Native Bees with Krystle Hickman

Note: This episode was transcribed by AI and has not been checked by a human. Please forgive any errors. 

Krystle Hickman  0:00  
And I started realizing how easy it is for people to make discoveries because there's not a lot of people looking people don't really look at nature and appreciate it just I feel like a lot of times nature, the way people look at it, it kind of revolves around people instead of the creatures and nature itself. Hello,

Michelle Fullner  0:17  
and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who delights in sharing this planet with millions of other species of living beings. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today we're talking about over 20,000 of those other species, native bees with crystal Hickman, whose voice you just heard. In this episode, we discussed the widely varied social lives of bees bee architecture, whether or not honey bees are an invasive species buzz pollination where to find native bees near you the potential of native bees in agriculture and the importance of these beings not just to humans, but to entire ecosystems. And if you've been following along with the last couple of episodes, you already know that I recently released a set of six California nature themed Valentine's featuring artists who have been guests on Golden State naturalist, including today's guest crystal Hickman crystals Valentine is a photorealistic ballpoint pen drawing of a California Bumblebee Bombus California kiss with the words I want to be in a symbiotic relationship with you. The set also features aren't by OB Kaufmann, John Muir laws Jane Kim Robin Lee Carlson and Marnie filling, I love every single one of these cards and I think you'll hurt them too. So go check them out at love dot Golden State naturalist.com. This project is rad for three reasons. One, you get these super high quality Valentines to share with friends or keep for yourself to each purchase supports me in creating new episodes of the podcast and three 10% of the profit from this project will be donated directly to Cal wild, which is the only statewide organization dedicated solely to protecting and restoring the wild places and native biodiversity of California's public lands. It's a win all around. So again, you can find those at love dot Golden State naturalist.com or by following the link in the show notes. Just make sure to grab your set soon because they're going away after Valentine's Day. I also want to remind you that this is the 10th episode out of 12 and season three. So just two more episodes after this one. And then I'll be taking a break from making new episodes and heading out into the field to record the interviews for season four. I already have lots of wonderful guests you're going to love lined up for next season in a few locations around the state, which I'm very excited about. So stay tuned for more about that. I'll share a little bit more on the podcast as those start to take shape. But if you want to be the first to know and contribute your questions to be asked during interviews, you can become a patron of Golden State naturalist for just $4 a month that $4 also gets you access to the patrons only book club which is reading an immense world by Ed Young next month, as well as video and audio extras from Select episodes including audio extra from this episode. You can find me on Patreon at patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er if you want to know what my face looks like or follow a new video series I recently launched that teaches the vocabulary you need to talk like a naturalist you can follow me at Golden State naturalist on Instagram or Tiktok. I also recently recorded a very quick video about beings in Middle Earth that I thought maybe 20 people would watch and it's weirdly blowing up and has like over 300,000 views right now. So go tell me what kind of being you would be in The Lord of the Rings universe just for fun if you go in for that sort of thing. And I also wonder like all of these new followers what's going to happen when they find out that like I talk about bugs this much. Oh, but now let's get to the episode. Crystal Hickman is a TEDx speaker, community scientist, National Geographic Explorer self taught wealth of knowledge on native bees photographer, artist and creator of the beautiful native bees of the western United States card deck which features 100 cards and 42 species of native bees. So without further ado, let's hear from Crystal Hickman on Golden State naturalist.

I met up with crystal on a 95 degree July day and an unshaded expanse of grass dotted with the bright yellow flowers of the Great Valley GM plant. We parked not far from it at in Yolo County. And as soon as we stepped out of our cars, we saw these teeny tiny bees called Anna Furla kaya neuros. Well, I'd

Krystle Hickman  4:34  
say they're like six to eight millimeters.

Michelle Fullner  4:38  
I think that like if you saw them from far away and you didn't know bees, you might think there's like a little cloud of large gnats over there. Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  4:44  
and the females have like really, really like a lot of pollen on their back like this is really cute. And then there's males flying around checking the flowers and kind of dive bombing the female.

Michelle Fullner  4:55  
We'll get back to the tiny bees and my conversation with Krystal in just a moment

Welcome back. Today we're talking native bees with crystal Hickman and the native bees we were seeing on our Yolo County outing weren't exactly what I expected in the ground. Do you see them?

Krystle Hickman  5:42  
Those are bees. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  5:44  
I need to train my eye that those are bees, because I think that I would have just assumed there were some other little flying. Yeah.

Krystle Hickman  5:50  
So there's a bunch of them around here. They're probably males. What makes you think they're males. So males always do these little like flying patterns when they're, they're basically spinning either their time neck during or finding females to mate

Michelle Fullner  6:02  
with. Okay, so B behaviors can give you a hint about the sex of the bees, even if they're tiny and hard to get a close look at. But where should you go to see native bees at all? So when you're looking around when you're thinking about, like, where you want to find some bees, like, how do you figure out where to go? I

Krystle Hickman  6:20  
look for a lot of habitat that has native plants, okay. I mean, that's pretty much that. And also areas that have like their soil like this can be really helpful. But you got some bees really like disturbed areas as well. So I mean, it just kind of depends on what B you're looking for. But honestly, native bees are kind of everywhere, as long as there's aren't like lawns, like a lot of green grass, you can just kind of find them wherever you are.

Michelle Fullner  6:49  
That makes sense. I mean, there's so much varied habitat in California, right or anywhere. Yeah, there's gonna be somebody specializing in something, right?

Krystle Hickman  6:57  
Yeah, like, honestly, you could just find like a bush and the corner of the yard or something. And there's not just bees but like so many different creatures just Yeah. All over it. So yeah,

Michelle Fullner  7:08  
I'm bummed though, because I never see native bees in my yard. Oh, yeah. I've only seen like honeybees. And I think they're like Woolcott aurveys, which I think

Krystle Hickman  7:17  
there is definitely a European one.

Michelle Fullner  7:18  
Okay, after this interview, I started to see native bees in my yard. And I think there are two reasons why. One is that after this experience, I expanded my definition of what a bee looks like to include some truly tiny adorable bees, like the ones Krystal and I saw in Yolo County. And the other reason is that I had planted some great valley gum plant, just like the ones we were seeing covered in native bees in the field where we stood and the ones in my yard bloomed for the first time. Not long after this interview. That plant is by far where I've seen the most native bees in my yard. So maybe growing it finally gave the bees a reason to stop by and say hello.

Krystle Hickman  7:54  
Another good way to spot them again is like look for the like what we saw before and look like a bunch of males flying around. That'll give you kind of Oh, yeah, like here. Here we go. Oh, what are you? So there's either it's either a bee or a wasp, I can't tell from here

Michelle Fullner  8:10  
crystals method is to observe and photograph the bees behaviors with as little interference as possible. And it just, which means sometimes losing the beats. Cool.

Krystle Hickman  8:22  
Is a lot of your day like that. Yes. Yeah. That's why it takes too long. I actually went out with a friend, a boyfriend who I just met recently, and he he goes out with nets. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, so much faster. Oh, yeah. Told you. Yeah. And because I've I've stood in the same spot before for like 15 hours to get like photos and things. And he's just like, No, just get to yeah, get to net. But yeah, I mean, I like to get like also behavior and like interesting things. And you can't get that if you're like just swinging the net around, although you do get so many more things. 100% missings.

