Franklin County Master Gardener Participates in Award-Winning Bee Monitoring Program

 August 24, 2023                                                                                                                                                                              

Ceratina (small carpenter bee) at a nesting site
 in a Rudbeckia stem (Ron George)

Franklin County Master Gardener Participates in Award-Winning Bee Monitoring Program

By Sherrie McCleary, Master Gardener

The many roles of a Master Gardner include teaching, problem solving,  community outreach, and advising the public on best gardening practices. Did you know community scientist is now added to this list? What is a community scientist? The definition of community or citizen science is “work undertaken by volunteers or the general public, often done in collaboration, with or under the direction of professional, scientists, or scientific institutions.”

Pennsylvania Master Gardeners are participating in a bee monitoring program investigating and collecting data on bees at a highly trained level. Under the direction of Penn State’s College of Agricultural Science and the lab of Associate Professor of Entomology, Margarita Lopez-Uribe, bee monitoring is a multiyear effort to understand Pennsylvania’s native bee population. Since bees are the most important pollinators of plants, it makes them critical for plant reproduction and a balanced ecosystem. While studies show evidence of bee decline, there has been a lack of standardized long-term monitoring data. The participants have been recognized for their work in this important program.

 In June 2023, Penn State Master Gardeners earned first place in the research category of the David Gibby Search for Excellence Awards at the International Master Gardener Conference held in Kansas. The award was for exceptional volunteer work and dedication to the bee monitoring program. Recognized for the first-place award were 20 Penn State Master Gardeners.

Tracy Snyder collecting bees for the monitoring project

Penn State Extension is proud to announce Franklin County Master Gardener Tracy Snyder as one of the 20 volunteers recognized. An avid gardener for more than 30 years, Tracy became a Master Gardener in 2018. She has volunteered her time to other projects such as Victory Garden, Greenhouse Planting, and Program Advisory but her love and passion for insects is what interested her in the bee monitoring project. According to Tracy, “Becoming a Master Gardener was an easy choice based on my gardening experience, but I had no idea that it would give me the opportunity to participate in something like this. I am really grateful for that.”

She has received advanced training on the protocols used to collect, pin, label and identify native bees.  “I have no formal scientific training, so it is really great to be making a meaningful contribution to the scientific community,” Tracy said. “I hope that my efforts can help protect our native bees.” A follow-up workshop is held each year for additional training and interaction with fellow bee monitors.

Thanks to Tracy’s efforts and involvement, Franklin County Extension is now part of this important initiative. Penn State will use the data collected to gain a better understanding of the nature of Pennsylvania bees, including distributions, host plants, and timing of developmental cycles. As a Franklin County Master Gardener, Tracy will be able to use her knowledge and experiences to educate people in the community on the diversity of bees in Pennsylvania. “A lot of people are unaware of the huge diversity of bees that could be right outside their door,“ said Tracy. “The 2020 checklist of bees in PA showed 437 species.” She also noted, “Native bees provide vital pollination services and are often better pollinators than honeybees. They evolved with our native plants, so they are uniquely qualified to pollinate them.”

Pinned bees and labels are ready to be examined for identification (Penn State Extension)

To date, Tracy has collected 493 specimens, 58 varied species and 37 county records. County records indicate that the species had not been recorded for the county previously, even though they may have existed. These species were not officially recognized because many areas of the state have been poorly sampled or not sampled at all. Tracy notes that, as time goes on, it will be harder to get county records because the easy species will already have been recorded.

The Penn State bee monitoring program continues to make strides with totals of 4,761 specimens, 185 species, and 488 county records collected so far for 2022. The Master Gardeners involved have been applauded for their dedication to learning the skills required and devotion to research. Plus, they are winning first place awards! Congratulations to Franklin County’s Tracy Snyder and the other 19 state-wide Master Gardeners for being recognized and honored for your outstanding research.

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Now is the time to start planning to harvest and preserve your herbs. There’s lots of good information in the

HERB SAMPLER Second Edition

Buy one for yourself and consider getting a few more as the winter holidays approach – hostess gifts, housewarming and holiday presents.

The Second Edition Herb Sampler (2019) is exclusively sold retail at Snavely's Garden Center, Chambersburg or available through Amazon. 

Just click this link to find it.

