relationship, and i don't how many people have noticed that, but in the painting, he painted jefferson standing on adams left for, which i think was his way of capturing that division had existed for a while. the good news is, they were reconciled and adams died july 4, 1826, 50 years to the day, and it's been reported that his last words, if not his last word, word and god jefferson lived and jefferson died four hours later. i think it's really interesting, the path that these two gentlemen took and how they came back together toward the end of their lives and they died on the same day. i look forward to reading then getting a little more of the back story. >> book tv wants to know what you are reading.ns

send us your reading list. television for serious readers. thank you all very much. it is a pleasure to be here in portland. i want to thank everyone here for inviting me this evening, and i also just want to thank powell and independent bookstores for what they do for our communities, not just can them connecting us to books, but connecting us to one of one another gathering as we are tonight and learning about new ideas. we are so indebted to our booklovers and i want to give them a hand tonight too. i am often asked how i got into this line of work.

this sort of peculiar combination of science and storytelling. love to build the stand before you this morning and say it was all part of my master plan and that i graduated from scientific story telling, but that's not the case. it's not something you hear about from the guidance counselor. i thought about how this came about anything it all boils down to one thing, curiosity. if you've ever spent any time around the 4-year-old, you will know that the word wide makes up a large portion of their active vocabulary. there may be other aspects of my personality letter also stuck at four years old, but that's certainly one of them. i can't stop asking questions. that habit led me very naturally to a career in science where questions are a coin of the realm and very naturally onto writing where i get to indulge myself by

guiding deeply into the topics that fascinate me so much. at the end of those arduous process, if i'm really lucky, we end up in a room like that, people who are curious about the same sorts of things that i am. i feel very fortunate here tonight to be with all of you and i know you are all curious people too. or he would be endorsed on a beautiful summer evening devoting yourself to be here. is curious, i know you won't mind if we begin our time together with one of those "why" questions. why write a book about bees? my interest in these dates back to my time in graduate school where i was studying the pollen dispersal and genetics of these large rain

forest trees in central america. i had gone out and genetically fingerprinted all of the adult trees of a particular species in this landscape so that i could see how the genes were moving around amongst them, and i knew that something up there, out of sight, in the rain forest canopy was moving pollen around, not just between neighboring trees but among individuals of a mile and a half apart. because that tree was a member of the family and have this big purple p flowers just like the sweet peas or garden keys in your yard, i knew that was something so i coerced a friend of mine into joining me for a couple weeks and we hired a local businessman who was handy with a crossbow and we spent two weeks firing lines up into the rain forest canopy and hauling up all

manner of insect traps and catching a grand total of zero bees. the only time we saw b was when one of our traps went into an aerial master the whole hive attack. lucky for us it was distinguish species. at any rate, that project was a failure. they never did learn what species of the word moving pollen around amongst those trees, but it sparked a fascination within me that we quit. i have been looking for ways to chase after bees in my work and daily life ever sent. like anyone interested in these, i have been shocked and alarmed by the headlines in recent years, what we read in the news about the decline and whole hive collapsing in math, but in reading those stories, i've also noticed that certain machinists about the subject matter. i mean, what do we really know

about bees customer even the experts sometimes stumble over the details. once while driving and listening to the radio in my car, i heard a noted historian of science being interviewed and he said that when the settlers from europe arrived at msn jamestown, they brought honeybees with them which is true. honeybee is a european and african species so that part is true. but then he went on to say, if they hadn't there would have been nothing here to pollinate their crops at which point i nearly drove off the road. what about the 4000 species of native bees already buzzing happily around north america, but that's not the worst of it. given my interest, it will not surprise you to learn that in my office i keep a copy of the reference book ease of the world. it is a nice hardbound edition

bitten by a pair of very accomplished entomologist and published by a good nonfiction press and the cover features a lovely close-up photograph of a fly. [laughter] so here in the 21st century, we find ourselves in the odd position of knowing more about the plight of bees that we do about the bees themselves. which means the place to start in any exploration of this topic is right back with the most basic question of all, what is a b? i'm happy that i have an answer i can supply to you tonight that is simple and memorable and it really sums up all of the major components of the evolution. a b is a hippie wasp. a b is a hippie wasp.

