The US olive oil market is worth nearly three billion dollars — and 95 percent of it is imported. But across seven American states, a small, quality-focused domestic industry is growing. And native bees, without invitation or management, are showing up in those groves every spring and doing something that a landmark 2013 study in Science confirmed: improving crop fruit set in ways that honey bees alone cannot match.

Episode 41 follows olive trees from California's Central Valley to Georgia's coastal plain, and the native bee communities — mining bees, sweat bees, carpenter bees — that found them.

Secret Pollinators is a solo narration science podcast about native and wild bees and the lesser-known pollinators shaping the world around us.

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#SecretPollinators #NativeBees #OliveOil #AmericanOliveOil #WildBees #Pollinators #MiningBees #SweatBees #CarpenterBee #OliveGrove #ExtraVirginOliveOil #BeePodcast #NaturePodcast #SciencePodcast #Pollination #BeeScience #GeorgiaOlives #CaliforniaOliveOil #GroveToTable #FoodScience #WildBees

A brand-new study — published this week in the Journal of Animal Ecology — just revealed something remarkable about bumble bee colonies: they function as living thermostats, maintaining their brood at a precise 30 to 33 degrees Celsius, which is 86 to 91 degrees Fahrenheit, using only the bodies of their workers. When temperatures drop, bees vibrate their flight muscles to heat the nest. When it gets too hot, they fan their wings — a living air conditioning system. And when heat events become extreme, the entire colony redirects its labor away from foraging to cooling, with cascading effects on pollination. Kelly breaks down the science of bumble bee thermoregulation, the critical role of underground nest sites, and what this research means for how we think about wild bumble bee habitat. It's not just about flowers. It's about what's happening below the surface.

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Everybody knows grasses are wind-pollinated. Right? RIGHT?? Turns out the textbooks have been quietly leaving something out. Bees — honeybees, bumblebees, sweat bees, mining bees — are visiting grass flowers and combing pale yellow pollen straight off the anthers. And they're doing it without the usual floral road signs: no nectar, no big colorful petals, no UV bullseyes. So how on earth are they finding it? In this episode we dig into the surprising science of grass pollen as bee food, the new (and shockingly recent) research showing five genera of bees collecting pollen from a single turfgrass species, what cues bees use to spot grass anthers in a sea of green, and why the lawn under your feet might be quietly feeding the bees you're trying so hard to save with your wildflowers. Spoiler: the cemetery bees from Episode 37 were in on this all along.

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#SecretPollinators #NativePollinators #NativeBees #PollinatorScience #BeeScience #LawnsForBees #NoMowMay #PollinatorPodcast #NaturePodcast #SciencePodcast #PlantTheSpecies #LetItBeWild #LeaveTheLeaves #GrassPollen #WildBees #SolitaryBees #Andrena #Bumblebees #HoneyBees #SweatBees #PollinatorConservation #NativePlants #PrairieGrasses #BeeFriendlyLawn #UrbanEcology #BackyardScience #PollinatorGarden #Entomology #Apidae #BeeFacts #WildBees #Lawn #Pollen

It's spring. Things are emerging. Something just buzzed past your ear, and your shoulders went up to your eyeballs. But was it a bee? A wasp? A fly? A genuinely surprising number of the "bees" in your garden are actually flies wearing a very convincing costume. In this episode, Kelly walks you through a five-second checklist — wings, antennae, eyes, waist, hair — that'll make you the most confident pollinator ID-er on your block. Plus, the hoverflies fooling everyone, the bee flies zooming over your dirt banks, and why bees are basically wasps that went vegetarian 125 million years ago.

How to tell if your pollinator is a bee, wasp or fly | The Great Sunflower Project

Bee Guides | Pollinator.org

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In 2021, researchers noticed something unusual about the northeast corner of a cemetery in Ithaca, New York. The ground was full of tiny holes. A Cornell University team set up emergence traps and counted what came out. The answer: 5.6 million solitary bees, emerging from beneath the headstones every spring, quietly pollinating a university apple orchard 600 meters away. Then the same team found 651,440 more bees in a suburban lawn — collecting grass pollen nobody knew they wanted. These populations are hiding everywhere in plain sight, in the patches of ground we've never thought to study. And the safest place a wild bee can nest might just be the one piece of land nobody ever builds on.