Michelle Fullner  8:57  
So also, it's I think when we got out of the car, it was 94 degrees. Yeah. Does that not bother the bees? Like what's the deal to some of them just not mine the heat? Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  9:05  
so some bees will actually they prefer warm weather like there's certain midday bees and there's compressed killer bees as well, so they'll prefer a dusk or dawn. There are some like Perdita, for example, like the Perdita minima, the smallest known bee in North America, you'll actually find the females in like the low 80s to upper 90s. Within the males, you'll find in like the upper 90s to a little over 100. So there's it's like thin temperature where both of them are out and then that's when like the meeting happens, but a lot of other times lower temperatures that females get left alone so they can forage. Oh, and there's this there was this particular bee that I photographed like two months ago, I think in Twentynine Palms. So the males weren't showing up in the morning. Oh, they were only there in the evening. And I was the only person looking so maybe I missed them, but it was over three days I was looking and I never saw them in the morning. So the females got to kind of like forage a little bit more slowly. Yeah, cuz the males were like really really aggressively following them? But yeah, it would be there's not a lot of people who have served that one it was an answer. Londrina okay globaleye She was really cool be crystal

Michelle Fullner  10:09  
has a lot of stories like this where she sees incredible things by showing up strategically and consistently. But what if you're like me, and you mistake some species of native bees for honeybees, which are actually native to Europe.

Krystle Hickman  10:21  
Oh, here we go. That is a female Minnesota. Okay.

Michelle Fullner  10:26  
It looks kind of like a honeybee. Okay, to me,

Krystle Hickman  10:29  
I don't know. So this one's like little stockier. It looks smaller. Yeah, she is a little shorter, a little less long, I guess. And also, the way she carries pollen is different. So instead of like the little balls of pollen on the back legs, she has really long like Plumose hair. It's branched, kind of like a bird's feather. Oh, yeah. So she uses that to basically cover all of the back hair on her legs. But yeah, it looks like she's actually putting pollen on her back legs right now. If you see you're kind of It looks like she's just picking it up right now. And then she's packing it on her back legs.

Michelle Fullner  10:59  
If you look at photos of the Minnesota species, they immediately look very different from honeybees. They're fluffier and stockier than honeybees. And they're often covered in pollen. But it can be hard to see all that on a tiny creature with the naked eye. So I'm going to cut myself some slack for not noticing those differences right away. And except that I might have to channel some of crystals, patience and attentiveness to hone my B ID skills. But we're in California, should we go to practice those skills? Are there any like hotspots for native bees in California? Or they're just kind of different regions with different varieties?

Krystle Hickman  11:33  
So I feel like most Ooh, let's check out here. So I feel like most people consider Riverside and San Diego County hotspots Oh, but like I've also gone to like the Santa Monica Mountains. I've also gone to like, the Cisco us or Trinity Alps. I mean, I don't know if the I do think the biodiversity is a lot higher and like Riverside and San Diego County, but there's like some just really cool creatures that you'll find like endemic to those other areas. If

Michelle Fullner  11:59  
you want to hear about why there's so much endemism or so many species of both plants and animals found in the Northern California mountains Krystal is referring to make sure to check out the episode on the Klamath mountains with Michael Kaufman. I have a million bazillion questions for you once we kind of at this point, we fled the heat and ducked into my air conditioned car to get into the full interview. I just want to back up to the beginning for you with native bees, like how did you get interested in native bees.

Krystle Hickman  12:28  
It's very long, sort of convoluted story. But I guess like as a kid, I really liked insects. I really like nature, when like bees are obviously a part of that. But at the time, I was like honey bees, honeybees, and it was just kind of something like as I was getting a little bit older, everyone's sort of telling me like, oh, you need like a career like an actual path. So a lot of things that I was interested because I was really interested in nature. I was really interested in photography. I started kind of like, deviating from that and going to like sitting behind a desk, getting a job. I did that for a really long time. And I felt like I was getting kind of like dumber. So this other passion I had which art I liked as well. So I started just drawing and that took me away from sitting behind a desk. So I actually did art for like a number of years. But then I was basically drawing off of other people's photos. And I wanted to get to a place where I was like, You know what, I'm gonna start actually creating my own art pieces and drawing based off of those so it was like, let me get a camera. But at the time too. I was like also trying to get back into my passion. So again with nature, and I was using my cell phone at the time to get into bees. I was started out with honeybees. I ended up moving to native bees because I thought it was like initially honey bees that needed to be saved. Right? Everyone thinks that which is yeah,

Michelle Fullner  13:44  
if you're like, holed up honey bees don't need to be saved. I'm going to try to give you a very condensed history to explain this. Okay, so Western honeybees. apice mellifera are native to Europe, not North America. European settlers introduced them to North America in 1622. And they very quickly escaped into the Massachusetts forest and made themselves at home there. But it wasn't until more than 200 years later that they were introduced in California by a botanist named ch Shelton in 1853. So throughout most of the Gold Rush, there were no honeybees in California. But what did exist in California during that time was more than 1600 species of native bees, which had been doing just fine pollinating the wildly diverse and abundant plants native to the state alongside other pollinators like butterflies, moths, birds, bats, beetles, and wasps. They did this without the help of honeybees. So our ecosystems evolved without honeybees and don't need them to thrive. But what about honeybees in agriculture? Don't we need to save those bees. Crystal will say more about the role of both honeybees and native bees and agriculture a little bit later, because while honey bees currently pollinate around $15 billion worth of crops in the US each year, according to the USDA, we may not always have To lean so heavily on this one important species to pollinate our food crops.

Krystle Hickman  15:03  
So I was out there photographing honeybees. I know that sounds very random, but I was out there photographing honeybees. And then I accidentally took a photo of a native bee. Yeah, and I had no idea what it was. And then went back to beekeepers, because I was like, beekeepers are bee experts. And they didn't know what it was. And then I ended up going to Facebook and I found this group that was full of military ologists, which are need to be experts are a lot of entomologists in there as well. And they told me what the bee was, it was a very common be called a mining bee or an Andrina. And they also kind of like fact, check me on a bunch of different things. And we're like, Hey, this is actually what's going on with bees, they were talking about how honey bees are not native, like the whole history of them. So like these two different passions, the art, and then the photography with my cell phone kind of combined to like, let me get a camera where I can do both of these things. So I ended up getting a camera to take photos from my artwork, but then also photos of native bees. And then initially with native bees, I was like, let me just take pretty photos, right? Because I was like, hey, yeah, that's fun. I like pretty photos, but I can actually like, kind of talk about them as well. But after a couple of years, I started visiting the same locations over and over. And I inadvertedly started documenting climate change. Wow. Yeah. Which now thinking back on it, it's like, oh, yeah, of course, that's what's going to happen because climate change is happening. But like, yeah, I started seeing like the changes year after year. And then I started documenting like, new behaviors and like photographing it, which just didn't seem like something like a person like me can do like a community scientist, or like just a regular layperson, not somebody who went to college. And I started realizing how easy it is for people to make discoveries, because there's not a lot of people looking people don't really look at nature and appreciate it just I feel like a lot of times nature, the way people look at it, it kind of revolves around people instead of the creatures in nature itself. So my photography now I tried to do like, beautiful photos, but also like, help people learn things, as well as myself. And you can also like, hopefully identify these bees to species through my photos instead of collecting them.

Michelle Fullner  17:12  
Yeah, so they get to keep living out in the wild. Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  17:14  
yeah. Cuz it's like when you go to collections, a lot of times, it's really cool to see these rare bees. But a lot of times with the females, you'll see like pollen on their back legs or in their abdomen, and like, you were probably like, you maybe had like a burrow somewhere with some eggs, like what happened to those, those eggs because they they might have be closed, but like were hatched, and just there's nothing for them to eat. So it could be killing more than like just one individual. And I definitely I appreciate collecting, because I feel like that's how people scientists have learned so much about these bees. But I feel like we're at a point now where maybe we don't need to do that as much. Or maybe we could do it in a different way.

