Buzzing Backyard Biodiversity: Fostering Native Bee Habitats (Ep. 29)

Justina Block is the founder and CEO of Osmia Bee in the United States. She’s on a mission to raise awareness about native bees and create supportive environments for them. Her work has led to remarkable, science-backed initiatives that can have a significant impact on bee populations. We discuss her bee journey, her business, and a special government-funded project called Blooms for Mason Bees.

Osmia Bee creates sustainable kits for raising native bees at home. Justina and her company are wonderful champions for mason and other bees, reminding us that these are gentle, non-threatening creatures, happy to be left in peace amongst the blooms.

Good to know

One of Justina’s initiatives is the Blooms for Mason Bees project whose goal is to develop a seed mix for pollinators. Under a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education, the team strategically placed nest boxes in different environments across her state of Ohio. They collected and anaylzed the pollen the bees brought in to feed their young. She then partnered with a seed company to create a mix of annual and perennial plants for farmers, orchardists, and backyard gardeners. It’s a wonderful program that will support native bee populations and enhance pollination in urban and agricultural settings.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Bee’s Knees. I’m your host, Jacy Meyer. The Bee’s Knees is a podcast wild about native bees. Wild and native bees are under threat worldwide. In each episode, we look at actionable things we can do to support these adorable little guys whose pollination work is crucial for maintaining biodiversity.

Thanks for being here.

Having honey bee hives in backyards, near farms, even on the roofs of city buildings has become a thing over the past decade. As news spread of the desperate plight of bees, many people sprang into action, setting up their own hives. Unfortunately, honeybees aren’t really under threat. As a managed species, there will always be beekeepers to care for them.

Unlike our native bees, who are often left to struggle alone, in the face of [00:01:00] habitat and food loss, pesticide use, and of course, the climate crisis. So today I want to try and set a new trend, raising native bees at home. Here to help me is Justina Block, founder and CEO of Osmia Bee. This US based company partners with bee experts across the world to develop research backed products for raising bees.

This is knowledge that both farmers and gardeners can use to create supportive environments for bees. Let’s learn a little more. Justina, welcome. Tell me about your native bee journey. Well, I’ve been raising native bees since 2010, just as a passion in my yard and sharing with friends and back then there wasn’t a lot of information about solitary bees.

Obviously the researchers were aware of them, but the public really wasn’t. And, um, so I enjoyed my raising them and observing them and creating my own notebook. And, you know, you only get to enjoy them six weeks out of the year. You know, certain, you know, [00:02:00] bees emerge depending on the weather and the temperatures and floral resources.

So the Mason bee, the Osmia lignaria that I raise, you know, is an early, it emerges early in the season and is called the orchard bee. So. You know, I wait all year, you get six weeks to enjoy them. And then following that up with a summer leaf cutting bee. And what’s wonderful about them, you can get sometimes two generations and sometimes three, depending how long the summer is.

So in 2017, I wanted to share what I was doing with some of the local organizations we have here in Cincinnati. And I approached them, but they’ve never heard of them. They’re like, what are these? They all had honeybee programs, but they didn’t have any education programs about solitary bees. And I guess my biggest cheerleader was, you know, the Osmia lignaria, because I had them emerging when I approached these organizations.

So these bees were emerging in their hands and they’re like, wow, [00:03:00] why don’t we know about these bees? These are fantastic. At that time, I was going to donate my habitats and bees in exchange if they would create. An education program. So with that, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden immediately within five minutes, like how do we get started?

How do we do this and Green Acres Foundation, which is another organization here in Cincinnati and Bernheim Forest and Research Arboretum is in about an hour and a half from me. It’s the largest arboretum at 19, 000 acres. They had a honeybee program. But again, they’re like, what are these? What do we have?

So with these organizations, I started donating and visiting, you know, their guests that would come to visit the parks. And I would have a booth and discuss, you know, these bees. And at that time, again, I had bees emerging. So. For the first time, people are holding a bee and they just were amazed. And you never get tired.

It never gets old when [00:04:00] a bee emerges in your hand and this little animal, it comes out and it stretches and it warms up and it’s grooming and it’s a beautiful little bee, you know, the lignaria it’s blue, it comes in blues and different kinds of greens, you know, shades. And it’s just a gentle bee. That’s great for, you know, Families and pets, you don’t have to worry about aggression because they’re solitary.

So from there, within seven weeks, the zoo approached me that they were getting questions. Can they purchase these? And I had my little houses in four different areas of the zoo. So people were questioning and they said, we would love to put this in our gift shop. And I said, okay. And then it, this passion of mine turned into a business.

