Pesticides and Honey Bees with Dr. Judy Wu-Smart (S6, E21)

S6, E21 - Pesticides and Honey Bees with Dr. Judy Wu-Smart

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Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment presented by BetterBee. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

Kim Flottum: and I'm Kim Flottum.

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You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. Hey, so we have today Becky Masterman. Becky's back filling in for Kim. Becky, thanks for sitting in today.

Becky: Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Although I'll tell you, Jeff, I told somebody that I was guest hosting, and the first thing they said is, "I just love Kim." Kim is very missed out there.

Jeff: He is. He really is missed and we send him our best wishes. Coming up on today's episode, we have a compatriot of yours, if I may use that term, Dr. Judy Wu-Smart. You've worked with her in the past.

Becky: I had the opportunity to be at the University of Minnesota Bee Lab when she was finishing up her PhD there. Impressive is, if I had one word, I'd choose impressive. If I had two words, I'd choose--

Jeff: Really impressive.

Becky: That's three words. I was going to say extremely nice. Judy is just a lovely human being and so smart and so easily able to take that information and make it so that I can understand it. I'm really excited that we get to talk to her today.

Jeff: I'm looking forward to it. You recently had an article in Bee Culture magazine about bee vaccines and that's a common topic now. It's fresh in my mind because my left arm feels like my brother slugged it because I just took a double hit of vaccine for COVID and flu going into the fall here. Are we going to be giving bees shots in their little legs or how does this really work?

Becky: Am I glad that we don't have to use a needle? Yes. Bridget Mendel and I were able to interview the CEO of Dahlin Animal Health, Annette Kleiser, and wow, it's a very impressive operation. Although this vaccine is available, spoiler alert, they actually feed it to the bees via queen candy through the workers and then they feed it to the queen. No needles involved. It is a technology that beekeepers really have to get behind because it's new and it needs the force of beekeepers in order to push forward.

I don't know about you, I'm not as worried about American fall brood, I'm worried about the viruses that Varroa are transmitting and I'm worried about, well, a future guest, Megan Milbreath, is going to be talking about European fall brood, and holy cow, do you want a shot for that. Not a shot, but you want your bees to be protected from European fall brood after you talk to Megan Milbreath. It's great for beekeeping, but it's not quite where we need it to be yet. Hopefully, it'll get there.

Jeff: In a prior episode with Dr. Andoni Melanthopoulos out of Oregon, he talks a lot about the European fall brood and the problems they have in Oregon with the bees coming out of blueberries, just guaranteed to have European fall brood. It's quite the thing. If they do come up with a vaccine for EFB, that would be a good thing.

Becky: It's in the pipeline. They've started working on it. It's pretty exciting. Beekeepers can actually get the vaccine now, or they can actually buy a queen who's been vaccinated. How beekeepers love to try out new things and try out new lines of bees. In your operation, you could buy a queen next season and that queen could be vaccinated against EFB, for EFB.

Jeff: Queens are so important to success of beekeepers. It used to be that you get a queen for $20, $15. I can't remember how much I paid for my first couple of queens, but they were really cheap. Now it's like $50, $60. If you have it shipped to you overnight, then you're talking serious money.

Becky: It's an investment and no matter the capability of the queen producers, they are not living like they used to. You are spending that money and it's an investment that we keep needing to make year after year in our operations. It is one more problem beekeepers have. All we talk about are problems, Jeff.

Jeff: Problems are what are on the mind of many beekeepers. Especially this time of year, we're looking back at the year just passed and looking forward to the year coming up. We're gearing up and thinking about how we are going to be better next year. These are the things that we take this time of year to review and think about. Let's get set for Dr. Judy Woo. First, let's hear from our friends at Strong Microbials.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to The Hive, the regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across the big virtual Beekeeping Today podcast table, Becky and I are excited to bring you Dr. Judy Wu-Smart of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Bee Lab. Judy, welcome to the show.

Dr. Judy Wu-Smart: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Becky: Thank you, Judy, for showing up. We're so excited to talk to you about pesticides today.

Judy: I'm glad that you are. It's often a good time.

Becky: That's actually my first question, but I think before we get to my first question, how did you get into bees, Judy?