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#SecretPollinators #5MillionBees #CemeteryBees #AndreaBees #AndenaRegularis #NativeBees #GroundNestingBees #SolitaryBees #BeeDiscovery #HiddenBees #EastLawnCemetery #CornellUniversity #PollinatorScience #WildBees #BeeConservation #ApplePollination #MelissodesBimaculatus #TwoSpottedLonghornBee #GrassPollen #BeeResearch #NativeBeeResearch #PollinatorConservation #SaveTheBees #BeeNerd #BeeFacts #InsectScience #SciencePodcast #NaturePodcast #NatureLovers #EntomologyNerd #Entomology #DidYouKnow #MindBlown #ScienceIsAmazing #HiddenNature #UnexpectedNature #BeesOfInstagram #PollinatorHabitat #SacredGround #TheDeadAreKeepingBees #NewEpisode #Ghosts #Dead #Cemetery #headstones #wildbees

The Netherlands ships one billion flower bulbs to the United States every single year — and most of them grow into flowers that feed no bees at all. Modern hybrid tulips are sterile and produce no nectar. Daffodils contain toxic alkaloids that bees avoid. The "pollinator-friendly bulb mix" at your garden center is mostly empty flowers dressed up for human eyes. Meanwhile, bumblebee queens emerging from winter starvation are flying over a $6 billion tulip industry that offers them nothing. Here's the real spring bulb story — and the species varieties that actually feed the bees you're trying to help.

Visit my website for the Spring Bulb Guide: The Spring Bulb Guide: What to Plant for Pollinators (and What to Skip) | Native Bee Podcast: Identification, Conservation & Habitat

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Bees have five eyes, can see colors that don't exist in the human visual spectrum, and navigate by reading polarized light patterns in the sky like a living GPS. With the National Geographic Secrets of the Bees special fresh in everyone's minds, this is the episode that goes deeper — into the visual system that makes all that extraordinary bee behavior possible. And yes, it changes how you'll think about your garden.

Watch Secrets of the Bees TV Show - Streaming Online | Nat Geo TV

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Exciting news — Kelly's article on the American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) was just published today in the Pollinator Partnership Bee Friendly Gardening Newsletter. In this short episode, she shares what's in the piece, why this bee matters, and where to read it. Head to pollinator.org or find the link in the show notes. Please consider becoming a member of the Pollinator Partnership - Bee Friendly Gardening.

My-Favorite-Native-Bumblebee.pdf

Bee Friendly Gardening | Pollinator.org

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One bumblebee. One wooden ball. One hundred and seventeen times - with no reward, no training, and no reason anyone could explain. In Part 2 of our bumblebee play series, we follow PhD student Samadi Galpayage, who couldn't stop thinking about the bees she'd watched rolling balls for no apparent reason. What she discovered - published in the journal Animal Behaviour in 2022 — became the first scientific proof that insects play. Not for food. Not for survival. Just for the joy of it. We dig into what that means for how we understand bee emotion, insect sentience, and the surprisingly blurry line between creatures that feel and creatures we've always assumed don't. If this episode doesn't change the way you look at the next Bumblebee you see, nothing will.

Galpayage Dona, H.S., Solvi, C., Kowalewska, A., Mäkelä, K., MaBouDi, H., & Chittka, L. (2022). Do bumble bees play? Animal Behaviour, 194, 239–251

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What happens when a scientist hands a bumblebee a wooden ball and a target — and offers a drop of sugar as the prize? She scores a goal. In 2017, researchers at Queen Mary University of London discovered that bumblebees could learn to roll a ball to a target by watching another bee do it first — and then improve on what they saw. With brains smaller than a sesame seed, these tiny athletes showed a level of social learning and cognitive flexibility that stunned the scientific world. But the most surprising discovery? Some bees kept rolling the ball even when no reward was coming. That's where this story gets really interesting. Tune in for Part 1 — and stay for the twist that launched one of the most fascinating bee studies ever published.

Here is the link to the article:

Are these bumble bees playing with toys? | Science | AAAS

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#Bumblebee #BumblebeeScience #BeeCognition #BeeFacts #NativeBees #BeeResearch #BeeLovers #SaveTheBees #PollinatorScience #PollinatorProtection #Pollinators #InsectIntelligence #InsectBehavior #AnimalCognition #AnimalBehavior #AnimalPlay #SocialLearning #CognitiveFlexibility #LarsChittka #OlliLoukola #QueenMaryUniversity #QMUL #SecretPollinators #NaturePodcast #SciencePodcast #NatureLovers #EntomologyNerd #Entomology #TinyBrainBigMind #MindBlown #DidYouKnow #ScienceIsAmazing #UnexpectedNature #soccer #cognativeflexibility