Clay: [00:00:00] I was hearing these sounds, and I realized it was the sound of all the different species that were living in my backyard. I realized that within my care, the circle of my care, were not hundreds, but thousands, if not millions of organisms. 99 percent of life on Earth being smaller than your little finger. There was lots of life that I could positively impact.

Alexander: Hello there, and welcome to World Wildlife Fund's Wildlife Café series. Wildlife Café is a space for conversations that reveal the fascinations and wonders of our biodiverse planet with conservationists who are dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild places.

I'm Alexander Nicolas, and in this episode, I'll be chatting with Clay Bolt about the wonderful world of native bees and other pollinators, what makes them so special, and why they're important for ecosystems. I'm really looking forward to this, so please pour a cup of your favorite brew, and let's get talking with Clay.

Alexander: Hi, Clay. How are you doing?

Clay: I'm doing great, Alexander. Thanks for having me today.

Alexander: Yeah. Welcome to Wildlife Café. I'm so excited to be [00:01:00] talking to you.

Clay: Me too. I'm always happy to talk about bees.

Alexander: Awesome. Well, I mean, I just, I want to jump in right away just with a very kind of basic question, you probably get a lot. Who gets bestowed with the honor of being called a pollinator? And is it just bees? Cause we're largely going to be talking about bees as prominent pollinators, and often I feel like they are the common or sole association with who the pollinators out in the world are.

But there are so many more animals out there that are pollinators as well. Right?

Clay: Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, while bees are undoubtedly the most efficient pollinators in the world, there are many species that pollinate. For example, bats are great pollinators. Birds, as we know, with hummingbirds and other species of birds. Even lizards are good pollinators, certain species of lizards. There are a lot of different species that whether or not they're intentionally collecting pollen or not, maybe they're attracted to the nectar on a flower, they're still coming in contact with that pollen and then as they go to another plant, they transfer that pollen.

So, you know, scientists are learning [00:02:00] more and more that there are a lot of species that wouldn't be thought of as pollinators that actually are.

Alexander: That's really cool. So bees can't claim that sole status.

Clay: No, nor would they want to. They're very generous.

Alexander: That's great. That's great. Well then, how have bees evolved over time though to become the pollinators that we know them to be today?

Clay: So the first pollen producing plants evolved around 150 million years ago. And so when we think about some of the earliest pollen producing plants, plants like pine trees, for example, produce copious amounts of pollen. And the first flowers evolved around 130 million years ago.

And those first flowers had arisen before bees actually existed. So some of the first pollinators were flies and beetles, which also continue to be pollinators today. But about seven to 10 million years after the first flowers came on the scene, we start to see the first bees.

Bees are actually, believe it or not, vegetarian wasps.

They're still categorized within the family of wasps and their early ancestors, [00:03:00] like a lot of the wasps that we see today, got their protein from spiders and other insects that they paralyze, and they take those insects into the nest and they feed those to their young. But somewhere along the line, some of these wasps began to collect pollen, probably accidentally to begin with.

They transported that pollen on their bodies to their nest, and eventually some of them realized, maybe not realized is the right word, but some of them began to rely solely on the pollen from flowers to feed their young.

And so that's what continues to happen today. And one thing that's really interesting is even though they made that switch from an animal based protein to a plant based protein, when you look at what happens within a bee's nest, that pollen actually begins to become more like a fungal body over time.

And so, it's more like a cow than it is like a flower by the time the larva of the beehas been raised to maturity.

Alexander: That's incredible. And they're amazing creatures. That's [00:04:00] awesome.

Well, and I feel like as cool as they are. I feel like they tend to get a little bit of a bad rap, uh, insects sometimes they're maybe seen a little bit as nuisances or not as, uh, flashy or charismatic as larger wild megafauna like elephants and tigers. However, not only are many beautiful, they also provide tremendous value when it comes to the ecosystem services they provide, including their role as pollinators. So, could you talk a bit more about the role pollinators play in nature and why people should care about insects, including those that are pollinators?