the thing to remember, the first thing is that wasps came first. wasps had a been around for millions of years before bees came along. these evolved from the wasp, and they did so by changing one particular habit. if you are ever being harassed at a picnic and your attackers are swarming over the fried chicken and the steak and stealing bits of baloney from your sandwiches, do not blame the bees. your attackers are most certainly wasps because wasps are carnivores. their hunters and scavengers, constantly searching the landscape for other insects to hunt or spiders or bits of meat that they can take back to feed to their babies, the lame, back at the nest. but these gave up that lifestyle. they gave up that lifestyle to provision themselves and their children solely from the products of flowers. once they made that dietary

switch that set them on their own evolutionary pathway and soon their bodies began to adapt and response, developing long tubelike tongues for sipping nectar from deep flowers and the evolution of finally branched hairs, almost like little feathers specifically adapted for transporting pollen from place to place. that switch that them apart and set them on their own pathway. now of course, there is nuance to the story, there are certain bees that are parasitic and do not bother collecting pollen at all, and there's also some wasps that are fond of flowers and will sip at nectar, but if you want to remember the basics of b evolution, just remember that they are hippie wasp. they are the long-haired flower loving vegetarians.

[laughter] now all of this evolutionary activity took place long time ago. bees have been with us for at least 120 million years. they made that dietary switch back in the mid- cretaceous time famously dominated by the dinosaurs, but if you can look past those lumbering beasts for a moment to the vegetation, you will see something interesting. you see, furs and firms abounding, but where the flowers? you have to look pretty hard at any of these illustrations to find a couple short of crummy -looking shrubs that might be able to produce a flower, but overall it's not a very promising landscape for the evolution of an insect that relies solely upon the product of flowers, but the artist in the picture got things but on because in the mid- cretaceous, flowers were still something of a novelty, just beginning to diversify and spread across the

landscape, but they were still big players in a time that was dominated by kinko's and other flowering plants. it's always been something of a mystery. no flowering plants whatsoever and then suddenly they're everywhere. charles darwin thought of it, in fact he called it an abominable mystery and he considered it a serious challenge to his concept of evolution as a slow, incremental process, the sudden appearance of flowering plants. but rarely noted is that in the same letter to a friend of his he made that famous mystery comment, he also noted the work of the french naturalist, a lesser-known

naturalist named jeff stone who theorized that flowering plants did evolve rapidly as a result of their interaction with these. darwin didn't buy it. he preferred to think that the flowering plants must have evolved slowly and incrementally elsewhere and then dispersed rapidly to the places where they became fossilized. well, darwin had the bigger recitation as well as a bigger beard and his ideas prevailed, for decades until people finally realized that he had been right all along and that the code evolution between the flowering plants and insects, particularly the bees had led to their great diversification and the results can be seen everywhere from mountain meadows to rain forests, canopies to the nearest lower market. but what is less well known is how the rapid diversification of flowering plants led in turn to an incredible diversity of bees which range

from the familiar like this bumblebee to the fantastic like this iridescent sweaty, to the downright strange like this newly discovered long tongue species known only from the desert of chile. they can be minuscule like this tiny cuckoo of bees, glued to the side of a pin or they can be massive like this bulky collecting b from puerto rico port. and the colors can range from the simple like this leaf cutter be to the showy and even the surprising like this blue banded be or this beautiful purple one from french guiana. and while it's true that many bees are indeed fuzzy, like this long warned specimen, they can also be smooth like this blood be or this shimmering orchid be from

south america. and while some bees may seem alarming, or at least certain parts of them, they can also be, in spite of their antenna and faceted eyes, what can only be described as cute. so the co- evolution of bees and flowering plants led to great diversity on both sides of that equation. i have just shown you 16 different species of bees from various places around the globe. if we wanted to see all the world bees, we would be here for a long time. let's say we kept going as we have about ten seconds. b. at that rate it would take us two days, seven hours and 30 minutes to get through the world estimated 20000 species. : : :