That is such an amazing story. I love it. And I can just picture these people experiencing these little bees being born in their hands for the first time and their enthusiasm for them. Right. So now [00:05:00] tell me about these bee kits that you’re building. Okay. I ended up reaching out to a few researchers in Washington.

They were doing similar Things out in the state of Washington. So I flew out to visit, to see what they were doing and they were so kind to spend the day with me. It was literally a whole day to see their operation. So I was able to see how the industry standards really industry standards. And that was still at its infancy in the sense, like, how do we clean them, store them at proper temperatures for the following year?

And so I’ve been able to create a relationship with some of the best experts. Really literally in the world, the USDA bee lab in Logan, Utah. I went out there and spent two weeks the first time and under their mentorship, I was able to work in some of the orchards in Utah, apples, pears, peaches, tart cherry.

And then I actually went to the [00:06:00] orchards, almond orchards out in California and helped work there for two weeks, working with some of the smaller orchards here in Cincinnati, like fruit orchards, you know, talking about pesticides, when to spray, when not to spray and what to spray. So doing soil samples and really learning the trade.

To help the orchardists here and growers in the midwest. No one’s doing it here in the midwest But me as far as I know So with the help with these researchers and some of the universities like Penn State University, Ohio State University have been fantastic and just very supportive and helping me i’ve been working with backyard gardeners, but Grow my business into using these bees and orchard, you know pollination here in the midwest So you have another interesting project going on, and that’s the blooms for mason bees.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? So what we did is we placed out 30 nest boxes across the state of Ohio, it was for Ohio only, and [00:07:00] we collaborated with a seed company, Ohio Prairie Seed Company. It’s a family owned business. And we placed these. Nest boxes out in agriculture, urban areas and woodland areas.

So we did a Google map. We placed where we thought they would do well, or, you know, see what was, was out there, you know, as far as like plants, we did two releases, we released at the beginning and what was great about it is that. Different areas across Ohio, depending on the weather released different times.

So here in Cincinnati, we did our first release the last week of March and we. Let the bees fly for 14 days and when we collect the reeds that are filled, you can tell by the end of the reeds with a little mud cap, we remove three from that first release and we put them in the freezer because we don’t want the egg to hatch and consume

the [00:08:00] pollen provisions so we put them in the freezer and then we do a second release because there’s other things blooming now, right? so Usually bloom time for most trees is 9 to 14 days So usually there’s a second round of blooming of different plants and flowers trees and flowers So after the end of that 14 days, we went back collected those filled reeds put them in the freezer and then shipped them off to Penn State Uh, DNA pollen metabarcoding .

So what they did is they opened them up, they removed the pollen provisions and they, what they do is they spin it and they spin it down where they can identify the flowers by genus. So we, once we received it, took several months to do this. And so the different locations, everyone shipped their own ’cause we were all across.

You know, Ohio, so everyone was given a kit and instructions and we always followed up with, like, how’s it going? What are you seeing? You know, and with that we came up, there [00:09:00] were over 200 floral varieties, you know, in their findings, which was very exciting. And then we met with, uh, some horticulturists. We met with the bee lab like Dr.

Jim Kane. We met with, you know, Dr. Jamie Strange and of course, you know, OPN and we sat down and we revised, revised, we went down and down and down. So we have a proprietary seed mix. Now, we have three different seed mixes. So the first one will be, um, which will be available soon, will be a seed mix that has a rhythm

to it. So it’ll be early, early spring into fall, so it’ll provide floral resources, not only for bees, but other pollinators, which is a fantastic mix. We’ll pair that down for the growers. So, as you know, you know, they transfer honeybees. So once the pollen is finished, once the trees are finished blooming, they will pack up the honeybees and transport them to the next

orchard or fruit crop whether it [00:10:00] be strawberries or or nuts. Um, so but for Using mason bees they need extended floral resources. So they continue to nest so putting in floral strips or hedgerows in these, um In these orchards or different growers or backyard gardeners That’s what that seed mix is for.

The second seed mix will be for our propagation cages, which we’re going to put up this year. We’ll prep the ground, we’ll install the cages by 20 by 96 and put in the floral resources and then release bees in 2025. Let’s talk about the backyard gardeners for a little bit. Are there any floral resources that you recommend people have and are there any other gardening tips that you can share with us to make sure we’re helping the bees as much as we can in our little spaces?