Judy: Actually, this is an interesting story, and I don't even know if Dave Hackenberg knows about this, but I was an intern in Florida at the time learning about insects being used to control weeds out in the Florida Everglades. One of my professors was really interested in this orchid bee, which is like a bumblebee that's glittery and very fascinating. The males collect these oils from the orchids, and they attract the females, but they're finding them all over Florida. One of my jobs was to catch them, give them to the chemists, find out how are they surviving in Florida without their orchid, without the mutualistic partner.

It turns out these bees were collecting dozens of different compounds from man-made to natural herbs to things, and creating and synthesizing a cocktail that was very similar to what you'd find in nature. That same week was the week that CCD came out in the media, and Dave Hackenberg's articles and news media was just like, first, my mind is blown about how fascinating these bees are. Then, immediately after, I learned they're all dying.

That was my first introduction to the world of bees as a whole. I spent the rest of the summer just diving in and saying, "This is it. I need to learn more about these bees, honeybees, wild bees," all sorts of bees, orchid bees. That's when I just started digging into that literature and trying to reach out to researchers who might be interested in taking on a student. I never looked back. I started in 2007 in Florida with Dave Hackenberg being a huge influence on me.

Jeff: No, he'll enjoy that.

Becky: That is a neat story. That is interesting because pesticides have really been part of your career. You studied them even in your master's research, correct?

Judy: Yes. Yes. Under the advisement of Steve Shepard at Washington State University, we were looking at how chemicals can accumulate in the comb

and what that actually does to the brood development. When bees are reared in these contaminated combs, they end up being more susceptible to diseases like nocema and other things like viruses when they've been reared in a condition like that. It was a really interesting study, opened up my eyes at how many different compounds bees collect in the environment and bring back.

Jeff: That's widely established now, isn't it? That the compounds in the waxes can because problems with developing brood.

Judy: Yes, but at the time, this was early 2000s, there were still beekeepers that were really proud of their great-great-grandfather's combs. Those were some of the combs and their equipment. No one changed out comb, that wasn't a common practice. When we tested those combs, there were compounds in there that had been banned for decades, still existing in there. Then we also had, from Jeff Pettis, a number of these dead-out combs that were from CDD colonies, colony-collapsatory colonies. They too also had really high levels of these pesticides. That was when we really started emphasizing the importance of comb replacement. Even now, 10 years later, we still don't have good information about how many combs to replace and how often to replace it and when it needs to be replaced. A lot of that is still, up in the air in terms of recommendations for beekeepers.

Jeff: Is it just the brood comb you need to replace or should you replace the honeycomb as well? Kim Plowden, who's typically here, he will not keep a frame longer than five years. We tease him about it, but he's very adamant about that rule.

Judy: Yes, what's interesting is, that the brood comb gets contaminated and they just really don't like laying eggs in it or rearing brood in it anymore. It ultimately becomes more of a food frame for them. I don't know if there's a good answer to when we should replace combs, but I recommend that beekeepers mark the tops of the frames when they see a problem, like brood diseases or entombed pollen, which is a sign that there's some contaminated pollen coming in. That's when they wax over the cells to make sure nestmates don't eat it. That's a better way.

I use the three strikes, you're out system. When you're checking a frame, you don't want to throw away that decent food and the hundred cells that are filled with brood, even though it's probably not that great brood anyways. Once you start marking the tops of the frames and then you've got times in the season when you're installing packages or you're building new colonies or you're culling colonies in the fall, that's the time to toss those frames out because that they've gone through multiple inspections and they're not performing right.

It's an easier way for us to cycle through combs that need to be changed out rather than just clear-cutting everything and just replacing everything in the operation, which could, cut your honey production down.

Jeff: I'll be honest, and this isn't a reflection of all nuc producers, but it's been my experience that many of the frames I get in my nucs when I get them in the spring or when I've gotten them in the spring are probably the oldest frames that beekeeper had. I just trash them as soon as I can just because they look horrible.

Judy: Yes, some of them are full of issues or they just are old. I think that is something that people are doing. If I was in operation with high production of colonies, that's the way that I would do it as well. Just something that needs to phase out, keep it out of your operation, move it along. For the receiving beekeeper, if you don't want to get rid of those frames, the very least you could do is mark them so that you can track them. If there are diseases that come up later, you know that those five frames came from the original nuc and aren't part of the frames that you had originally.

More information is power, then you know. Is that a supplier that I want to continue to use or is that something that I need to remove immediately? You said, just get rid of it after you install it.