Clay: Well, first I'll say, I mean, I'm going to take a little bit of issue with the fact that you mentioned that they were not as flashy or charismatic as large megafauna. I think the issue is not the animal itself, but more so the fact that we have a hard time seeing these small things.

Over 99 percent of life on our planet is smaller than your little finger.

So, the large charismatic megafauna may be some of our favorites because we are also large charismatic megafauna, but that doesn't mean that they are more exciting, more interesting. The [00:05:00] behavior is incredible.

Unfortunately, you know, it is true that insects and a lot of different types of invertebrates do have a bad rap, mostly because there are a few species that can, grow in numbers, or are found in our homes, and they become a pest to us oftentimes because of the way that we influence the environment. And there are also many species like mosquitoes, which certainly can carry disease and have caused a lot of trouble for people over the ages.

But most insects, most invertebrates in general are absolutely harmless to people.

And they do so many things for our world from ensuring that plants are pollinated, which produces fruits that we often eat and many other species eat, but also they till the soil. They keep water clean by breaking down leaves and other materials that fall in water. Like, insects are absolutely fundamental to the world that we live in.

And without insects, maybe people wouldn't starve to death. Initially, I think there's, you know, [00:06:00] sometimes we read that like, "oh, if pollinators went away, we would have nothing to eat." We would have some things to eat. I mean, grasses are primarily wind pollinated. So, you know, you'd have certain species of crop, you'd have corn and some other things, but eventually, what would happen on a broader scale is that the world's ecosystems in most places, except for maybe, you know, the Arctic or Antarctica, would collapse as we know them, because insects are just so fundamental to most ecosystems.

Alexander: Okay, well, I mean, I will backtrack. You don't have to convince me about how important they are. They are certainly very charismatic. I will take that back. I'm completely on board the bee train, and you've clearly been riding it for quite some time and have a love for these critters. So I would love to learn more about what first got you inspired to work on pollinator conservation.

Clay: My love of pollinators goes back, really until the earliest days of my life. I have always, and I really don't know why, but I've always been fascinated with insects. I was a pretty shy [00:07:00] kid and, you know, I always felt that if I could, quietly observe an insect, I felt, I don't know, I felt very comforted by that feeling.

And, um, I had, you know, spent a lot of my life dreaming of becoming an entomologist. And my other love in my life was art. And so I had these sort of two passions. And ultimately, I think I've ended up in a place where I can use both of those passions. But I was not as focused on pollinators until around 2012, actually, when I began to read more about some of the things that bees were facing. And so I went out in my backyard, originally from South Carolina, now live in Montana. And, I went in my backyard and, and I thought, okay, I'm going to photograph some honeybees. And instead I ended up photographing two species of native bee, which there are 20, 000 species of bee in the world.

There's around 4,000 known species in North America. We're discovering new species all the time, but that set me on a really amazing journey to learn more about our [00:08:00] native bees. And what was interesting to me is that, at the time, there were very few photographers. As a photographer, I love photographing insects and helping to tell their stories, but there were very few photographers who were actually focused on native bees, and I really saw a niche for myself that I could, you know, expand the story to look beyond the honeybee, if you will, and really tell these stories.

And so it was just right time, right place, and it has led me in some incredible directions and ultimately allowed me to take on this role with WWF as the manager of pollinator conservation.

Alexander: That's awesome. I will point out one of your photographs is actually behind me. You really are an incredible nature photographer and have photographed many bees and other pollinators over the years, and I'm sure learned a lot of cool facts and things about the behavior and anatomy along the way.

So I was wondering if there was a particular fact that really stood out to you.

Clay: Oh, where to begin? Well, I think, you know, one of the best things that I've [00:09:00] learned about bees and insects in general is just when you think you know something, there's going to be another species that's going to come along and totally blow your mind and totally reframe everything you understand. You know, initially I think like with anything, when we start learning about a group of insects, we think, "okay, this is a bee and a bee does this, it makes honey and it does this."

But as it turns out, like bees are so varied in their ways of living that it is just so remarkable. For example, there are bees that fly at night because they visit night opening, you know, plants that open at night. There are bees that. have crazy like weird mouth parts and weird long front legs that have evolved to visit plants in desert environments.