Michelle Fullner  17:55  
I've done a lot of collecting. Yeah, can study those specimen kind of thing. Yeah, I

Krystle Hickman  17:59  
think like, with cameras like cell phones. It's a really high powered camera. Yeah.

Michelle Fullner  18:03  
So and everyone has it on everyone. Yeah, exactly.

Krystle Hickman  18:07  
So So you could just you can make observations yourself with your cell phone that like everyone has in their pocket, you don't need to go out and buy all this camera equipment.

Michelle Fullner  18:15  
I love crystal story, because she ties together so many things she's passionate about into studying, documenting and sharing information about these underrecognized creatures. And Crystal gives a really good example here about why we need more people getting out observing and engaging in community science, there's a per data called a pretty data wrapped up Perdita is a genus of itty bitty bees native to North America. It's an

Krystle Hickman  18:39  
early season bee, I want to say like March, April, I can't remember what month but it's only out for like a month. And this is a bee that has a symbiotic relationship with poppies and cryptantha. And if you have it in your yard, you'll have like a pretty decent population, but it's also a very uncommon B, no one's ever seen a burrow, and this is in people's backyards, or their front yards. So like, if you have those flowers in your yard, look for that B and try and find a burrow. And that's like anyone who has a yard can do that. You can contribute design. Yeah, but I think just because like a lot of times people don't know that like, Hey, this is something uncommon or unique. Hey, I've never seen like, Oh, I found a burrow really easily. But like, I didn't know that was a thing that no one else had seen before.

Michelle Fullner  19:22  
Oh, you don't know that. You're supposed to be looking for something. You're not gonna look. Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  19:25  
yeah, there's things like when I was first starting, there were things that I didn't realize were very unique. And I just observed that I never taken photos of them and then I talked to the people about it and they were like what you saw what? Yeah, and then I would try and go back and find and the odds of you finding it again. Yeah, okay, this is really cool. So I went to Santa Rosa Island one time to look for this beam. And it's really windy there. Have you ever been to Santa Rosa? No. So it's super windy there and like so this visa Colette is B and typically the male's sleep kind of group together on plans. But I think Maybe because it's so windy, they've started sleeping in boroughs below ground, and they sleep on their backs. That's right. And I got photos of that. And I was talking to someone about it and they were like, You're confusing males for females. And I was like, I'm not. And I showed them the photos and I'm like, holy crap. Yeah, it's just it's like, like just random things or like maybe sleeping on plants. I really, I would love to get this photo. But like, I never because I didn't know it's rare, but like, there was an opera, mature digger bees sleeping with Mila xodus, which is Longhorn bees group together. Oh, my goodness, and getting photos of it to get I took photos of individuals not as a group. Right. But yeah, things like that. Absolutely. You

Michelle Fullner  20:43  
don't know. You don't know. Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  20:45  
just take pictures of everything. Yeah. Or video or whatever. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Well,

Michelle Fullner  20:50  
one of the things that kind of came up to in your story is like this distinction between honeybees and native bees. And so, yes, they're not native to here. I have a lot of friends who will say they're invasive. Yeah. Right. Do you agree with that assessment? Like what would you say and or am I getting into like, territory that's controversial. It's still okay, here's

Krystle Hickman  21:09  
the thing. So how do I word this? Okay, so there are facts about science, but facts can change. And also people can look at the same facts and interpret them differently based on how they feel about it. So how I feel about it, I would say 100% invasive. That's just because I've seen how they've acted around native bees. I've seen how they outcompete them I've seen how they like push them aside. I don't personally feel that there is a benefit to having honey bees in the United States. Wow. Even when people use them in farming like so I was telling you earlier I've been visiting farms for this B course it's that's being developed right now about native bees and farming. And people put honey bee hives next to the the farmland but then you go in the farmland and you'll see native bees. And if you actually observe them for a while, a lot of times the honeybees are just kind of like hanging out on the flowers are not doing as much but you'll see the native bees just like collecting pollen and they're collecting so much more pollen. They're also fluffier. So they like even the males that are visiting the flowers who aren't purposely collecting pollen they're pollinating. But yeah, I I 100% think honey bees are invasive. I don't think they should be here, which I know is really controversial. I think the only real benefit to them is Honey,

Michelle Fullner  22:26  
I was going to ask about Honey, are there any native bees that make honey so that's another

Krystle Hickman  22:31  
conversation and I don't know where it's at now. But honey is just nectar that's had a lot of the moisture remote. Okay. And there are other bees that make honey like substances. But I also know I haven't had this conversation for a few years. So I don't know where it is now. But there were certain, I guess beekeepers who didn't want honey like substances made by other bees to be called Honey. So you'll find bumble bees make like a honey like substance. A lot of like you social bees. Do. There's a lot of bees in like Brazil, Australia like stingless bees. They make a honey like substance which is just I think, honey, yeah, so there are there are other bees that make honey, all adult bees drink nectar, which is honey like it's basically just again, honey with more moisture in it.

Michelle Fullner  23:24  
Like I mean, as a kid I drink a lot of like honeysuckle flowers. Yeah, so it's just like a less moist version of that.

Krystle Hickman  23:32  
Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So you could see these on flowers concentrating nectar. So they'll like have their tongue stuck out when it's really warm. And they're like removing the moisture from a lot of the nectar and they're consuming it. Wow. So yeah, okay.

Michelle Fullner  23:47  
I found an article by Australian geographic about this, and it explains that there are plenty of other bee species that produce honey, but usually not enough of it to make a commercial success. One example the article gives is that quote stingless bees are a group of about 500 bee species that are excellent honey producers and are also managed as efficient crop pollinators in some regions. stingless bees are mostly found in tropical and subtropical regions of Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Americas. Their honey is different in taste and consistency to honey bee honey, it has high water content, so it's a lot runnier and tastes quite tangy. stingless bee honey is an important food and income source for many traditional communities around the world. But not only are there other bee species that produce honey there are also other insects that produce honey like the Mexican honey Wasp, and honey pot ants, which is a common name that includes several species of ants that store honey in their abdomens. Please do yourself a favor and Google this immediately because they hold quantities of honey that seem impossible and is a sight to behold. But the bees we most associate with honey whose honey we can buy at the grocery store are very social sort of bees, which made me wonder about the social lives of bees in general. What are some of the different ways bees Live together or are solitary. So

Krystle Hickman  25:01  
there are bees that are eusocial like stingless bees like honey bees, bumblebees, where they live in like a hive for like a colony you

Michelle Fullner  25:10  
social is spelled eu s o c i a l, but I like to think of it as one be asking another eusocial and they use social babying like, Yeah, but use social actually refers only to a specific type of social structure defined by Oxford languages as quote showing an advanced level of social organization in which a single female or caste produces the offspring, and non reproductive individuals cooperate in caring for the young. So honeybees are a classic example of use social insects because the queen bee produces the offspring and her worker bee daughters who don't and can't have their own offspring take care of the bouncing baby bee siblings. I also just found out that naked mole rats and demora Lind mole rats are considered by some to be eusocial mammals because relatives work together to raise young born from a queen mole rat, which feels like the perfect Halloween costume or character from a Neil Gaiman novel. So eusocial is the social structure that most of us are familiar with in bees. But what are the social lives of other bee species like there's

Krystle Hickman  26:16  
other bees that are communal or semi social. So like a lot of electeds, they'll have a founders which is also a queen, another word for a queen. So it'll either be her sisters, or her daughters, which basically work under her. And they could switch from being like just collecting resources for her young and they could switch to maybe being reproductive, oh my god. So they could also be like solitary a certain time of the year. But then there's also other bees that are semi social, so they have one burrow entrance, but then they live in like an apartment complex. So they each have their own little apartments, but with their own entrance, wow, then there's also solitary so they could just live in a borough by themselves. But then there's also solitary and aggregations. So it's like a neighborhood. So it's a bunch of individual houses, but they all live close together. And then I would say the last one, and these are just the main ones, by the way, but the last one I would say is parasite. And this is a bee that actually doesn't live in burrows. So the males and the females, you'll find them sleeping on plants at night. So typically, the way it works is most of them will actually go into the burrow of the host B, they'll lay an egg and then their egg will hatch. It'll consume the egg or the larva of the host. And then we'll eat all the pollen. There's also some parasites that are bumblebees. So what they'll do is the queen will actually go into a colony, I think, if I remember correctly, she kills the queen. And then she has the workers from that colony raise her brood of the same species or different species of her species. Wow. Yeah, so she's a parasite or they're called cuckoo bees. Okay, a lot of times. So this is a cuckoo Bumblebee.