Becky: We haven't even gotten to your PhD work and the story is just going to get more depressing. Let's go. Can you just quickly sum up what you spent multiple years of your life working on at the University of Minnesota?

Judy: Yes, under Marla Spivak, it was a wonderful experience, even though we were doing some pretty depressing work. We were setting up a lot of behavioral assays to look at how neonicotinoids, like the insecticides can move through a system, they're systemic, they can move in the plant and then show up in nectar and pollen. We're feeding them to bees and looking at how they can affect queen egg-laying behavior and hygienic behavior and some of the really important colony tasks and functions that the social insects rely on. From that, and that was in honeybees and bumblebees, but I think the biggest lesson that we learned is that a pesticide doesn't have to outright kill a bee to harm the colony.

That's what we really showed is, it doesn't matter if it doesn't kill all the bees, if it stops egg-laying, stops foraging, or stops hygienic behavior, think about what happens with a beekeeper who buys that very expensive princess queen and puts it in an environment that she's just not going to perform. That colony's not going to perform like you expect it.

Becky: That was a great summary, Judy. I think if I remember correctly, you were hired at Nebraska. It was before you even graduated, right?

Jeff: Yes. I graduated September 15th, and then I started a job on October 1st. My letter of offer said, "You get this job granted you successfully graduate." No pressure.

Becky: No pressure.

Judy: Yes. That goes to show any students out there in apiculture and the research, this was a practice interview, put yourself out there, you never know what's going to happen. That was a really big surprise. I thought it was just going to be a practice interview. No way I was going to get an offer up against a couple of postdocs, It ended up being a great interview process and really engaging department, so I'm happy to be here.

Becky: I know how the story turns out, but were they looking for somebody specifically to look at pesticides or was that just your specialty?

Judy: That was just my specialty. I think they were interested in someone who could have that research and extension roles as someone who can not only just do the research, but also engage with the public and the beekeepers about the important aspects of the science and to work with them in the management side of things. The applied science and the extension side, they were really looking for someone who could do that.

Jeff: Speaking of neonicotinoids, for those beekeepers who may not really understand what those are and the impact of those on the honeybees and all insects for that matter, can you do a quick recap on that?

Judy: Neonicotinoid insecticides, they're also known as neonics for short. They're a class of insecticides that are known to be highly selective for insects. That means they target insects, but they're relatively safe for mammals like us who handle the chemicals. That's a really great thing. you want something that can target insects but be safe for the handler. The problem is, well, the benefit and the problem is that they have this systemic action, meaning that it could be put on the seed, put in the soil, injected into a tree, or applied through the water, and it can move throughout the whole plant system from the stems to the leaves, and then eventually up into the nectar and the pollen.

It's good for farmers in that it can protect some of the root-dwelling or stem-dwelling insects that you can't get with traditional spray application. It's also more difficult for us as researchers, as well as beekeepers, because you don't know how much is going to end up in the nectar or the pollen and when. That's where bees become exposed. They bring that contaminant back. Through lots and lots of studies, we know that these neonicotinoid insecticides can affect their behavior, their cognitive functions, their ability to orientate, memory difficulties, and then they can also increase susceptibility to viruses and other diseases.

On the high concentrations, they can outright kill an insect because they attack the central nervous system. On the low end of things, these sublethal exposures, they can still cause a lot of problems for the hives. You're just not able to recognize and pinpoint some of those because they're through the behaviors of those bees. It's challenging on our end to try to tease out all of those impacts. I think that the most difficult thing is that these compounds regularly move in the water. When you apply them to the field or to a garden, they don't stay put. They often can move into the soil and into other plants or into the waterways.

You may not know where the bees are getting it, but you can see the impacts of it in your colonies that are struggling to thrive. They don't outright die, but they struggle.

Jeff: There are some beekeepers who believe this is all overhyped, and maybe that's part of our political climate now. How does one beekeeper try to convince another? This is a hypothetical question. How do you talk to a beekeeper about the importance or the risk of using the neonics and the risk to the beekeeper, even though there may not be hard evidence proof that one plus one equals two?