how thrilling. so, the story of bees is still very much being written. many people were surprised to learn that they were so diverse because when you think of them our minds turn immediately to

the one species that we know best, the honey bee massing by tens of thousands around a single queen. but honey bees are the exception. the vast majority are solitary creatures, leaf cutters and more building their nest alone in their tunnels into the rose or hollow twigs, sometimes in stems and snail shells if they can find one with brick walls or cracks in the pavement. many are tiny and hard to find so it's not unusual, most through direct studies than understanding the dramatic ways that they've influenced the world around us. and i'd like to illustrate that

with a passage the passage of chapter four of the book which begins again at the graph by the british public normandale who wrote you vehement fellows that play on your musical cellos come out of my roses with your plausible noses. when henry longfellow called them so blue and gold and he probably wasn't thinking about the visual receptors the prevalence goes into pondered the k. was not a coincidence. they fall right in the middle of the visual spectrum and as pollinators. the evolution trends closely for getting the flowers for unbiased from mustard to corn flour to

purple would be scarce and might not exist at all if there had been no need to advertise for the services. saint is also send is also a common trait and walt whitman made a finding by an observation with, quote, order is at sunrise. many floral fragrances do surge during the morning hours just as temperatures rise and bees become active seeking out flowers filled with nectar overnight. for plants the perfect pollination opportunity in the right moment to advertise. if there were no bees in the equation, which meant might have timed it for a moonlit walk to get the perfume given off by most pollinated flowers or any theater he might never have considered the garden in the first place since the majority

would think of the the rotten flesh smells attractive to wasps and flies. the fact that bees prefer borders and colors is one of nature's happy accidents. the odd color dog collar and smelled the shape of many flowers can also be traced to bees while blossoms generally appeal to all sorts of pollen and nectar bees included most of the more elaborate floppers eagled with specific visitors in mind. the blooms can be approached from any angle or direction with the same result, this would've come one come all display displayed off control the crowd. if claude monet include pollinators in his famous still life she would have found himself busy as well as butterflies, wasps and horseflies all attract it to

those simple round blossoms. flowers that diverge however can be more choosy and whom they invited where they deposit their polling. the wide banners of the flower or the snapdragon display bilateral symmetry a concept that is also familiar from the shape of the human face. keep drawing lines on line down the center from top to bottom one half is an image of the other. for flowers this design creates a distinct sense of up and down requiring visitors to enter in a specific way. once accomplished they can develop all sorts of adaptation for polling in particular places on the insect of a particular size and shape but plans can only afford such a focused approach if the pollen is likely

to stick to their targets which make bees with their pollen attracting for is by far the most common callers compared to the sunflowers rené would have found pollinators on his yellow irises since bumblebees are virtually the only insect capable of getting the job done with their upright orientation, they force them to land on a designated platform and pass beneath a broad place placed as one expert charmingly described, did exactly the dorsal surface of the bee. the females are there in showing that the beagle deposit the pollen in just the right location on the next that it visits. so, much of what we take for granted when we look at a flower boils down to the proclivity of bees and flowers in turn have

altered the buzzing visitors to the distinctive habits of memory and navigation. and should anyone in the rimmed the room doubt for an instant just how tightly wound these relationships can become, look no further than the blossoms of the bee orchids whose pedal have taken on the various shape and texture of the insect they hope to attract and who go so far as to produce the particular pheromone of a female be trekking male bees into mounting these alluring blossoms again and again. a pollination strategy defined by a technical term that is unusual for terms like this requires no further explanation, pseudo copulation. [laughter] the mail doesn't even know he's visiting a flower.

he thinks he's met a fine lady at a pickup bar. it's outrageous, but also a highly specific and effective pollination strategy because the male bees is attracted to only one type of orchid, moving polynomial among those that look and smell like the right species of female. this example also reveals there's no small amount of trickery and exploitation going on in this nice co- evolutionary relationship. now the search of the evening with the question asked by 4-year-old, but it's also worth considering a question commented 14-year-olds. who cares? [laughter] also an important question. why should we care about bees? because people do care. i've heard from people who are concerned about the decline which if you think about it is pretty unusual for an insect.