Michelle Fullner  27:54  
Cuckoo bees are named after cuckoo birds because some species of the birds engage in brood parasitism, which means that they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and get those birds to raise their baby birds for them. There's also

Krystle Hickman  28:08  
a really cool cuckoo bee called them electa, which I just found out. I didn't realize their phonology was so different. But so most of these other like the solitary cuckoo bees that are not the Bumblebee, they'll go into open burrows. This one will actually go into closed burrows. So they'll open them up, go inside there. And I got this all film because I was like, What the heck is happening? And then they'll when they're inside, they'll actually block the entrance from the inside, lay an egg, and then they'll come out and then basically hide the insurance again. Wow. And I was like, This is crazy, because I'd like I didn't know they did that. Yeah. But yeah, I was like, I filmed the whole thing. I was like laying there for I don't know how long but I got, like, what is going on here? But yeah, there's a lot of different forms of social. That is incredible.

Michelle Fullner  28:53  
Yeah, there's such a diversity in the species and like their life histories and how they go about everything that they do. And in California, we have like 1600 Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  29:05  
a little over 1600 species. Yeah, so we're a Mediterranean climate. And Mediterranean climates only take up about 2% of the Earth's surface area, but we're 20 a little over 20% of the Earth's biodiversity wild. So that's why in like the entire United States, there's about a little over 4000 species, but in California, there's a little over 16 100,000 That's that's a really big percentage. We're

Michelle Fullner  29:29  
not almost half of the landmass. No, yeah,

Krystle Hickman  29:33  
we haven't. We have awesome ecosystems here. It's, it's amazing. It's a

Michelle Fullner  29:38  
great place to be interested in bees. Driving for an hour in this direction, you see something totally different. You drive in the other direction. Like

Krystle Hickman  29:46  
that's why like every single like, at least like three to four days a week minimum. I'm out like driving somewhere random and just like hanging out there because it's just cool ecosystems. That

Michelle Fullner  29:56  
is great. Okay, but part of the thing with the 1600 species, right? It's amazing. but it's also if you're like, I just want to learn a little bit to hang on to right. Yeah. Where would you say is something that's maybe a species that's pretty statewide that like a lot of people could observe if they wanted to just go out and see something.

Krystle Hickman  30:14  
So it depends on what you I guess it depends on the person but I'd say one that's statewide and is probably one of the easier beast it identify as a bombas busness NCI, it's a yellow face Bumblebee, it's large. If you get like more to like Central or Northern California, there's a lot of bumblebees that look very similar. Okay. But that is one that I would say it's very easy to observe, like finding nests of them is actually pretty easy. I've stepped out of a car one time and just found one on the side of the sidewalk, but it's a very common Bumblebee.

Michelle Fullner  30:46  
I literally found what I'm pretty sure was a female of the species digging a nest on the coast in Sea Ranch. A few months after this interview, just out for a walk with my kids under some cypress trees.

Krystle Hickman  30:57  
Oh Harper and your bees because there are around a lot of houses. Or there's a very big bright orange one is Isla Copus on arena Valley carpenter bee some people call them teddy bear carpenter bees, they just they hang out in the same spot waiting for females to pass. So they're very easy to observe, you keep going back to the same spot. They're there all the time. So

Michelle Fullner  31:16  
sidenote, the valley carpenter bee is a great example of something called sexual dimorphism, where the males and females of the same species have different forms or different morphology. In the case of Valley carpenter bees, the females are obsidian black, and the males are this bright golden orange color that crystal described and have green eyes. The males are called teddy bears, probably both because of their appearance. And because they can't sting, while the females can sting, but probably won't

Krystle Hickman  31:45  
sweat Bazer like literally everywhere. Oh, my goodness, like we saw a little. They're very tiny. So that gives you like an idea of like how the range of bees and not even the tiniest. There's a lot of different sweat bees. Minnesota's bees like the Longhorn ones. If you have, like sunflowers in your garden, a lot of the males will just sleep. They're so cute. Yeah. So you can just see them every night. Like we saw the females here. Yeah, they're statewide.

Michelle Fullner  32:09  
Okay, so it sounds like step one is just change your idea of what you're looking for when you're looking for bees. Yeah, like, kind of change your perspective, because we're so used to looking for honey bees when we think about bees. And if you're looking for this kind of set of parameters around what a bee is, you're not going to see even a fraction of the bees that are out there. Yeah.

Krystle Hickman  32:29  
And I guess like a good thing too, is just to know that bees have routines. So if you understand a bees routine, you can know when to find it, where to find it. And they'll like they'll keep visiting the same things over and over. If you see a bee like we saw those male bees kind of like swarming around, if you stay there for like, I stay there for hours. But maybe like less time than that, if you want, you'll actually start to notice they have a pattern that they fly around, you'll start to notice which flowers they're visiting. They kind of just do it in the same order over and over. So you can predict where they're going to be. Wow. Yeah. So yeah, it's kind of like they're at their day job or something. Okay, so

Michelle Fullner  33:06  
like, as with many things in the natural world, right, like it's kind of a, it's kind of that building a relationship with something. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And I keep coming back, making those observations and then patterns start to emerge.

Krystle Hickman  33:21  
up to the surface. Yeah. And then you can start to look at flowers. And you're okay, bees are going to be here. Yeah.

Michelle Fullner  33:26  
Because you recognize the type of thing that they're looking for. Yeah, exactly.

Krystle Hickman  33:28  
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  33:32  
that's amazing. Like I said before, I didn't think I had native bees in my yard. But after this interview, I started seeing them specifically on my Great Valley gun plants. So spending more time looking, broadening the search image for what actually fits into the category of B and building a relationship with a place and the species present. There are always to start seeing more native bees, wherever you are innovative bees are in our yards. Are they also already on our farms? I was curious whether Krystal thought we could feasibly replace honeybees with native bees in agriculture. And she's a big believer in these sometimes tiny bees

Krystle Hickman  34:07  
farm alongside native ecosystems. That's all you need to do. Okay.

Michelle Fullner  34:10  
And like create habitat, like hedgerows and things like that. Yeah.

Krystle Hickman  34:14  
And the thing is to so you don't necessarily have to replace honeybees with native bees. If you put a native ecosystem in, it's not just bees that are replacing the honeybees. It's also birds, it's butterflies, moths. It's all these creatures pollinate. Right? So it's just this one single, like invasive farm animal versus an entire ecosystem of creatures that will do it so much better.