Judy: That's a great question. I think, let's put it this

way. With the older chemicals, the ones like myosin, it's a poster child. It's an example. With those harsher compounds, it was more dangerous for the handler. When there was an exposure, it was clear cut. You had a pile of dead bees and a dead hive. That was end of story. I know exactly what caused that loss. With this class of chemicals, it's a little bit harder because they may or may not kill the colony. They may do different things. These are social insects. They have nurse bees, house bees, forager bees. If you think about it, if you have forager bees that become exposed to this compound, some of them might die out in the field and never come home. That's going to cause the bees inside to start foraging earlier. The younger house bees now need to put out and go out and get the food because their foragers never came back. These kinds of things, the shifts in the behavior, causes these cascading effects where now there's less brood care, there's less hygienics, there's less food processing because you're spread far more thin in the colony and it's the task that they need.

We see this as being an added stressor that increases the risk of them getting diseases. It increases the risk of them not getting proper nutrition or brood care. It increases the risk of having queen failures and overwintering losses because it basically weakens the hive, prevents them to thrive and prevents them to be the most robust they can going into winter. It's a little bit hard and tricky because it's like the slow killer as opposed to a fast killer. It is also really circumstantial in terms of where you are. What's your level of exposure to neonics? If we don't do a good job monitoring it, how do we know if we can roll that out as a potential problem or not?

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Jeff: How can a beekeeper prevent and minimize the impact of neonics to their bees when the bees travel so far and wide in their foraging?

Judy: Yes, that's a great question. I don't think it's neonics-specific. Yes, I think it's pesticide exposure in general. How do you minimize exposure risk and maybe even respond to it when you think that they might have been exposed? Part of that is having good communication with the farmers nearby or the people, the folks that if you're in a garden setting or homeowners, communication with the people that are nearest you on making sure that they know that you have hives that could be sensitive to chemical sprays. If they are spraying to let you know not every beekeeper has an alternative location to move their hives.

If you have only a handful of hives, you might be able to provide them feed inside the colony or provide them a cover, so that reduces their foraging. Another way is to make sure that the farmers that are around that you can significantly reduce the risk of exposure of your spraying towards dusk. Then there's more time for those residues to leave that cropping system before the bees go out and forage the next day. On the beekeeper side, we have an experiment going with dead bee traps that helps us monitor for abnormal losses of bees. This is something that we needed to create because of a situation in Nebraska.

From that experiment, we really learned that there's a way for us to monitor when there's abnormal losses of the workers and the timing of that. At least we know when they're dying. Is this out of the norm? Then we could take that information back and say, "Well, in July, I saw a lot more dead bees than I would expect. What was happening in July? Was there a pest outbreak? Were there chemical sprays? Were there mosquito abatement programs? What was it about that month that caused higher losses than normal?"

Then you can figure out, if you can rule out what isn't causing those impacts, then you can narrow in what practices that might be causing that exposure and have a little bit more information on how to deal with those.

Jeff: I am seeing the possibility here of a new hive sensor, your automated dead bee trap. You could track it on a monthly basis or a weekly basis to start monitoring your bee losses. I wonder if Rich Morris from Broodminders is listening. Hey, Rich, there's a new idea for you.

Judy: That would be great.

Jeff: You can credit Beekeeping Today on that.

Judy: The automated part, I'm sure, is sounding really good to the students too who have to sit through and count the dead bees.

Jeff: Yes, it'd be the answer to their prayers.

Becky: On top of that, as you describe what happens to the colony, I think about it. If you're a new beekeeper, you don't even know what normal looks like because it takes a while to get that. you want in your colony for it to be bursting with bees and barely able to actually manage it because there are so many bees. If you're a new beekeeper and your bees are maybe impacted by pesticides, you might not ever notice that there's a problem because of not knowing the difference. How do you handle that?

Judy: The other really interesting thing that came out of this, we did a citizen science project that said, hey, let's set up these dead bee traps for those that think that they have a pesticide issue so we can monitor when your issue is. Turns out a lot of them didn't have a pesticide issue. They had a Varroa control failure issue. That was also very useful in determining whether or not the Varroa control was working because in those dead bee traps, you can clearly see deformed wing or ejected pupae or Varroa mites in itself. There was opportunities for training and education.

By setting those dead bee traps, they come in with these big piles of dead bee and say, "Look, there's something killing it." Then we look at the bottom of the bag and say, "Look at all those mites down there." Let's control the mites and then revisit the pesticide exposure issue.

Becky: They're going to want to know where to order dead bee traps, all the listeners.