There are bees that are gigantic, and then there are bees that are super tiny. And so what I love about evolution and insects especially is that they've been around a really long time, and they've been really successful in terms of evolving to fit all of these different niches that exist.

So for example, bumblebees, the group that I'm [00:10:00] particularly interested in are found all the way up into the Arctic. There's actually an Arctic or polar bumblebee that can survive in the Arctic tundra. And then there are bees that live almost all the way down to the tip of South America.

So, it's just really fascinating to me to see how bees have evolved to fit all of these different niches but also sort of break our expectations about what a bee actually is.

Alexander: I would love to pivot a little bit to looking at present day and how bees are faring today in nature.

I've heard of the term Colony Collapse Disorder used before, but if you could speak a little bit to what that means too and how that factors in as well.

Clay: So, Colony Collapse Disorder is actually one of the things that first got me interested in bees to begin with, and it's affliction that primarily impacts honeybees. And through my studies of Colony Collapse Disorder, I learned a few things. First of all, by definition, Colony Collapse Disorder is when a hive of honeybees leave the colony and don't return. For whatever [00:11:00] reason, they just disappear. And prior to the early nineties, we still had examples throughout the years over a century ago, actually before that, when honeybee colonies would die out, perhaps that was just before winter or during winter, they hadn't stored up enough honey to survive on things of that nature.

And so, it's not a new thing to have honeybee colonies die off, but what was unique about what started happening in the early 90s is, again, this idea that bees were evacuating and abandoning their homes.

And this seems to be primarily due to a few things, one being impacts of pesticides, primarily neonicotinoid pesticides, which were also released in the early 90s, which impacts not just honeybees, but lots of other species of bee.

But also the way that we use honeybees in the environment, because we ship colonies of honeybees around from place to place to pollinate crops like almond groves, which, you know, are these large monocultural crops that bloom [00:12:00] all at once. And then once the flowers stop blooming, there's nothing for native species to eat.

And so, therefore, we have to bring in the pollinators.

But maybe one of the biggest things I learned when I started studying Colony Collapse Disorder was the fact that honeybees, the species that we're so focused on, are actually not native to North America. They were introduced in the 1600s, along with cows and chickens and all of our other domesticated species.

And, um, they're not really in danger of going extinct in the same way that a chicken or a cow is not at risk of going extinct. Yes, they die. Yes, they recover, but their future is really in our hands in a big way. However, our native species of bee, like many species of bumblebee, sweat bees, mason bees, these other bees that live in the environment are being impacted, severely impacted by habitat loss, by climate change, and particularly by pesticides.

The truth is that while we know that bumblebees, one of our most studied groups of bees are not doing [00:13:00] great, we know that one out of every four species of bumblebee in the world, there's around 250, is at risk of extinction, including here in the U.S. We know so little about most of our other species.

We don't even really have the data to know what's happening to them. But, it's easy to understand that if species that are very easy to spot in the landscape like bumblebees are dying out because of these various reasons, it's pretty safe to assume that many of our other native species are faring poorly.

The hopeful note I'll say is that while bees aren't doing great in general, bees, like most insects, if given a chance, if given a pesticide free environment, if given a place to feed, plants to feed upon, and places to nest, they recover quite quickly. And so, it's really up to us to make those changes to help them fare better.

Alexander: Well, I kind of want to build on that point. I want to touch on that. I mean, it's given it's clear a lot needs to be and should be done. What has WWF been doing to [00:14:00] address these various threats that bees are facing to tackle these issues?

Clay: This is a question that I'm really excited to answer. I've been with WWF for around nine years. And when I first joined the organization, I was this, you know, I think some people saw me as this weird guy who is constantly talking about, "we have to talk about insects too," and it took a while for me to wear people down. Maybe that's not what happened.

But I was very persistent in saying, "we have to talk about insects." And so, over the last year and a half, we've gotten more serious about our work with pollinators. And we're really trying to address how to protect pollinators and ways of protecting pollinators through three channels, if you will.