Michelle Fullner  34:38  
That's amazing. Yeah. And biodiversity is resilience it is and so if something happens to one of those species, yeah, the colony collapse disorder, right with the honeybees. It's like oh, no, are we going to eat right but like if you're making the space

Krystle Hickman  34:54  
for all of these creatures, yeah. And then I think like a thing to that's really interesting about it is because like it's So as I've been talking to like farmers this week, I've noticed there's certain things that they consider weeds or pests. And I've personally considered them like, oh, when I'm see these things, I'm really excited about them. So when you have like a healthy biodiversity ecosystem by where you're farming, there's going to be a lot of creatures in there that you will consider pests. But they're actually there, they will control a lot of things that like you don't necessarily want on like your farmland or in your neighborhood, wherever you are, their population control or they help support things that are like, I call them indicator insects, because if they're there, they mean that these like, these creatures that are I don't know if you'd call them like lower on the totem pole, like aphids, maybe you're like thrips, mealy bugs, things like that, like wasps. People don't like Wasp but they control the population spiders also control the population with sort of birds as well. Just like Cuba ladybugs. Yeah, yeah. So if you like pick and choose because I like compare it to like, kind of like a game of like Jenga, if you keep removing blocks. It's not stable. Right. So like, all of it should be there. Yeah. So yeah, with farming, if you keep spraying pesticides, things that are, quote unquote, higher up on the totem pole, they're going to take longer to come back, opposed to the things that you consider pests.

Michelle Fullner  36:08  
One of the things too, that I have heard on the kind of agriculture side of things is that native bees are actually better pollinator

Krystle Hickman  36:14  
they are they're much better about that. Yeah, I think it's like a combination of the way they visit flowers and also the way they're, like physically built. So a lot of native bees are just fluffier. And with honey bees, if you see the way they carry pollen, they have a little feature called a curricula. And it's just like kind of a scoop and they just put pollen there. But native bees like if you saw that Minnesota she was covered with pollen. Yeah. But then they also like they have a little puffy pants with a cover with pollen there. And then there's like, asked me, like, totally covered and then like osmia If this is a good way to identify asthma to you, they kind of like do like little twerking. Yeah. And they they basically cover the underside of their abdomen with pollen. Oh my gosh. So they're like, just naturally as they're walking around, they're pollinating and like male bees. They're also a lot of them are also very fluffy. So they're pollinating as well. Not on purpose. To be cute. Yeah, so like the native bees that are very covered and they pollinate really well. So yeah, just like, I think a few dozen. I think people were looking at osmia which are the mason bees, they can pollinate as well as a couple 100 honeybees. And I feel like too, if you just like kind of observe them. The native bees seem to be just working so much harder. Like a lot of times you'll just see like a honey bee just kind of hanging out on a flower. I don't know what they're doing. Taking a nap. But yeah, they just seem to be working harder. Okay, yeah.

Michelle Fullner  37:43  
So the busy bee thing applies better to native bees, the honey bee?

Krystle Hickman  37:46  
I think so. I definitely think so. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  37:50  
we got some good busy bees. That's great. Another sense in which native bees are better pollinators was demonstrated in a 2023 study out of San Diego titled honeybees decrease the fitness of plants they pollinate. The possible explanation put forth in the study is that since honey bees tend to visit many flowers on the same plant, before moving on to the next plant, the plants end up self pollinating, rather than getting pollen from another nearby plant, resulting in offspring that's less fit. I'll link this study in the show notes in case you want to read more about it. Okay, so I think that most of us are very bought into the idea of supporting native bees. Yeah. And one of the things you said earlier is that you look for places with native plants. And a lot of people are really interested in creating that at home. Yeah. So any top tips for Californians trying to create habitat at home? For bees?

Krystle Hickman  38:37  
Yeah, I would say number one thing is I would create a habitat, maybe not just for bees, but again, for like the whole ecosystem, you can go to well, I'm in Southern California. So I would look at a place like theater Payne, which is a native plant garden, they have on their website, you could put in your zip code, and it will say, what plants are native to your area. I think the Audubon Society has something similar. So you can start there by planting native. And then also just based on your area, different insects, different bees will show up so you can kind of create a habitat around them, those plants for them. So like, a lot, most of these are ground nesting, though a lot of them will nest right below the plants. So then if you're going to mulch, think about like, what's going to happen to the bees, are they going to have be able to go through the motion mulch? Are they going to be able to breathe through it so maybe don't put more than like two inches, okay, or you can use like, just like leaves from your plants because those create like kind of a blanket but like the overwintering bees or butterflies, whatever can like still breathe through them. Okay, yeah, they can get through it. Yeah. And then also like, you could play it to attract certain bees like Redbud is great for carpenter bees love it. Mega Kylie bees and leafcutter bees love it and you could see that they're there because they have those little like, see? Yeah, again, like we were talking about the Perdita interrupt. If you want to track those, you can put The copies and the cryptantha You couldn't get a book like the bees in your backyard. So they came out with an East Coast version and a West Coast version came out and I think May. That's a really great book to start with. So it'll help you know, specifically what bees are in your area, what they like, you can learn about their phonology, or about the life cycles, things like that. But yeah, yeah,

Michelle Fullner  40:22  
that's great. Okay, I listener had a bunch of questions. Okay. in backyards. Yeah. And you kind of touched on some of them. So her name is Andrea or Andrea. I'm not sure which I'm sorry. But they were wondering if like with sheet mulching okay. So like you mentioned, maybe don't put more than a couple of inches. And you said that their nests are often like run under plants. So wouldn't it be a good idea to like leave a little bit of space of bare ground right under some Yeah.

Krystle Hickman  40:44  
So I normally say like six to 12 inches around plans. Also, if you're planning on a Heugel like just like a mound. I know a lot of people put like a lot of different things. I've seen a lot of bees like nesting and huge goals. I had to look

Michelle Fullner  40:57  
this up. Heugel mounds according to the permaculture Research Institute, are a way of creating raised beds, which over time break down into mounds of fertility, they work on the principle of mimicking how a forest works to regenerate itself. The dead wood falls and begins to decompose, fallen branches and leaf litter begin to accumulate on top and year after year rich soil begins to form because it creates a diverse habitat for decomposers, fungi and bacteria to thrive. It goes on when recreating this forest technique. You can use logs as the base for the mounds and top with any organic matter you have easily accessible close to your site branches, leaves, straw, hay, woodchips, any green vegetation, grass clippings, etc. Layer the mounds using coarser material below and the finest material on top top with a fine layer of soil or compost and mulch again and they are ready. So there you go. Hugo mounts also a

Krystle Hickman  41:46  
lot of bees are stem nesting bees. So if you are cutting back your foliage, maybe leave I think it's like 12 to 18 inches, anything that has like a pithy stem, they'll create their own little nest in there. So you don't need to actually provide like, there's a lot of like, bee houses people get. I feel like it's more so for people than bees. Okay. Also, there is like a lot of cleaning required. So if you just create a habitat, that's fine. See,

Michelle Fullner  42:09  
and that for me, that's like one of my questions, because I know I'm not going to keep up on me and I

Krystle Hickman  42:13  
wouldn't do it either. Right? It's just not gonna happen. Yeah, like that's the thing too, because like I know like, yeah, and also to it requires you knowing the phonology of the beat, because there's certain bees that will have like two generations in a year maybe maybe even three, some of them just like, one part of the year, like just one a year. So yeah, if you're not as interested in figuring out that and like figuring out how to properly clean them and then getting a proper like be house then like,

Michelle Fullner  42:40  
to kind of be a passion in it. Yeah, I don't want to maintain that. And I love

Krystle Hickman  42:45  
these and I know I wouldn't do it right. So yeah, leave the stem leave the leaves is our society has a thing, leave the leaves. But yeah, if you're cutting back the stems leave like 12 to 18 inches for the stems. Xerces

Michelle Fullner  42:54  
Society, which is spelled Xer CES has a lot of information about leaving the leaves so look them up to learn more. And you can also get assigned for your yard that says leave the leaves so that your HOA if you have one might leave you alone, but no promises. Even if you do keep getting grumpy letters from your HOA. As I do. Everyone who passes by your yard will learn something about helping wildlife, which seems like a really easy way to make a difference. Okay, more listener questions. I've got a listener Belinda, who was nicknamed be by her mom. Oh, based on her determination. Yeah, she got that nickname, which is great. And she wants to know what your favorite native bee is.