you hear lies in the news? cockroaches coming earwigs come if so certainly not with a fondness. i mean, let's face it, by and large nobody trusts an exoskeleton. [laughter] when science fiction authors or horror film directors need a terrifying go to monster, there's a reason they don't choose puppies or teddy bears. time and again they find inspiration in the creepy crawlies with soft bodies encased in the tightness of the exoskeleton. the mere sight of insects and spiders can treasure debate could trigger action in the human brain often synopsis associated with disgust. psychologists believe that these feelings are innate evolutionary, that there is a deep sense of otherness about those brittle segmented bodies.

it is as if even from a safe distance we know such creatures would give a sickening crunch if stepped upon. yet throughout human history and all sorts of contexts, we have made a special exception for bees. from soap to saturday night live grenades everywhere. we make an exception. to be clear, they have exoskeletons at like all the other insects. many of them also have venomous stingers into their babies look like i gets. they don't hide, but in cultures around the world people have to decide their put aside their natural fear to bond with bees, watching them, tracking them, studying them, writing poems and stories about them, even

worshiping them. no other group of insects have grown so close to us and done is more essential or revered. now you might say of course we like bees. think of all the crops they pollinate. fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds depending how you parse them, the numbers make up as much as one third of the food in the human diet. that's fair enough, but that can't be the whole story since people didn't even understand insect pollination until the 19th century. yet our fund this dates back millennia. to the ancient they were the finest sources of sweetness but also of light as well as medicine, waterproofing the first erasable writing tablet made from beeswax. and even the earliest forms of reliable intoxication in the form of need.

a source of pride people kept them long before they attend horses, camels or docs not to mention such familiar crops as apples, oats, watermelons, onions, even coffee came to us long after the bees. beekeeping is a science and art that dates back at least to the middle of egypt where sophisticated clay hides were up and down the nile used for wildflower bloom and also to the classical mayan period where people had the good sense to tend royal ladies a rain forest bees would be a trade off steam. bees shall again shallot again and again throughout recorded history while blacks and honey show up everywhere from pottery fragments to the world's oldest and fulfilling. but by one school of thought, our connection shouldn't be measured in thousands of years.

it should be measured in millions. a relationship with potential evolutionary consequences for our own species as well as that of a peculiar african bird. this story comes from chapter six of the book and also begins in the quotation this time from the dutch renaissance scholar who observed no bees, no honey. we are catching up with a narrative in south africa where i was frankly skipping out on a biology conference where i was supposed to be presenting a paper because i couldn't resist going out and looking for native honey bees and the habitat in south africa. oh please i wondered for so long -- [inaudible] thank you very much. i will get it right from now on. as sick of this wonderful

habitat if i were writing a novel this is the moment where i would tell you that a brown robin sized bird landed on a nearby twig chattering excitedly to get my attention. i would then describe how i followed the bird as it hopped and fluttered from branch to branch leaving me directly to bees buzzing home. it didn't happen but the strange thing is it could have. it earned its name through exactly the behavior i just described assuring people to be hides with boisterous hopping, flapping and a cry that bird books describe. the bird ranges widely across sub-saharan africa where it wherever it finds the traditional honey hunters learned to rely on its unique talent. in one study following the next

discovery by 560% and the birds led the hunters to the colonies that were larger and more productive than the ones they discover on their own. after the nest had been located and breached, they benefit by feasting on leftovers and scraps into specialized diet resulted in an unusual ability to digest beeswax. as one early european observer noted, people customarily reword their helpers with a calculated gift of honeycomb. but the hunters never never failed to lead a small portion for their conduct of the commonly take care not to leave so much as would satisfy its hunger the appetite with this is obliged to commit a second treason connect a second treason by discovering other bees nests in hopes of a better salary. although no honey guide