Judy: Yes. They're not real traps. They're two-by-fours with a cloth on the bottom just so that it's more visible, especially with hives in the grass. You can't see the dead bees or sift through the ground. If you've got colonies on a cement, a flat surface, you can do the same thing. You just bring a broom and sweep them up so you can monitor it. The two-by-fours on the side just prevent them from blowing away when we're not around.

Becky: Do you put them right in front of the hive?

Judy: Yes. They pick up a lot of the bees at the grave, the attendees drop out.

Jeff: I was thinking it was underneath the hive where they just normally collect on the bottom board.

Becky: They're stacked up in our University of Minnesota apiaries. I think there are some of Judy's there maybe at one point, but then there also, I think there's a new set.

Judy: Yes. If you have your hives like ours on a pallet, it sits really nicely against the pallet and right by the entrance. If they're dropping bees out, they don't get all the bees, but they get the majority of them. Then if there are any that are sick and crawling out, they just tumble right into there.

Jeff: CSI, the bee squad.

Judy: Yes. We had to. We had to because when I first started my job in the fall of 2015, this was Mary and Ellis, Dr. Ellis's lab. He had this beautiful honey house and lots of honey production facilities and secret spots. He drove me around, said, "Hey, this is a great place to have hives because there's really good honey production and sweet clover." He showed me, I don't know, six to eight different locations around our research facility. The year that I set them up, I had maybe only a handful of colonies, maybe six to eight colonies out there, and they all died. Classic pesticides spilling out. What just happened? This is weird. The next year we set up a new set of hives and they died too.

Just, I don't know if you can imagine, but having someone who just graduated out of a program, starting a new program, and I can't keep bees alive in this one location. How am I supposed to do any experiments if I can't keep them alive and they keep spilling out? That shifted my entire program. I actually told Marla too, I said, "After my experience with Neonic and Neonic research in my PhD, it's a bit controversial. It's a bit, maybe I'm going to try something new. I'm going to try something different." I was trying to set up some experiments that was a little bit different from the typical chemical exposure stuff. It turns out this huge pesticide pollution thing just fell in my lap.

After a couple of years of trying to figure out

why are these bees dying only in this one location, but my other locations seem to be doing fine? That's when we started building those dead bee traps to find out when those bees are dying and how long they're dying for. Turns out they were dying all season long, just spilling out of our hives. The queen was still struggling to lay as much brood as she could, but the workers kept dying. That was our-- After a couple of years of pesticide testing and monitoring for dead bee losses, we ruled out all the on-farm practices that were happening in our area. That's when we started contacting our state of ag and all the people who might know about mosquito abatement programs, or maybe some contaminants in the water, trying to figure out where these chemicals were coming from. That's when we learned that our honey house and our apiary locations were just a few miles down south and downstream of this ethanol plant that was processing the majority of North America's surplus pesticide-treated seeds through the facility as their primary source of carbohydrate for ethanol production.

Jeff: Oh my gosh.

Judy: Lucky me, what are the chances?

Becky: They did not know about you when they started that. Had it been going on for years though, before you showed up?

Judy: No, the plant started this in 2015, just about the same time that I started. Of course, there were no problems when Marion was in and then he retires. Then all of a sudden this plant shifts its practice. I come in, I can't keep bees alive. Yes, I don't know. It was fated to happen, I guess.

Jeff: Was that the start of your One Health program? Is that the genesis of that whole shift from a singular focus to a broader focus?

Judy: Yes, so One Health, for those who aren't familiar with that term, it just basically is an approach to research, to looking at challenges and answering research questions with the idea that the health of the environment, human health and wildlife health are all interconnected. When we are looking at issues or challenges like pesticide exposure, we should be looking broadly across different systems. This one plant that was processing millions of pounds of seed, this seed has neonic insecticides on it, as well as several fungicides and herbicides in it. They were processing it and then dumping it outside. Just with no protection against runoff or getting into the system.

With our chemical testing, we found that it was extremely high levels of pesticides in the soil, in the water, in the plants, and in the air too. As they were processing this, it was scuffing off with just the dust in the air.

Jeff: That's scary, actually.

Judy: It is very scary. I think where I started to look at it from a One Health perspective is trying to recruit awareness and more researchers to start looking at the system. Not everybody cares about bees. The residents of the community were like, "Well, so what, your bees are dying. What does this mean for my house? What does it mean to my kids?" It's a valid question. What we needed to do was build a coalition of researchers and people who can engage with us, like journalists and citizen scientists, and people who could translate the research.

