Earth Day, 2018: Celebrate with the Bees!

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than with a tale of the simple joy brought to people by bees? The following essay  by Mace Vaughan, who co-directs the Xerces Society's Pollinator Conservation Program, was published here in 2015, and is just as relevant today as it was then.

In the summer of 2009, my family and I moved into a house across from the Sabin Elementary School in northeast Portland, Oregon. Our daughter started kindergarten at the school that fall. Sporadically, as other school parents learned of my work in pollinator conservation, they would ask me if I’d ever seen the “tickle bees.” I would respond with a polite “no,” unsure what they meant. Still, as the question continued to come up through the December holidays and into the late, wet winter, my curiosity grew. Everyone seemed to know about the tickle bees.

And then St. Patrick’s Day arrived. The sun shone and it was warm for a March afternoon. I sat in our dining room, working from home and enjoying the sounds of kids playing in the schoolyard across the street from our house. Every so often I would sneak a peek across the street to see if our daughter was running around, and that was when I spotted a boy, all alone, kneeling on the ground as he tried to catch something. He grabbed and lunged, attempting to seize it from the air. In that moment, it all came clear to me.

I waited until the kids had cleared out of the field, closed my computer, and walked across the street. And there, to my amazement, were the tickle bees of Sabin Elementary. Not tens, not hundreds, but thousands of gentle, ground-nesting bees were emerging all across the two-acre field. I was standing in a giant aggregation of mining bees, which turned out to be at least two species of the genus Andrena—christened the “tickle bees” by the students of Sabin.

For the next two months I watched as more and more bees emerged from the ground. Scattered across baseball diamonds, the bare dirt under park benches, and all across the soccer pitch were mounds of soil the bees had excavated from underground. They seemed to deepen their tunnels mostly at night; walking across the grounds in the morning you would see freshly dug dirt hiding the holes underneath. By the afternoon, the dirt was pushed aside as the females emerged to fly to the flowering maple trees, dandelions, and cherry and plum trees around the neighborhood. On an especially warm day, you couldn’t run across the field without bumping into these amazing insects.

As someone who has worked hard to convince people worldwide that insects are not a bunch of biting, stinging, crop-killing animals, but rather the drivers of healthy ecosystems, I was touched by the reception these bees received. For the two months the bees were active, parents and students regularly approached me with questions. I helped dozens of people discover what, for them, was a whole new world of ephemeral bees, with their golden stores of food and developing brood buried below soccer and kickball games.

Tickle bees are not unusual or uncommon. Every spring we receive calls at the office starting in early March from people wondering about the bees that are showing up in their lawns, whether they are safe, or just wanting to know what they are. Across the rest of the country, as spring comes on after this harsh winter, look for holes in the ground and bees flying. If you want to find your own tickle bees, go out on a warm spring day and watch sunny, south-facing slopes around your neighborhood. You might find your own aggregation of mining bees.

As for Sabin, five years later the tickle bees are going strong. As kids get older, they may lose interest. But each spring, a new group of kindergartners gets to meet the tickle bees and share something unique that their older classmates have cherished for years.

Watch an interview with Mace talking about the tickle bees of Sabin School.

Food News: Garden Educator for PDX School, Fresh Farmers, and Rebuilding Grasslands

One of the newest educators at Sabin Elementary School in Northeast Portland is rarely in the classroom, preferring instead to meet with his students outside, rain and shine. That's because Julian Dominic's job is to get kids excited about digging in the dirt of the school's edible garden, observing the life of the soil through its bugs and biology, as well as learning to cook some of the produce they grow.

A feature in the Sabin Community Association newsletter said that this winter Sabin's students will learn how soil is built by planting cover crops that put nitrogen back into the soil through succession planting.

"We'll start with a cover crop of nitrogen-fixing plants such as fava beans, buckwheat or rye on a third of the 14 raised beds," Dominic said. "Then we'll plant winter-hardy greens such as spinach, chard and kale in the other two-thirds of the beds. Those will be covered with a hoop house to nurture the spring plants."

The article said that Dominic, whose position is funded through the school's PTA, is coordinating the garden curriculum to match the themes that the school's teachers are covering in class.

There is a Taste of Thanksgiving fundraiser for the school's garden program on Thurs. Nov. 5th from 5 to 8 pm at Whole Foods on Northeast 15th and Fremont. Tickets are $5 for a full meal.