materialized to help the afternoon its habits are a commonplace well-known to be immortalized in one of the greatest scientific names of all kind indicator. for over two centuries of wisdom maintained it evolved between the bird and another and people have simply come along and learned to exclude them. it wasn't until the 1980s that a group of south african biologists pointed out what should have been obvious all along. honey badgers are almost entirely nocturnal. they are also nearsighted and they don't generally climb trees to the nest usually discovered by the birds. while waking hours to overlap briefly for such limited opportunities for interaction hardly seem like a good co-

evolutionary story point. particularly for something so complex. while the myth persists in natural history articles and even the best-selling children's book that you can find probably find somewhere, finding the real story required biologists to go knocking on doors in an entirely different department of science. to track down the origin of the honey guide i spoke with nutritional anthropologist at the university who made a remarkable discovery about the people of tanzania a group still living a traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle in the very landscape where our species is thought to have evolved. they do follow the honey guide and this has been known for decades, but she was the first person to ask a basic question. how much do they eat and the answer was surprising.

it wasn't just an occasional sweet treat. men, women and children ranked it as their number one favorite and they looked for it every single day, rating the nest not just of honey bees that of at least six other varieties. over the course of a year they made up 15% higher during certain seasons and higher still for many of the men who would not only gather most of the honey out in the field but eat quite a bit of it before they came back to camp. [laughter] now that is interesting in and of itself, but the idea becomes powerful in an evolutionary context because she and her colleagues composed another question. without ancestors, surviving in roughly the same way and in the same landscape behaved any differently after all

chimpanzees eat honey so why not if we've been chasing after these since the beginning, that explains the co- evolution of the honey guide. a co- evolve with us. why would they bother to attract the attention of a nocturnal badger when there are eighths eighth out there in plain sight scouring the savanna for bees nests all day long? that for her colleagues, it come it as a sidenote. the real discovery has to do with us, because the story of human evolution has always been a story about green sides. and the brain is with physiologists like to call metabolically expensive. it takes a lot of energy to run it come up to 20% of your daily calories go to feed something that makes up only about 2% of our body weight.

so if you want to evolve a bigger brain than you need more fuel. and as he was the told me, honey is the most energy rich food and nature. and not only that, but it comes in the form of glucose, or a good portion of it does. and our brains are glucose consumers. if you need other things, your body will transform those things into glucose to feed your brain said here is this wonderful source of it out of the landscape. one more chapter, off one more chapter one more paragraph. [laughter] one paragraph only from chapter six. like hunting animals, finding honey provided our ancestors with a rich nutritional reward for completing a complex task. it would have created a similar impetus for the development of cooperation and sharing as well as tool use and the mastery of fire. other stone implements did lead

to efficiencies and healing episode two what they have allowed access to the larger piece asked in trees and wildfire may have given us a nutritional boost for cooking it would also have allowed the pacification of honey bees with smoke. if our ancestors did indeed search for honey as regularly as today, then each of these advances that have been accompanied by a huge surge in sugar calories. and as i've been reminded several times during the talk, they also contain larva and appalling that provide more calories as well as proteins and imported my code nutrients. taken together, these dietary competitions make a strong case that learning to follow these influenced the evolution holding our ancestors to bolster their growing brains into the language of anthropology outcompete other species. now there is some food for

thought. could it be our suite of lead us to believe that to make us who we are? with a tantalizing notion. so if i were giving this talk 100 years ago, i would stopped now and take questions. even 50 or 25 years ago i might not need to say another word. but in the 21st century it is impossible to talk about bees without confronting the challenges that they face. colony collapse disorder appeared on the scene in 2006 decimating the hives across north america and then spreading to europe setting off a mad research scrambled to understand why. i spoke with a bees scientist named diane foster, who's been studying the colony collapse disorder since the beginning it helped coin the phrase and she

told me something surprising. over the past several years, colony collapse disorder has almost disappeared. it now accounts for less than 5% have% have lost hives of lost hives yet professional beekeepers continue to lose 30 to 40% of their hives every year and the studies of native wild bees have also shown steep declines for many species including what were once the most common bumblebees right here in portland, the western bumblebee now virtually extinct over much of its former range. so, what began as an investigation of a particular malady affecting one has grown into a grave concern of what may be affecting all. after more than a decade of research, one thing seems certain, more than one thing. there is no single smoking gun responsible for the decline. they are suffering from what some have begun calling of people stress disorder.

