connie Connie bow Bunny, I love that name. I'm such a good name, talked about sleeping inside of flowers. But Carolyn Myers wants to know, speaking bee butts, do bees really fall asleep in flowers with their cute butt sticking out? Is there a reason

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 getting under the hood.

Yeah, I think that's what she was doing. But it looked just her butt was sticking out. Oh my gosh, wait, what was the question? Do they do bee butt stick out?

Yeah? Do they sleep with their butts out? Usually? Or probably not?

I usually don't so normally. I can't remember what the center of the flowers called. Is it the stamen?

I think so, but I'll check it out. Okay, to stop yelling at us. The circle of stalks inside a flower that are all covered in pollen, those are stamens, and the rod in the middle connected to of flowers ovary is called a stigma. And I was like stigma, that's not the right word. It was in 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 brand.

No?

Anthology is a collection?

Right? 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 the 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 closed. A lot of times you'll just see them like tucked in. Sometimes you'll see them kind of face up on the flower opens, you'll see their face first. 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 than

So all it takes is that little block.

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 that's so cute. Yeah, Nat Scheffer 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 could by getting them fresh flowers and water breen them. 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 bees, 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 cavities. I don't know how they're getting inside. That's interesting.

Maybe block up an entrance of some sort. 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 that's 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 there year round, just hibernating through the chili winter, drinking eggnog, binging skins, hoping for a makeout scene, and then when things warm up outside, they're like,

Or as 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 create in wood. What I would maybe recommend doing is just providing other resources for them to nested in, because they really like wood that's not treated. They love yuka,

Ah.

But also they don't do any structural damage. They just do unsightly damage.

Okay, Yeah, so they're not your swing set or your decks going to fall apart because of carpenter bees. No, oh, well then that's great. Then you just got yourself a dual purpose B.

Hotel, right, basically a self made be hotel.

I looked it up and okay, people are divided on carpenter b destruction.

Okay.

And carpenter bees do have to chew wood with their faces, so naturally they prefer the softer stuff, your pines, your cedar, your redwood. 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

In so you see so to spuild on a sidewalk and you don't drink It is.

A little bee.

He's not bothering anybody.

Get out of.

Here, your creep.

Yeah, that's so annoying, you know what. Don't like it's not just like ants, like the Bugs Life, 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

I mean, yeah, just like open the wiki page before just sell draft.

Yeah, just 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. I recommend it to like everybody full tape.

In the spring of twenty twenty, 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 and just go ye, you know, Susannah Green first time question Osker also in terms of we always like to ask, like, what's the best representation in like pop culture, but wants to know how you feel about they bring 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 mommy be so proud of me? I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee. Oh, it's stung 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 working on an animated short about a bee. Yeah yeah, And I 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 like 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 or so rash or getting stun abdomen from something else.

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 realized 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 bees spoke English, so I could just kind of say, like, hey, don't fly away, I just need

I'm sure people have called you a bee whisperer so much. I wish I could whisper to the bees and I like, yeah, here to the left head chinned down.

Oh my gosh, yeah no.

And then like also too, 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 two 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 antennae? I'm like, oh jeez, but yeah, I wish I could communicate with them.

Better to be a director like America's next top model, but for beest 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 be like.

If you ever would be is yeah one of those one of those Yeah, 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 bees 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 they go out in your yard, you could experience the exact same thing. Just lay on the ground.

And do you get a lot of dms from people asking about bees or showing you bees?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I get a lot of photos where people like can you idea 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 I was just loved hanging out. Do we love her? We love her? And Volume one? Congratulations on Volume Volume one. Yes, I'm excited. I have four sets coming, do you. Yeah, I bought four because I'm like, 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 like just moved to LA.

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 entomology guest Lee Lincoln's so Wild La. Excellent book. Get it for everyone you know who lives near LA.

I keep that in my car with me.

Oh it's so good. I'm on my second batch of them because I give them to neighbors or when people move to LA's and I feel like your deck will be like that.

I really hope, so really, I put so much thought into it, so I really hope everyone really enjoys it and learns things from it.

Well, 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 to 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. From 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 flash cards and definitely have a look at her photography. Tell her you love her work. We are atologies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at ali

Pacadermatologymbology or doo zoology, lithology, yeah, zerology, meteorology, pology, apology, seriology, slisology.

It's a bee, it's a bumblebee. It's furry, it's about this big