We're looking at this system and seeing how it impacts bees, which are generally, bioindicators organisms. What about the frogs and the birds and the mammals in the system? We started recruiting more researchers to look at amphibians and bird system, like the red-winged blackbird. Then we are also recruiting a bunch of people who have continued to look at the water health and the soil health. The UNMC folks, the Nebraska Medical Center group, are taking swipes of cabinets and shelving in the houses of people who have lived near this plant and taking air samples in the homes as well.

They're finding detectable levels of these neonicotinoids that were at least higher than what you would test in a similar rural community, but not close to the plant. Now you're sitting with this information saying, "A year after the plant has shut down, we're still finding detectable levels of it in your air and in your home. What does that mean?" We don't have real world information about the consequences of having X amount in your home and in your food and in your water. It's quite scary.

Jeff: It'd be everywhere, right? It'd be on your sofa, it'd be on your pillowcase, it would be everywhere. That's scary.

Judy: That is scary.

Becky: This is like a scary movie, Judy. You almost can't write something like this as far as what's happened. When was the plant shut down?

Judy: In 2021. To make things worse, the byproducts that they produce, it was in a liquid form and a solid form. They utilize them as soil conditioners and apply them to farms all around. They, for the longest time, argued that they don't produce hazardous waste. They produce an economically valuable product because people want it. Granted, it does have high nutritive values because of all the fertilizer aspect of things, but it also is really hot with contaminants. Why this is allowed to happen is because while pesticide-treated seeds are federally exempt from pesticide regulations, they are considered treated articles.

All of the regulation and oversight happens at the seed company where the chemical is put on the seed. Once it leaves that company, it's no longer considered a typical pesticide product. There's no requirements for pesticide testing or containment. When it went into the ethanol plant, it didn't get flagged as a pesticide product and it didn't have containment requirements and it didn't have testing requirements. That's why it was allowed to happen for so long because of these loopholes.

A great example that was told to me by the Department of Ag was think about treated lumber. They're also considered treated articles. You buy it from Menards or from Home Depot or whatever. You can mulch it and put it on your yard and no one would say anything because all that regulation happens when the lumber is first treated. The difference is that these are pesticides and they come at much higher levels than what you would consider preservatives for wood.

Becky: This work has landed you in Washington, DC, hasn't it?

Judy: Yes. From this, there's been a lot of testimony that we've had to give at the local level within Nebraska, but ecause this is an unusual thing, this is-- Think about how long pesticide-treated seeds, like neonicotinoid-treated seeds, have been on the market since the '90s. This is the first incidents people have asked, "Where does it get disposed?" If they were using this ethanol plant as a form of disposal for seed companies to get rid of their unviable, unmarketable treated seed, now that it's shut down in 2021, where's it going now? There's still not a whole lot of information about how this proper disposal should occur and how it's occurring.

They started in 2015 and before then it was a Kansas plant. I don't know the backstory behind that, but it seems like we're playing whack-a-mole with these different facilities and we're always playing catch up to trying to figure out what's going on. It's just a strange set of circumstances where this landed in our backyard. We happen to be able to recognize with the skillset and experience that this is due to those pesticide-treated seeds.

Jeff: Wow. Everything is so interconnected.

Judy: It is, yes. I think there's been a lot of science policy emphasis on this, because if you just report the research in our research world, it really isn't going to change anything in terms of societal impact. We've been working with a lot of states, helping them understand the consequences of what happened here. Minnesota is one of them, Vermont, New Jersey, all of them have been interested in what's happening in Nebraska because they don't want this to happen in their own states. The recommendation hasn't been, "Let's ban all neonics," because that's not going to be a good solution. It's not going to get your foot in the door in any healthy, productive conversation.

I think what has been a good resonating message is let's look at it by state and let's decide or let's evaluate where compounds are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing and are benefiting farmers. Where are they showing really no benefit at all? Do we really need those? Can we cull those off the market so we can preserve the ones that really are needed? The research shows that the neonics really don't do much for the seed. The fungicides do a lot for the seedling and to protect the seedling. By the time that the pests come into the cropping systems, those residues are so low that they're not really providing any protectant.

That's a question we need to ask. State by state, what is the usefulness of these chemicals?

Which products are showing a benefit and which ones are no longer really helping, let's get rid of those. I think that's a better way to do it than a more sustainable way of figuring this out.