diane summarizes the stressors as parasites like the deadly mite attaches itself to the bodies of bees and feeds of on their bodily fluids, pesticide like the notorious and ubiquitous, pathogens including a host of viruses and finally, poor nutrition. the simple scarcity of flowers in our increasingly industrial farms in urbanized landscapes. add climate change and invasive species to the mix, and things get even more complicated. particularly since all of these factors have the potential to interact with one another. they passed tests in a lab and can become deadly in a field that has been sprayed with a fungicide or a virus that hardly impacts a healthy healthy ulf ramm healthy bees can count on already stressed by parasites or lack of vector.

british bumblebee expert told me the issue boils down to a crisis in bees health. as he put it bees are starving, disease and the poison, no wonder they are not thriving. but he went on to give me the good news in spite of the complexity of the problem and the challenges of the research, we already know enough to take action and to take action in specific ways by providing more flowers and nesting habitat, by reducing pesticide use and avoiding the wrong distance movement of domestic bees as a pathogen that traveled with them putting them straightforward into practice can be transformational. and efforts are already underway on the thousands of acres of farmland i toured an almond orchard in central valley one of the most intensively farmed places on earth. and even there with all of native habitat gone, a simple

wildflower had brought back all kinds of species of bees like this hopeful little sweaty somewhere. purged if you can imagine on a yellow flower, the most hopeful i encountered in all of my research. but perhaps the best news of all is that you don't have to be an expert to help. anyone can do it. you can do it. you can help with a window box or your back yard or garden or on your farm. it can be as simple as drilling holes in a block of wood to provide nesting habitat or choosing to plant flowers that don't require spraying. and if you do this, you will experience something that can be pretty unusual in the world of

species conservation, instant gratification. i recently decided i needed some catchment, a wonderful purple meant that even though i can't kill it is very hardy and i thought i need more of this in the garden in front of my office, so i got some at the hardware store. i got it home and before i could even translate from pot garden, there were bees on it. instant gratification is that you can experience. to borrow a catchphrase from one field so to speak and apply it to the field of frustration if you build it they will come. in a moment i will finally take questions, but i first want to conclude this portion of our time together with a short passage from the preface to the book which was quoted earlier but i will repeat it. i think it is appropriate to end at the beginning because while

we may have a long history with bees we are at the beginning of understanding their fascinating biology. we are still just at the beginning of understanding how dependent upon them and still at the very start of learning what we can do to bring them back. from the preface of the gifted progress from henry david thoreau who wrote there are certain pursuits which if not poetic and true do at least suggest a noble and fibrillation then we know. the keeping of bees for instance is like directing the sunbeams. bees today certainly need our help but just as importantly our curiosity exploring these creatures can transform anyone into an enthusiastic about is the purpose of this book but i

hope he you will do more than read it. i hope it makes you want to go straight outside on the next sunny day can find a b. on a flower and settled down to watch. if you do you might find yourself buried to reach out and touch that be in the same way my son has done since the age of three. try this and you can feel the tickle of tiny feet and before you slowly toward her fingers hold the beat up and set it free -- bees up and set it free. thank you very much. [applause] so, we do have a bit of a rule for questions if you have a question raise your hand and we will have a microphone presented to you. can you demonstrate. right in front so that's what

you're going to experience but don't be afraid. i hope you have some questions that must be answered here. we have won have unlawfully in the front. sorry to make you work so hard. >> you didn't mention killer bees. was there ever such a thing as color bees migrating from the southern hemisphere up or was that just more of a myth? >> that is a great question and wonderful example of biological air command error made by biologists i should say. this story comes to us from brazil but beyond that because all the it goes all the way over to africa and there is even a european connection and if you consider the honey bee which has a wide native range from the tip