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With the average age of Oregon's farmers nearing 60 years old, it's hard not to worry about who's going to be growing our food in ten years. Luckily, it looks like it's not too late to turn the tide, according to a recent article in the Capital Press.

Many programs are offering prospective farmers the opportunity to participate in what are being called "farm schools" where they can learn not only how to grow vegetables, but how to write a business plan, invest in the right equipment and market farm goods through farmers' markets, CSAs and value-added products. And those would-be farmers are flocking to attend workshops like the one-day small farm school sponsored by Oregon State University’s Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems and schools like the one at Greenbank Farm (photo above) on Whidbey Island in Washington.

"We have a generation of people in their twenties and thirties who are interested in going into farming as a business and as a statement of how they see the world," the article quotes Garry Stephenson, director of the OSU center, as saying. "One of the hopes we have is that they will eventually scale up and become medium-size farms."

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Rotational grazing—the farming method that builds nutrient-rich soil by moving animals between pastures, allowing the land to rest between grazing periods—is helping to restore grasslands even in arid states like New Mexico. This method also helps the soil to retain more moisture during dry periods, according to an article by food writer and author Deborah Madison for the website Civil Eats.

It quotes rancher Nancy Ranney of Ranney Ranch in Central New Mexico as saying, “We don’t have to cut back so much on our herd count during deep drought, and we can build it back while other ranchers are still de-stocking.” Ranney added that rotational grazing has diversified the varieties of grasses growing on their land, which gives the cattle a wider range of nutrients in their diet.

"In three years we went from four to five species of native grasses to 30, without planting seed or irrigating. Among them were cool season grasses, which people said we couldn’t grow. But every year we see a new cool-season grass come up," she said.

The Tickle Bees of Sabin Elementary School

What better way to celebrate insects on Earth Day than with a tale of the simple joy brought to people by bees? The following essay was written by Mace Vaughan, who co-directs the Xerces Society's Pollinator Conservation Program.

In the summer of 2009, my family and I moved into a house across from the Sabin Elementary School in northeast Portland, Oregon. Our daughter started kindergarten at the school that fall. Sporadically, as other school parents learned of my work in pollinator conservation, they would ask me if I’d ever seen the “tickle bees.” I would respond with a polite “no,” unsure what they meant. Still, as the question continued to come up through the December holidays and into the late, wet winter, my curiosity grew. Everyone seemed to know about the tickle bees.

And then St. Patrick’s Day arrived. The sun shone and it was warm for a March afternoon. I sat in our dining room, working from home and enjoying the sounds of kids playing in the schoolyard across the street from our house. Every so often I would sneak a peek across the street to see if our daughter was running around, and that was when I spotted a boy, all alone, kneeling on the ground as he tried to catch something. He grabbed and lunged, attempting to seize it from the air. In that moment, it all came clear to me.

I waited until the kids had cleared out of the field, closed my computer, and walked across the street. And there, to my amazement, were the tickle bees of Sabin Elementary. Not tens, not hundreds, but thousands of gentle, ground-nesting bees were emerging all across the two-acre field. I was standing in a giant aggregation of mining bees, which turned out to be at least two species of the genus Andrena—christened the “tickle bees” by the students of Sabin.

For the next two months I watched as more and more bees emerged from the ground. Scattered across baseball diamonds, the bare dirt under park benches, and all across the soccer pitch were mounds of soil the bees had excavated from underground. They seemed to deepen their tunnels mostly at night; walking across the grounds in the morning you would see freshly dug dirt hiding the holes underneath. By the afternoon, the dirt was pushed aside as the females emerged to fly to the flowering maple trees, dandelions, and cherry and plum trees around the neighborhood. On an especially warm day, you couldn’t run across the field without bumping into these amazing insects.

As someone who has worked hard to convince people worldwide that insects are not a bunch of biting, stinging, crop-killing animals, but rather the drivers of healthy ecosystems, I was touched by the reception these bees received. For the two months the bees were active, parents and students regularly approached me with questions. I helped dozens of people discover what, for them, was a whole new world of ephemeral bees, with their golden stores of food and developing brood buried below soccer and kickball games.