Sometimes people get turned off with native because they associate native. Oh, [00:11:00] it’s going to look weedy You know in my I don’t want it to look weedy and I always suggest start with a great design Speak to a professional go to the local nursery that you like They’re great about making suggestions You know, and if you don’t have a place and of course maintenance people’s questions are like how much maintenance is this going to take?

so with a great design You can create a pollinator space, you know, whether it be small or large, if you’re a gardener, if you’re not so much a gardener, that can be easy maintenance, if you, if you purchase the right plants, but you definitely want a rhythm, you want early spring, which I found after doing this one, when I would get responses or people reaching out to me, , ,

and said my bees weren’t doing so didn’t do so great this year. Do you know why and the more I talked to them? They didn’t have anything blooming in early spring And so that was the purpose of making the seed mix as well that you know, things need to bloom very [00:12:00] early These are orchard bees. They emerge one of the first bees to emerge in the spring.

They emerge about 55 degrees So like bumblebees emerge early. There’s a lot of adrena bees that emerge early So it’s important to plants You know, your garden that have early bloom and also late bloom to take care of the bumblebees and honeybees that are still out foraging as late last year, as late as November last year here in Ohio for the gardeners.

It’s again, I don’t want to discourage them. It’s native or nothing. Yes. You can find native planted, especially things that you love, combine it with the non native, and then just encourage them, like anything, your garden is constantly evolving and moving, and if something doesn’t work, you pull it out, replace it with something else, and if you’re a gardener, you enjoy that, right?

You enjoy the process. You enjoy the process that it’s really four seasons. Right. So I just started cleaning out my pollinator garden, my different gardens, because I leave it up [00:13:00] because it provides seed for the birds who don’t migrate, it provides shelter for them as well. And different other animals that I have in our neighborhood.

It also provides nesting materials for different insects. So leaf litter, I don’t remove it. I pile my beds up with the leaf litter. So. You know, we have lightning bugs, we have beneficial insects, all these bugs are hibernating or these insects are hibernating over the winter. So, you know, the eggs, not the actual insect, you know, they probably are not there anymore, but you know, the eggs they leave behind for the following season.

So I don’t chew it up. I don’t use mulch or bark of any kind, you know, 70 percent of the bees, native bees, solitary bees in the U S are ground nesting. And I think. In the world. So you want to leave, you don’t want to cover up that soil. Bumblebees are ground nesting. So you want to leave, if you really, really have to have mulch, just leave some bare areas in your garden and in your yard where they can reach the soil and then, you know, [00:14:00] emerge in the spring and summer.

So tell me, why bees? Why did you choose to start a business with bees? Where does your passion come from? Their work ethic. Bees have such a strong work ethic, their diversity, their color, their sizes, and just the variety of bees, you know, fairy bees, who wouldn’t love a fairy bee, you know, digger bees, you know, they’re furry and fuzzy.

With all these pollen collecting hairs that help them dig, you know, into the ground, of course, they’re digger bees, you know, of course, mason bees and the variety of mason bees, and they all don’t come out at the same time. The lignaira just happens to be an early bee that emerges, you know, that they’re called the orchard bee or a bob, you know, blue orchard bees.

And. You know, polyester bees at there in the Colletidae family. They’re super cool. They’re ground nesting. They actually create the best way I can describe it is a substance [00:15:00] that creates this little plastic sack and it’s see through it’s almost like a little baggy where they. You know, collect pollen and nectar, then lay their egg in it.

So they build, you know, the underground and they built these different tunnels where they will lay an individual egg in each of these tunnels. And they’re incredibly cool. Who wouldn’t think, you know, all the different varieties of bees and colors. And really you just get to enjoy them for a short season.

You know, each bee has a, you know, the solitary bees have a six, seven week life cycle. That’s it. So that. These bees fly, and then as the temperatures warm, different bees emerge, there’s different things blooming, some are specialty bees, some are generalists, so like the mason bee tends to be a generalist, and I think people need to realize, not just for food security, but Almost everything we touch daily are thanks to some kind of insect pollination, bees being at the top of the [00:16:00] pyramid, obviously, but your coffee, your tea, you know, with the tea or hot tea we enjoy or iced tea, even our cosmetics, right?

Antibiotics, the ingredients all come from plants that need insect pollination or bee pollination. So all the way down to the materials we use, 90 percent of all plants. Benefit from some sort of insect pollination, whether it be flies or beetles, bees, you know, some birds as well. No, they’re very important.

Things like that. I think people need to know that it’s beyond food security, which obviously is important, but it’s the everyday products we use every day that people take. That don’t associate insect pollination with the product. Justina’s passion for native bees and her determination to learn and educate was very inspiring to me.

Her Blooms for Mason Bee project looks like it will help fill a knowledge gap combining what pollen [00:17:00] mason bees desire while giving farmers and gardeners the opportunity to provide them with the floral resources they need to do their very important work. So what do you think about our new native bee trend?

Will it catch on? If you have the opportunity and space to provide some food or nesting area for the bees, please take advantage. Thank you for helping the bees, and thank you for supporting The Bee’s Knees. Until next time, be a Bee Trendsetter.