of south africa all the way into southern europe and into the near east over that huge geographic stand there are several subspecies within that one and the europeans the europeans of species is docile and that is the ancestor of the domestic bees that we love and no. you might get stoned now and then but they are relatively easy to manage. but in the southern part of africa that is another subspecies that is far more aggressive yet it is reported to store more honey, massive amounts of honey and it's high and it's more aggressive perhaps because it is more has more to defensive defense a larger area and its more aggressive it's more aggressive in chasing people out of that area. it will chase someone as far as a quarter of a mile. i'm also a biologist had the idea that if you could

crossbreed this subspecies with a great honey maker down here in africa you could come up with one that made a lot of honey so this was started and taken over to brazil where this was going to go on and they were going to work on this business until someone left the door open and they escaped into thought as to be the result is nice and all of south america was nice and they interbred today interbred and spread and started to take over command guess with characteristic was dominant, the aggressive characteristic. i've heard mixed bags about what happened. i don't know if there is more or not, but they certainly are more aggressive, so bees africanized bees have been moving north ever since and has reached the southern part of the united

states. because of the ancestry they are more sensitive to cold so they haven't come as far north as we are here in portland, but they are in southern california and arizona, new mexico and places like that. they are more aggressive. what you haven't heard as much media did in the late 70s when they were the subject of some truly marvelous bees movies to speak, the killer bees, because i think people have grown more used to have to live with them knowing that if in fact you find yourself being chased or find these aggressive bees it is probably because you are close to a nest. so the thing with them has given people more awareness and there still are entries from them and occasionally even people who died from a massive number of stings but that's become as rare as people become accustomed to these bees as the wild honey bee in their backyard. great question. other questions.

can we move this direction is there anyone with a question? okay we have one right here in the fourth row. >> could you talk a little bit about the use to supplement honeybee population services if they are starting to do more of that and in orchards or on farms to diversify the kind of pollination that happens? >> wonderful question and that is beginning to happen. 20,000 species why are we so dependent on one? there are opportunities for publication and it is beginning to happen. you can even now i these little creatures that are black and shiny with a bit of iridescence

they are wonderful and the next and what did hold and you're seeing seeing them used in a commercial scale now an apple orchard that they supplement to the population of pollination and there are many other examples coming into play. one of the greatest for a glimpse of what is possible, people look to a tiny little town east of the mountains not that far from washington to this little town where four generations of farmers have been growing alfalfa not to feed the animals but for the seed. if you want to keep it to animals you've got to plant a seed and a ticket and alfalfa seed, you must have a flower pollinated. and alfalfa flower is a bit odd. they are in the bees family so they have paddles sticking out front, but the flowerpots are

packed so tightly within those paddles that when a d. spreads them apart to access the nectar and pollen, they come out like this and hit the bees right on the four head or wherever, right in the chin and they won't stand for it. they say forget it, they were treated coming from the side, but they are horrible pollinators of alfalfa. so come four generations ago the farmers in the valley and the family noticed in their alfalfa fields they were seeing this little native bee, called the alkali be that isn't made of hair but actually from the cubicle of the bees itself, the exoskeleton that is structured in such a way that the light scatters in the same way that it does from the surface creating these shimmering bands of pearly rainbow colors.

so they must have been wowed by that at least, i would have been in their shoes. that's but what they really noticed is they were doing a bang up job pollinating the alfalfa so they did the logical thing they followed back to find out where they were nesting and found them alongside the river in these areas with a little crust of salt over the surface of the soil that could waste and they dug down into this soil that would hold its shape and be a good time over the next. so the farmers copied that and what we can do that. so, to my knowledge it is the only agricultural area in the world where you can find the farmers salting their fields. thousands of pounds of rock salt and think about it they are planting a new field of alfalfa and they would fade fade a few of bees and plant them by creating habitat. they go out and lay her disloyal

with salt and then subjugate to the right level of moisture that's perfect for for bee nesting and the alkali bees settle in by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, the millions. the last time anyone bothered to count them and they were between 18 to 25 million nesting which is the largest aggregation ever measured anywhere and a wonderful example of what is possible when they are included in every management decision. people think about them all the time not just farmers that fill the whole community, the highway department. if you are driving through this area suddenly you had a field and here is a highway slows you down to 20 miles per hour.