Tickle bees are not unusual or uncommon. Every spring we receive calls at the office starting in early March from people wondering about the bees that are showing up in their lawns, whether they are safe, or just wanting to know what they are. Across the rest of the country, as spring comes on after this harsh winter, look for holes in the ground and bees flying. If you want to find your own tickle bees, go out on a warm spring day and watch sunny, south-facing slopes around your neighborhood. You might find your own aggregation of mining bees.

As for Sabin, five years later the tickle bees are going strong. As kids get older, they may lose interest. But each spring, a new group of kindergartners gets to meet the tickle bees and share something unique that their older classmates have cherished for years.

Watch a video from KATU-TV of Mace talking about the tickle bees at Sabin School.

Tickle Bees Star at Sabin School

If you've noticed little bees buzzing in your grass, with tiny piles of dirt pushed up around little holes in bare patches, you might be lucky enough to be hosting Andrena bees, also known as miner bees. Sabin School, in northeast Portland, noticed that there was a large population of bees in the ball field adjacent to their school. Rather than calling in exterminators, they called the Xerces Society, a non-profit organization that works to preserve invertebrates and their habitats.

After examining the bees, to the relief of school officials and parents, the society told them they had a species of non-stinging bees in the family Andrenidae. In fact, the field was home to one of the largest populations of the bees that the Xerces Society had documented. Now the bees are not only the subject of science classes at the school, but they've been named the school's official mascots, the Tickle Bees.

Recently, local television station KATU came out to talk with Mace Vaughan, director of the Xerces Society's pollinator program, to talk about the bees.

Livin' in the Blurbs: To Bee or Not To Bee…

First chickens, then goats. Now being into bees is the latest preoccupation among urban agriculturists in this most ag-obsessed city. In its third year, the Tour de Hives not only celebrates this industrious pollinator, it gives enthusiasts (wannabees?) the opportunity to learn what's going on in the backyards of other apiarists and learn the secrets of their success. Coinciding with National Bee Day on August 18 and organized by the Zenger Farm Bee Group, the tour will feature hives in the North, Northeast, Southeast and Gladstone areas. Best of all, the day is capped by lifting pints and discussing the finer points of beekeeping at the Lucky Lab pub. Now to organize an urban pig tour followed by a smoke-off…

Details: Tour de Hives organized by the Zenger Farm Bee Group. Sun., Aug. 18, 1-4 pm; post-event gathering at Lucky Lab at 915 SE Hawthorne, 4-6 pm. Tickets $5-$15 sliding scale with preregistration.

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For those too squeamish (or allergic) to want to put in their own beehives, there are ways to promote these infinitely useful invertebrates. One Northeast neighborhood has organized the Sabin Bee-Friendly Front Garden Tour that shows how easy and beautiful it is to plant a bee-friendly habitat. With 30 neighborhood homes participating, the tour is self-guided and you can peruse the gardens at your leisure all summer long. Even more helpful, there's an audio track available narrated by the homeowners themselves talking about their gardens. It's a great opportunity to learn a lot with little effort other than taking a walk through this lovely area.

Details: Sabin Bee-Friendly Garden Tour. Map available online or at Livingscape, Garden Fever or the Backyard Bird Shop Fremont location. Narrated audio track can be heard at 503-205-0326. For more information e-mail Diane Benson.

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And if the above activities aren't enough for you, or you get insanely inspired and become convinced bees are your new life's calling, there are several places you can get your bee on, learn more about hives and talk to your heart's content with other bee enthusiasts. (Don't you love living in Portland?) Check out these places for information:

• Zenger Farm Bee Group meets monthly and cares for the farm's hives.
• Naomi's Organic Farm Supply has classes, information and supplies.
• Ruhl Bee Supply, at 114 years the oldest bee supply company in town, has classes, info and supplies.
• Livingscape has supplies and information for home beekeeping.
• Bee Thinking has supplies and information about top bar hives.
• Portland Urban Beekeepers meets monthly.
• Portland Metro Beekeepers Association meets the second Thurs. of the month.
• Tualatin Valley Beekeepers Association meets the last Wed. of the month.
• Clark County (WA) Beekeepers Association meets the second Thurs. of the month.
• Oregon State Beekeepers Association has listings and information.
• Xerces Society is an organization dedicated to promoting and preserving pollinators. Lots of info here.