Krystle Hickman  43:32  
Okay, I have to Okay. Wait, is she talking just like an individual species? You're like, Okay, wait, no, I'll talk about January your way. That's what she asked. Yeah, I absolutely love Perdita and Andorra. So the fairy bee and then digger bee is another. Yeah, so those are really cool. But I think the prettiest isn't Andrina which one is that? What does that look like? It's a mining bee. So they're the ones that have they kind of look like they have the females have really thick eyebrows. So inside of their eyes, it's called facial for via they have really thick hair. And if you get a shot of their face, or if you see their face, the females then you know that's well. Okay, there's more exceptions, but that's, but that's definitely an Audrina. There's also there's there's also like the Ansel injury now, which I was talking to you about before they have that as well. They're beautiful. They're, they're amazing. Yeah. Okay.

Michelle Fullner  44:23  
I'm wondering what are Are there any like iconic plant and B relationships, maybe like a particular native plant or like a bee specialist or anything like that, where it's like a cool relationship between a plant and a bee. Oh, okay.

Krystle Hickman  44:37  
This one's really cool. So I finally saw this this year. So there's a bee called the Zero lick. disturber Timberlake EI. I wish I knew the common name. I don't know what it is. So it's a desert bee. And it has a relationship with two flowers. One is one of them is a min cilia. The other one is a ghost flower which the genus name changed. I don't know what it changed to. But The Ghost flower imitates the man Xillia. And it looks like it has a female's abdomen. It's so the males come to the ghost flower, they try to mate with it. And then it has sort of like a trap on the back. So it taps pollen on the males back in an area where they can't remove it. So as they go around from flower to flower trying to mate with the flower, they pollinate it. And then the females, they'll be in the men's cilia and it's so funny. I actually I photographed so the man cilia has, it's really thick in the center and the so the females dive in. So it's just their blood sticking out. And it looks so similar to the ghost flower.

Michelle Fullner  45:42  
Does it tricky when you see it? You're like, oh,

Krystle Hickman  45:46  
yeah, so like the so these can't see red, they see it as black. Okay, and the back of the zero like this Timberlake ei female is black. So it's the same. But yeah, it's just funny because you see, like, just the back end of the female sticking out and you're like, Okay, I get why the males are tricked by it. Sure. It's really, they're really beautiful flowers too.

Michelle Fullner  46:07  
I gotta see this. It's like, is it like Venus Flytrap action? Like it closes

Krystle Hickman  46:11  
it doesn't close. It's just like, it's kind of like when they go in there. It just kind of triggers the flowers. You just like put pollen on the back like that. Just taps. Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. And a lot of the males have really thick pollen on their back, you've been visiting a lot of flowers.

Michelle Fullner  46:31  
So the ghost flower is imitating them and Xillia the common name for which is the sand blazing star. But not only is it imitating the sand blazing star, it's imitating what that flower would look like if a female zero Lyptus Timberlake ei B were in it. And the males are all about it and ended up pollinating the ghost flower when they tried to meet with what they think is the Female Bee in the different flower. And if you're wondering what this Trixie flower looks like, it's a gorgeous white flower flecked with red. And of course it has the red would be B but right in the middle. It's native to the southwestern United States and Northwest Mexico. You can find pictures of it on kowski if you type in Ghost flower. Okay, another plant question. I have a listener who was wondering about oak tree relationships. Oh, so do you know because oak trees are like Keystone plants, right? For supporting a lot of insect species. So is there a bee species that you know of? Or, or a family or anything that relies on trees? Yeah.

Krystle Hickman  47:28  
No, I don't know of any. Normally I think of wasps, or so with us, because I know there's a lot of wasps that have toyed wasps. Yeah, you'll see like a lot of galls. Like it's basically kind of like a cocoon, but formed by the plant that they're developing last year. And I don't know if any of these are Yeah, I don't know if it

Michelle Fullner  47:48  
okay. Okay, that's interesting. I looked up bees in the index of Doug Ptolemies, the nature of oaks and it took me to a page about Wasp oak relationships, which only mentions bees to say that they're in the same order as wasps. So that isn't to say that there aren't any bees with oak relationships. But it does seem like wasps, such as the centipede go wasps, Crystal mentioned are typically more associated with oak trees than bees are. Alright, and then I asked my friend Charlotte go, who is the SF and bloom guy that does like the bee suit dress up? That's a great name, right? Yeah. So his question for you is, if you are going to be a B for Halloween, which B would you be?

Krystle Hickman  48:26  
Oh, oh, okay. I'll stick to California. Okay, I would be an added pasta and mela Ventress which is a green B, it's green in the front. And depending on where they are, if they are more in like a Zurich area, like desert, so the females have white and brown abdomens, but if you're in more like neighborhood, like suburban area, then it's brown, white and black. Oh, the green is really, really bright and shiny. And it's gorgeous. Oh, there's also a text Danis, which is fully green. So one of those because they really stand out. Yeah, they're beautiful. Yeah, they're really

Michelle Fullner  49:01  
I love that. He also wants to know about be architecture. Are there these building cool things? Oh, my God.

Krystle Hickman  49:09  
Yes. Let's talk about that. Okay, so let me Okay, so we'll go back to the aggregation because I've talked about that before. So there's bees that build basically chimney like structures called turrets. So around their burrow, they have a little chimney and it's basically to stop any like parasites from getting in there. So they build that they have a gland on their abdomen that they combined with saliva, and then they put they dig up the ground, and then they basically go around in a circle, but up and create these little turkey

Michelle Fullner  49:37  
like 3d printing it. Yeah.

Krystle Hickman  49:40  
It's actually they are Yeah. And then there's a beat called the Diantha idiom, it's a pebble B. So they create, I don't know if there's just one cell inside or more but it's basically a nest on plant stems that's made up pebbles. Whoa, there's another one that's called a resin B. So they Have these like sort of Brown, round, resin balls and then there's like a little stem at the bottom for airflow. They're single celled. Those are really cool. There's also wool carta bees, which you know about. So they collect like the the fuzzy plant material from a lot of different plants and they use it to like, basically stuffed the inside of their little burrow chambers with

Michelle Fullner  50:23  
doesn't make it cozy.

Krystle Hickman  50:24  
I mean, presumably, it looks very cozy. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, I think you social bees are just cool to like, like bumblebees, they have these like, sort of like bulbous looking collection of combs, I guess you would call them inside their, their nest, kind of like stacked on top of each other. Looks kind of very unorganized. But it's very cool. Looking nice. So yeah. And people

Michelle Fullner  50:46  
are probably taking inspiration from that. There's so much of that, like with architecture now. I feel like

Krystle Hickman  50:51  
yeah, oh, this is really cool. Okay, so I was talking about colitis a little bit before. So this B, a lot of these actually do this, but this one specifically, they'll actually line the inside of their burrow with a waterproof material that they create. And people were actually looking at that as an alternative to plastic because it's biodegradable, and it's waterproof. Wow. Yeah. are water resistant, I guess. So that could be inspiration from nature for plastic replacement. Something sustainable? Yeah. So that antastic Yeah, and the common name is plaster Orbeez. Because of that, okay.