Becky: That's amazing work you're doing on pesticides, but we need to bring this conversation up a little. We're happy that you are doing such great work and you're taking care of this, but let's talk about your Master Beekeeping program.

Judy: It's a regional program. It's called the Great Plains Master Beekeeping Program. Initially, we really just anticipated 200 or 300 beekeepers within our state taking part in this Master Beekeeping program. Through this education program, it's grown. We started in 2019 and now we're up to 3,000 individuals across six different states. It's blown up because there's not a lot of services for beekeepers in the Midwest, surprisingly. If we look at the map, the national map, there's a lot of ARS labs on the coast and on the south. There's a lot of bee labs within universities, and it's just me. There's no bee researcher in Kansas and Missouri, a honeybee researcher. At the time when we started this program, there wasn't any extension program focusing on honeybees in Iowa, but now we have Randall Cass out there. I was a real surprise that once we started to help provide some resources and management and training, they all started asking for help. It shows that, one, beekeeping has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. There's a lot more people getting into it and smaller operations. With newcomers and new beekeepers and those that are trying to start this as businesses, they need a lot of support. They need a lot of management. They need a lot of training.

There just really isn't a whole lot of options here in the Midwest. We have the majority of beekeepers going to South Dakota and North Dakota to overwinter their hives or to summer their hives and get honey production going. It's a surprise to me that the Midwest and the Great Plains area is vulnerable to diseases, transfer problems, lack of resources in forage and food. There's very little monitoring. There's not even inspection programs that are really functional here in the state.

If we really want to do a good job tracking, say, deformed wing virus and the different strains that come out of it or the different viruses that pop up, like the new one that just came out this summer, I think there's a lot of need to do a better job at giving those resources to those Midwest states. The goal is to not have everybody migrate to the Dakotas. The goal is to make habitat and states more supportive so that beekeepers don't have to leave the state to be healthy. That's at least my goal, is to make Nebraska a more hospitable place and the Midwest in general more hospitable so the answer to helping your bees is not leaving the state, either for overwintering or for foraging.

Becky: That's an excellent goal. Great education and increasing that honey production too because it's hurting in the Great Plains for sure.

Judy: Well, there's only so much that the Dakotas can handle, right? There's a caring capacity.

Becky: Well, it's hurting, yes, minus the Dakotas. The Dakotas are, yes, they're an exception. Kansas is really hurting for honey production. I think they're under a million pounds. I think it's somewhere around 500,000 or something like that, down from much higher levels. We see these trends across the states, but except for you've got Pete Berthelsen from Bee and Butterfly Fund, his flower farm in there in Nebraska. Are you going to put more flower farms out there?

Judy: I'm trying to. Actually, I'd love to see more of the pasture systems utilize more legumes and build that part up because there's a lot of ranchers, there's a lot of pasture. There's also a lot of efforts to try to increase wildflowers on roadsides, which is a continuing effort, which is great. You can see some areas that do a really good job, especially if they're creating new roads or they're grading it and they need to plant something there anyways.

Oftentimes, you can encourage them to do a high-diversity pollinator mix and then it fizzes out after a few years because it gets out-competed by the grasses. At least you've got these pockets. They're always doing new construction and road stuff. If we can just start implementing that as a regular practice, you at least get pockets of forage here and there.

Becky: Have you seen Audubon Societies work with ranchers?

Judy: No.

Becky: They have a special designation for ranchers. You might want to check it out, but they're literally putting their seal on the beef products if they pass certain guidelines. Honestly, it's helpful for bees too, but if they do certain practices, it's better and safe for birds and also a lot of different insects. It's a brilliant idea to engage other groups who are planting anyway and encouraging foraging practices or grazing practices, excuse me, that are supporting wildlife.

Judy: Yes. I think it works both ways too. Not only are you planting things that are good for wildlife, but I'm sure some of those more nutritious forbs are probably pretty good for beefing up those cattle, making them more healthy and more robust.

Becky: It's an animal health issue too. It's a great relationship that they're fostering.

Judy: But that Master Beekeeping Program, it's not a bee school. I just want to make that clear because sometimes people get into it thinking that it's a one-and-done set school where you can take the program and get your certificate. The idea behind this is that because there's such a lack of support, we're trying to create a community learning approach to education. There's already beekeepers and wonderful local associations, state associations, and local clubs that do the education and the training with their members.