my favorite road sign in the world. slow down the smell the flowers and listen to the buzzing. we have a question in the middle if we have the microphone. yes. >> my understanding is the only pollinator that can pollinating tomato is a bumblebee and it's the buzzing that has something to do with the release. you can see this if you have a tomato plant in your backyard. spend some time there tomorrow. i saw today right here in portland at the botanical gardens in one of their garden beds, said tomatoes belong to the nightshade family and there are a couple of other families of plan is to have this this

habit. 80% of all do this. it's a bit strange when you think of trying to get the flowers pollinated but instead of just displaying it wide open like you would see on a rose or something like that, they keep it within these chambers. close inside the chamber accessible only by a tiny hole at one end and so for the bee to get in there just to stick something inside and try to pry it out and it's a miserable experience. it has cody involved with particular bees that can do with a call does pollination and you can see this happen if you watch the bumblebee will come up to the flower and grip the flour tightly and then vibrate its wings in a particular frequency like a tuning fork. and as it does so it causes the pollen chamber to resnick made and spray out onto the body of

the. it's absolutely marvelous. there are several kinds that can do this. honey bees can't bumblebees are one of the best. you can see it and you can could hear that little buzz when they want to get the pollen out. it's a marvelous thing to watch. great question. we have more questions coming i think we will come to the front and then work this direction. right here with the microphone. >> thank you very much. everything you've you said has been interesting. and it's actually not a question i just wanted to let you all know that if anyone would like to see ten to 15,000 bees being worn and someone dancing in them i have a friend who will be doing that september 8 on top of large mountains with lovely tea and a buffet so i'm sure if you would like to come you can bring your book.

>> that is marvelous. thank you. we should all be there. we had another question we are going to move this direction. guess right here in the middle. >> bees have a fairly complex communication they can communicate with the flowers are and where the nectar is if you can address that. >> is a wonderful deep pool of interest in biology. the honey bees in particular much of what we know comes to us from honey bees because we studied them for so long they have remarkable abilities to communicate through a situation

where they find a good patch of flowers can return to the hyatt and by moving in certain patterns showing others it communicates a sense of distance introduction and so the others can learn by observing that dance if you know what direction to go. scientists have actually watched these dances and then gone out and try tried to find his place in the landscape. we know it is 600 meters to the north, northwest and there are the bees so they know it works well. there's all these great ways that they can communicate in that regard and they also have incredible ways of communicating their sense of smell and

chemicals and so on. very sensitive to pheromones and other things. if you can imagine inside of a high and where it is dark and you are bumping into all these other bees, you've got to have a pretty sophisticated weight to communicate if it is going to be as organized as those highly socialized bees on, honey bees in the bumblebees and such. they'd have their vindication for chemical cues. the queen bee controls the behavior of others by pheromones that she gives off and others communicate all sorts of things through chemicals. so communication is a deep pool and a marvelous topic. i'm getting the time signal we have one more question. we have one right here in the front if we can scoot all around with the microphone >> when i was a kid we had a

carport, too cheap to build a garage into a massive colony of carpenter bees. where do they learn their trade? >> carpenter bees which you have done here, they don't make it quite as far north. i'm from the san juan islands in washington. they are nesting in the what precious to you but they hold the chamber or look for empty chambers and improving by making a large chamber inside a hollow stem or any surface of what they are doing is making a nest cavity. if you see bumblebees in the spring time, moving down looking for an old mouse hole to miss

and accessing little holes that you felt they are always looking for a dark and the place to nest they will actually excavate a pretty elaborate chamber and they store the pollen and nectar to feed their young and carry out their lifecycle. >> that can happen. but think of the wonderful biology experience in that collapse. [laughter] >> i want to thank you all for your questions. it has been so fun. [applause]

gary smith, how often do economics professors talk about the role of luck and chance? >> guest: it used to be never. they are perfectly rational with no regrets and that is malarkey. >> host: economics is rational, isn't it? >> guest: but we have these guys come along who have economics even though there's ecologists and they point out the ways they're not completely rational. so i think it is