Michelle Fullner  51:22  
This idea of looking to the natural world to inspire our inventions and technological improvements is called biomimicry. And there are many familiar examples of biomimicry all around us from velcro inspired by birds to compression socks inspired by the legs of giraffes to nets that capture water from fog inspired by coast redwood trees, I learned all of this in a book called nature's wild ideas by Christy Hamilton, which I found out about from Griffith Griffith, the guest on the redwood tree episode because he's featured in the book. And speaking of guests of the podcast, doing cool things in the world, Crystal created a card deck called native bees of the western United States that all let her tell you more about.

Krystle Hickman  52:01  
So I'm not like a production company or product manufacturer, I was just like, oh, I had this idea to make cards for everyone to pick up something new information about bees, they have different areas like if this is in like a conifer forest, you'll find them grasslands, plains, coastal sage, scrub, desert, whatever. And then like natural, suburban, urban, if you live in these areas, you'll know this B is here. Also the plant relationships their size, there's photos, male, female, different information wing VaynerNation, too, so you can even identify them by that. But I was trying to make them very pretty and just colorful and just easy for like everyone to understand. And it was just it's something that's been in my mind since like 2019. And then I did a Kickstarter this year, which was successful, I was so happy about. And then I ordered enough for I thought would last a year. But after the Kickstarter was over, they basically sold out in five days. And I was like, I was very, I'm super happy about it. But I'm also like, I'm slightly like, oh my gosh, what do I do now? Right? Yeah, because I really do I reorder what I'm really trying to figure that out like, and it's just like, it's not something that was even like, conceptually, I was like, Hey, this is something that might happen. So I am definitely reordering

Michelle Fullner  53:11  
reorder, she did. And that second order sold out too. So now the cards are in their third printing, and they're now being fulfilled by Amazon. So crystal doesn't have to package every order anymore. So if you want to get a set of cards, search for native bees of the Western United States, or just be sipping native bees on Amazon, and they should be the first result in a green box. I'll also put a link in the show notes. If you do get them. Don't forget to leave a review on Amazon because that helps potential buyers know how awesome these cards are, which helps crystal very directly, and it only takes like two extra minutes. Or if you would rather get the cards from a brick and mortar store. There are some great options in Southern California. They're currently available at Theodore Payne Foundation, South Coast Botanical Garden, haha, manga, native plant, nursery, discounsel Gardens, Huntington Library, which is actually a garden and you can check them out from the actual LA County Library and the Altadena library. So keep your eyes open in those locations. And soon, hopefully some northern California locations as well. And then are you working on any other projects you want to talk about? Like? What's going on with? Yeah,

Krystle Hickman  54:14  
so I became a National Geographic Explorer this year. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm super excited. So yeah, the basically what I'm working on with them is creating a book. It's called the ABCs of California. So every single letter in the alphabet is a species or subspecies of be in California. So they're in different ecosystems. There's one I was talking about fourth on an island, there's some that are on mountains, vernal pools are thinking about doing a farm, I might not do that anymore. Also neighborhoods, just deserts, just all these different random ecosystems. So it's not just about pretty photos of the bee. It's also about like, the ecology of the area. What's happened like there's a bee that an area was on fire, like there were three fires in one year and then there's B reappear. Oh, wow. And then there's this other area, it's in the Santa Monica Mountains there, I found about, I think 41 or 42 species of bees. And that's just one small area. And then people have been moving into that area because it's really biodiversity beautiful. And then they were worried about fires. So then a conservancy came through and started coming through with a tractor and they cut down all of the native plants, and the bees completely disappeared. And the bee that is featured for that one, I, it took me two years to photograph it. And I photographed it two weeks before they came through, because it was I think it was 2021. It was the week of the Fourth of July, because I think they were anticipating fireworks. But yeah, and I've been I went back again, been going back in every year just to see and then they'd been going through with the tractor again every year. So it's basically stating I yeah, I feel like it's I mean, it could probably bounce back. Maybe they stopped doing that. But the only thing that is there is ants. But so yeah, I'm working on that an

Michelle Fullner  56:00  
update on the ABCs of California project. Crystal has now photographed a bee species for every letter of the alphabet. So follow her at bee sip on Instagram to get updates as the book continues to come together.

Krystle Hickman  56:13  
But then I'm also working on I don't know if this is going to happen. But I wrote a script for a short film based on a B I had a very short experience with it's going to be like animated. I have a character designer who's done the design for it. And then I'm going to I have no idea how to shop it around. I'm going to shop it around to see if anybody like studio wants to pick it up. But it's going to be like an eight to 10 minute short. No words. They asked me about that be?

Michelle Fullner  56:37  
I want to see it. I hope it happens. I want to see it.

Krystle Hickman  56:39  
I hope it happens to like I'm like kind of flying blind because I'm like, I have no idea how to do this. I'm just going to try and figure it out as I go along.

Michelle Fullner  56:46  
We need more stories about the natural world. Yeah, it's

Krystle Hickman  56:49  
cool. And what's really cool too about it because I feel like a lot of times with like, I'm not gonna bring up movies, but when they're about insects, they, they kind of like walk around on their hind legs and talk. It's for some reasons always about males, when they're doing things that typically the females do. So this one's like, the body proportions are correct. They're behaving like bees, there's other creatures. So it's not just the bee. There's also different birds, there's lizards, you see, like other little creatures around because they're in the ecosystem.

Michelle Fullner  57:18  
I love that I'm here from the present for me, which is the future from when this interview was recorded. But the past from whenever you are listening with another update, crystal has now started talking to industry people and is putting together a pitch. So fingers crossed, because I want to see this short real bad. Okay, two last question. Okay, one, any common myths, any economist that we'd maybe didn't cover yet, or just or it could be things that we did cover that are just like, things that drive you crazy?

Krystle Hickman  57:46  
I mean, basically, there's a cool bug out there. I guess there's like these native bees do not need bee houses. It's not they're not technically beneficial for them, they will use them but not beneficial. Actually, if you have a native ecosystem in your yard and you find that the bees aren't using the bee houses, that probably means that you created a really good ecosystem, okay. Also, you don't need to put water out for bees. It's honey bees that will use voice and bees. I mean, native bees, honey bees use them. Also, a lot of facts that are attributed to just bees in general only apply. So how do you check your bees? Oh, yeah. So like, people always say that if a bee stings you it'll die after. That's a honeybee. Okay. People also say after bees mate, the male's die. That's a honeybee. Okay, I guess like when you talk about bees, because I compare honey bees to chickens. So it's like basically like applying facts about chickens to birds that are like threatened or I know Eagles aren't as much now I can't think of like just birds. So it's like basically applying facts about chickens to like an eagle or like a penguin when it doesn't apply. So when people say like, this is a bird factor, this is a B factor. It only applies to just one individual b It's not a I guess just be more specific. Yeah, they can, like just kind of a follow up question like what B? Do you mean? Or are you talking about native bees? Or you're talking? If you're talking about honeybees, I would say honey bees instead of just bees,

Michelle Fullner  59:13  
right, like people are referring to one 4000 of the bees that we have like, in North America.

Krystle Hickman  59:20  
Yeah, awesome. Okay, so there's this quote, that like keeps getting repeated. It's attributed to Einstein Einstein did not say it. If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, the man would only have four years of life left. That's not true. Also, like when you really break it down. It doesn't make sense because bees are not the only creature that sustain life. On Earth. They're not the only creature that pollinates I would say instead, like insects, if insects disappeared, I wouldn't put it for your my time limit on it. But there's so many things that only eat insects. There's so many things that only eat things that eat insects, so insects, it wouldn't just be people it'd be like ecosystems Sure, but bees, if bees disappeared, like a lot of bees, if they disappear, people wouldn't notice. Because they don't negatively or positively impact people. But like, that doesn't mean that they're not important to the ecosystem. So I feel like that shouldn't mean they are more or less important. We

Michelle Fullner  1:00:21  
privilege certain species, we do well, so that they are related to us and how they impact us, the more we privilege.