We are trying to facilitate giving them content, giving them more professional training, giving them more information so that a lot of these folks are just teaching year one, year two beekeeping, but don't go past that because they may not have the resources or the time to develop all that content. By partnering with the local associations, we can give them more of that information that's time-tested, science-based in practices that addresses some of the bad practices that have gone wild in areas where there's no support and try to correct some of that. It's not a bee school. It's really bringing in all the local associations and the state associations.

Our governing committee is made up of over a dozen different individuals from the local clubs and partners. They make the decisions. They help provide the content and drive the program to help customize what we need in the Midwest. It's not a top-down like, "Here, you're going to learn this and this is our way," but it really is a lot more flexible and helpful for them.

Jeff: Judy, we're coming up at the end of our time here. Is there anything that you'd like to mention that we haven't asked you about yet? You've got a lot of things going on. It seems pretty exciting there in Nebraska. I wouldn't have known that without you being on the show. Thank you.

Judy: Yes, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I think for folks that are interested in getting more involved or reaching out, there are a lot of groups that would really highly benefit for someone who is maybe interested in doing some science policy, some advocacy for their local clubs and states. I think that is the missing link. There's a lot of information out there that we know. Most of the regulators and policymakers know that bees are important, but what is that bee industry doing for your state? What cropping systems are they contributing to? How much value-added economics are they providing?

Having someone who can communicate those specifics to those legislators makes a lot more of a case to leverage, "Hey, we need better conservation programs. We need more incentives for habitat. We need better education for pesticide applicators and training for pesticide risk and exposure." That's how we get long-term change. I know people don't want to get engaged with the government or any state agency right now, but disconnecting isn't going to help anybody. We just end up being disgruntled and pull our hair nonstop. I think the message or the take home is there's optimism, there's light, and I think we just got to figure out what is the best way to move forward.

I always think about what's best for the bees and how can we communicate that to the legislators. Maybe what's best for the bees is not for me to talk about the bees, but talk about the broad impacts to the community and what the bees are saying about the landscape around us. That's something that we've been working on. When I go to those town halls and the legislators, I do a lot less talking about the bees themselves, but what does it mean when I see dead bees and what does that connection to nature and the surrounding environment tell us about the health of your community?

I think if we can just focus on that, but not, I don't know. Find a good balance. We don't want to isolate people or make them feel guilty about using chemicals. That's a necessary evil in our agricultural production.

How do we do it smart and how do we do it sustainably?

Jeff: Dr. Judy Wu-Smart, we really appreciate having you on the show this afternoon and look forward to having you back.

Becky: Thank you, Judy.

Judy: Thank you for having me.

Jeff: It can't help but note that every time we have a guest that talks about pesticides, it's hard to end that conversation on a happy note. It's an overwhelming discussion.

Becky: It is one of the positive things is that we have people like Judy Wu-Smart working on it. I think that it takes a very special person to be able to actually do this research because it isn't fun and it doesn't give you a good feeling. You really have to take away from it that you're trying to make a difference. Judy Wu-Smart's story is about making a difference and just think about what she's done for people living in Nebraska, but it is. It's hard. It's something that we need to think about as beekeepers and it's something that's sometimes hard to tell the effects because it's a little bit invisible unless it's a massive exposure.

Jeff: Every once in a while, you hear the phrase that we're just not wired to see long-term threats. We're, as humans, wired to see the tiger in the weeds as opposed to the long-term weather change and the long-term effect of the pesticide buildup in the comb. We're just not wired to see the threat of that as opposed to a massive die-off in front of the hive. It's sad, but that's a mental shift we're capable of making, but we just need to consciously realize that threat that does pose and do what we can to mitigate it.

Becky: I agree. In my operation, that means because I know Judy Wu-Smart, I throw my comb out all the time, aggressively.

Jeff: Listeners, I've teased Kim about throwing out comb, but now, okay, I'm starting to understand the value of that. All right, Becky. I was glad that we had Judy on the show. I think I'm going to go down in the garage and start pulling together some optical sensor scale and collecting pan, so I can create some sort of dead bee collector that can tell me and monitor the dead bees in front of my hive.

Becky: You know what? That's something that you might not want to know, but you might be better for it.

Jeff: Yes, there you go. That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and especially BetterBee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping Today podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions or comments at leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

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