  

Turn the Page - May 2021 Book Review

 

Tussie-mussie or a nosegay

April showers bring May flowers and flowers convey messages in “The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, referring to a Victorian dictionary of flower meanings. However, the real story is about Victoria who, after a childhood of foster-care, struggles to create a life using her one talent – creating bouquets with flowers, that send messages and wishes. 

Like flowers in the breeze, Victoria's story moves back and forth between the present and the past, giving meaning to her choices and pulling readers into the tangle of her life. From living in a secretly planted garden in a public park to pushing against and yet drawing near to friendship and love, Victoria both overcomes challenges and succumbs to her doubts and mistrust.

This is a beautifully written story and readers will cheer, cry and curse at Victoria but stay with her to the end. This will likely be a popular book club selection.

May brings Mother's Day and there are many different kinds of mothers as evidenced in Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees." Lily, 14, flees her emotionally abusive father with nanny and surrogate-mother Rosaleen and searches for answers about her mother, shot dead when Lily was four.

A cryptic image of a Black Madonna left by her mother leads them to a small southern town and a family of black sisters, beekeepers bottling Black Madonna honey. The sisters take them in and the oldest, August, provides the mother-figure for both her sisters and the visitors.

As Lily discovers her parents' past, she comes to understand her father's actions and finds the true meaning of being a mother. Another well-written book, weaving life lessons around the art of beekeeping with love.

Space exploration continues with amazing photos of take-offs and landing and amazing videos of Perseverance on Mars. Videos coming from the International Space Station remind us that people are living in space.  But what is it really like to live in space? Mary Roach, in her usual combination of facts and humor, tells all in "Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void."

Roach researches and explains the human challenges of space travel: eating in space, bathing and body odor, zero-gravity elimination, and the psychological challenges of living with others in a small space with no exit door. There's enough here for both the scientifically curious and trivia buffs.

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Lavender stands for luck, purity and undying love.

Are you interested herbs? Check out the Herb Sampler on this Blog 

It has a list of the meanings of herbs and how to make nosegays or "tussie-mussies" .

The Second Edition Herb Sampler (2019) is available through Amazon.

Why be concerned about the loss of a species?

 Why should we care about the loss of a species?

At a presentation on Monarch butterflies and how to help avoid their extinction, an audience member asked, “Why do we care if they are gone?”

Extinction is a natural process that has been occurring since long before the existence of man. Normally, new species develop, through a process known as speciation, at about the same rate that other species become extinct. However, because of air and water pollution, forest clearing, loss of wetlands, and other man-induced environmental changes, extinctions are now occurring at a rate that far exceeds the speciation rate. 

Global Carbon Project

Each extinction of animals and plants diminishes the biodiversity and complexity of life on earth. The loss of a single species may result in few environmental repercussions; however, all life on earth is interconnected. If enough "living connections" are broken, whole ecosystems could fail the balance of nature could be forever altered, and our own survival could be jeopardized. Furthermore, the diversity of animal and plant life provide us with food and many of our life-saving medicines. When a species is lost, the benefits it might have provided are gone forever. Consider that these medicines are from plants: Aspirin from willow tree bark, morphine from poppies, digitalis from foxglove. 

The Connection

It is important to note that extinction – the permanent loss of species – is a natural process that is counterpoint to speciation, the creation of new species through evolution.

Background or “normal” rates of extinction vary through time but are typically in the order of one to two species per year. Current rates of extinction, however, are estimated to have reached 1000 to 10,000 times this rate. Put bluntly, the annual species body count is no longer a mere handful, it’s an avalanche.

But why should it matter to us if we have a few less species? The simple answer is that we are connected to and deeply dependent on other species. From pollination of our crops by bees, to carbon storage by our forests, and even the bacteria in our mouths, we rely upon biodiversity for our very existence. We neglect this at our own peril. And, of course, there are equally justified arguments for keeping species based purely on their aesthetic and cultural importance, or for their own sake.

Doom-and-gloom predictions tend to paralyze us, rather than jolting us into action. So what can be done? There are wonderful examples of individuals and organizations working at both small and large scales to tackle and even sometimes turn back the tide of extinctions.

There are also some compelling personal approaches, such as that of Alejandro Frid who is writing a series of letters to his daughter as a way of confronting the issues of climate change and biodiversity loss. But what is urgently needed, of course, is radical change in society as a whole in the way it interacts with its environment.

~Carol Kagan