Krystle Hickman  1:00:28  
And like the more like, the more cute they are to like, Okay, this is an example I do with like a lot of my talks. So the

Michelle Fullner  1:00:35  
phenomenon crystals about to explain is called the Indian Ocean Dipole. And it's a climate pattern I didn't know existed until she told me about it. It

Krystle Hickman  1:00:43  
happens between Eastern Africa and Australia. And I'm pretty sure it happens every year. But because of climate change, it's really like, strengthen that. So you remember a couple of years ago when there's a drought in Australia, and they had a lot of fires. So basically, there was a drought, what happens is, if there's a drought in Australia, like Eastern Africa will get a lot of floods. So there was flooding at the same time in eastern Africa, no one was really talking about more recently, there was flooding in Australia, Eastern Africa, you know, it's like opposite. So anyway, the creature that people were really concentrating on in Australia or the koalas, which have symbiotic relationships with Eucalyptus. So a lot of the koalas that survived the fires, the eucalyptus burn, and a lot of them ended up starving because they didn't have anything else to eat, because they just rely on that one plant. So people were really paying attention to them. One because they're bigger, they're fluffy. They're very cute. But the same? Yeah, the same thing is happening with bees, because there's a lot of bees that rely on just one single plan to live, but because they're not as large or not as cute, or they don't, again, negatively or positively impact people. A lot of times people just think they were like worth ignoring.

Michelle Fullner  1:01:49  
Right? It's easier to know, one fuzzy mammal. Yeah, than 1600. Oh, yeah. Tiny. Yeah, it's overwhelming. Yeah, it's

Krystle Hickman  1:01:59  
like that number is very huge. Like, they're not less important because of that. They're not less important, not less important to the ecosystem. So I mean, yeah, I think people should value nature as just existing as a thing. Because like, also, ecosystems can be tiny, like, it can be like a, just a little patch of flowers. And if this one creature disappears, from that patch of flowers, what happens to the flowers, or all of the other creatures that live in it as well. So again, that patch can disappear, doesn't impact people, but it does have an impact on the different creatures that were in that little ecosystem,

Michelle Fullner  1:02:34  
right? And it has ripples outward, even if it dies, right? Like there's birds now that aren't gonna eat the insects that were there.

Krystle Hickman  1:02:39  
Yeah. And then yeah, and it's just to like, birds also are great at seed dispersal. So if the birds like aren't gonna be there, that could be like this area that was like, farmed by people. And it was like, abandoned and the birds show up, and then they hit their seeds and stuff starts coming back. So it does have ripple effects that you can't even like, predict, right?

Michelle Fullner  1:02:58  
So totally unknowable.

Krystle Hickman  1:02:59  
Yeah, it is. It's very, it's really hard to predict. I feel like a lot of times when like people are trying to like intervene with nature to like, help things along. Hindsight you kind of like, like, oh, yeah, that that makes sense why that happened. But when you're when you're trying to do things to be helpful, like, a lot of times people can like kind of mess things up. They can like introduce a toad that might like, oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

Michelle Fullner  1:03:22  
so much of that. There are so many examples of these cascading effects in nature. But I want to share one that I came across recently in Kim Stanley Robinson, the High Sierra a love story. Robinson devotes an entire chapter to fish and frogs in the High Sierra describing how early members of the Sierra Club introduced golden trout and other fish to high rivers and lakes that had previously had no fish at all. The fish unsurprisingly, did what fish do and gobbled up insects that frogs had previously relied on as well as the frogs themselves. A less expected consequence was that the fish also out competed rosy finches for insects, leading to a precipitous drop in rosy Finch numbers, which is problematic not only for the birds, but also because rosy finches play an important role in seed dispersal, which means an impact on surrounding plant communities and the creatures that rely on them. So this is exactly like the example that crystal gave of a system lacking birds to spread seeds, which radiates the wound outward in ways that can be difficult to predict. Or like the Jenga tower she described earlier. We don't always know which pieces will cause the tower to topple. But the more we take out, the more wobbly things get. Okay, last question. Okay. What about native bees still blows your mind or takes your breath away? I

Krystle Hickman  1:04:38  
just feel like observing them. I feel like they're a lot smarter than people. Give them credit for it and I if you just observe them, a lot of times it just you could kind of see that like thought process thinking. And it's just I feel like people kind of associate a certain I don't know how intelligent they are. But I feel like people associate people at the top. But I don't know I just I feel like again, they have preteens they go about their day they like remember things they also you start to see them learning. So Bumblebee will actually all of the six families of bees that are in the United States can do buzz pollination. Some

Michelle Fullner  1:05:16  
species of flowers hang on to their pollen, and are like no good vibes only. I'm only going to give you this pollen with specific vibrations, so the bees do what is known as buzz pollination to get the pollen to release from the flower. And honey bees can't do it, which means that honeybees can't pollinate certain crops that require buzz pollination, like tomatoes, blueberries, eggplants, and potatoes. You can actually hear bees doing this, if you watch them, they vibrate their wings super rapidly when they're on a flower requiring buzz pollination. And the resulting home is a different note than that of their typical wing noise in flight. But apparently, there's a learning curve for this behavior.

Krystle Hickman  1:05:55  
So and you'll also see them like when they first emerge as adults. You'll see them kind of bad at it. And then they'll get better, really, so they could develop skills. They're just they're they're beings. And they're individuals and I feel like they should just be respected. So I think that's just something that's really cool about them. If you just add it's not just these two, it's like all things in nature. So she's got a look. Yeah, just look. Yeah, yeah. So I love that. Thank

Michelle Fullner  1:06:22  
you, Crystal. Yeah, it was. When we finished recording, I took a moment to choose a playlist for the drive and headed down the dirt road leading out of the wildlife refuge and toward home, but Krystal stuck around for a little bit longer checking to see which bees were out before she left. And in doing this, she found something remarkable something only known to have been seen a precious few times since it was named in 1939. Right outside of her car crystal found to be called the California smooth Nomad be Brackeen Oh, Mata mela nada. So on the day of our interview, Crystal became the first person known to have photographed this super rare parasitic bee. And prior to crystals photo, no one knew which b this B parasitized since you didn't see the parasitic bee enter any burrows crystal can't say for sure, but she suspects it's a parasite of the valley mini digger bee and the Furla Kiara, which was abundant in the area that day, and this wasn't the first time crystal had captured something rare. She's taken the first known photos of a dozen species of native bees, three of those were with another person who also took photos at the same time. So crystal, thank you for broadening our collective understanding of these incredible overlooked creatures, for going out and exploring the ecological richness all around us and for inspiring us to do the same. I also want to thank crystal for not only coming out on this interview with me, but also for being there for my million questions along the way in putting this episode together. And I want to thank Ralph Washington Jr. of the entomology episode for suggesting the location for this interview, we still need to go on a hike, hopefully somewhere with a lot of bugs. And thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it or learn something, please share it with a friend who grows tomatoes in their backyard so they can get those good buzz pollinators to show up at the party, they're thrown back there. And if you listen to the whole episode, I always share something interesting or embarrassing or mundane from my week. And this week, it's that I spent most of the day outside in forest areas for three days in a row which happens so much less frequently than I want it to and I felt like a new person. So I highly recommend as much of that as you can do. Okay, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. I'll catch you on the next episode of Golden State naturalist by.

The song is called at a no buy grapes and you can find a link to the song as well as the Creative Commons license in the show notes

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