One is trying to support policy that is helpful and beneficial for pollinators. So, ensuring that pesticides that are not needed are no longer used. So, for example, neonicotinoids are a pesticide that are found, almost on 100 percent of corn that's planted in the U.S. Non organic corn almost all [00:15:00] contains coatings of these neonicotinoid or neonic pesticides.

Same goes for soy and wheat, and science has proven many times that these pesticides are not actually that beneficial for farmers. In fact, farmers often don't even know how to access seeds that are not coated in these pesticides, because the majority of seed companies in the world are owned by pesticide companies, believe it or not.

And so we're working on legislation, particularly on the state level, that will allow farmers to use it if they need to, but it needs to be justified. Rather than there's blanket approval of these pesticides, which will severely reduce the impacts on pollinators, on birds, on white tail deer, lots of other species that are coming in contact with these pesticides.

Next thing we're doing is we're working with partners, particularly through our sustainable ranching initiative, to reseed grasslands in the Great Plains that were formerly [00:16:00] plowed up. We're restoring those back to native grasslands with a strong inclusion of native plant and native wildflower seeds.

Because, as I mentioned earlier, when pollinators have food and when they have shelter, they can thrive. And so, restoring these previously plowed up grasslands for pollinators. It's not easy to restore a grassland, but it is one of the most simple, I think most obvious, things we can do to help them out.

And finally, we're exploring ways to work with partners in the private sector, whether that be grocery store chains or other corporations to improve and lessen the impacts on pollinators within their supply chains. And so, ensuring that the products that they're sourcing have been produced in a way that is beneficial to pollinators and not harmful.

There's a lot of promise in all three of these areas because, you know, as a large organization, WWF has many relationships, and a lot of our partners are interested in doing the right thing for pollinators.

It's just oftentimes confusing in terms of where to begin. So, we're really trying to make some [00:17:00] meaningful impacts on all of these fronts.

Alexander: Very, very cool work. I mean, there's certainly no shortage of things that are being done and can be done it sounds like. But in our everyday lives, the actions that we take impact our shared environments where we live, whether in urban or rural environments.

So, I'd love to know if you have advice and tips about the role that we all can play to get involved in ensuring that we're supporting this work to protect bees and pollinators in the wild.

Clay: I do. And to be honest, it is sort of a micro version or a smaller version of the kinds of things we're doing on a broad scale here at WWF. So, you know, I think if you are a person, if our viewers obviously are people that care about nature, I think it's easy to feel overwhelmed at all of the things that are happening in the world.

You know, climate change seems sometimes just overwhelming. How do I, how do I fix this? You know, the plastics in the world. There's so many things that we feel we can't control. And I remember having a [00:18:00] moment, um, many years ago, not so long actually, after I got involved with pollinators where I was just feeling really down about that.

And I was standing on my, my back porch and I was looking at some plantings and things around that I had put into place. And I was hearing these sounds, and I realized it was the sound of all the different species that were living in my backyard, you know, and these were insects.

These were, you know, salamanders, cause I was living in South Carolina at the time. All of these different species. I realized that within my care, the circle of my care, were not hundreds, but thousands, if not millions of organisms. Again, 99 percent of life on Earth being smaller than your little finger. There was lots of life that I could positively impact.

And as I began to think about that, I realized, you know, just imagining myself flying over the country and looking at all of the backyards down there and seeing such little native habitat, and then recognizing that if I could do something in my backyard, and my neighbor did something in their backyard, and [00:19:00] then there was this domino effect, that we could reclaim a lot of habitat for, for wildlife, maybe not for large charismatic species per se, but certainly for songbirds, certainly for insects and nematodes and all these other cool things that live in the soil. And so along those lines, I really began to work on trying to reintroduce native plants into my garden.

And planting native plants is one of the best things you can do, because native plants are ideal not only for the climate where you live and the soils where you live, but they also have the nutrients and the bloom times and all of those things that native species of pollinators need. So right away, if you're planting a group of wildflowers that bloom from early in the spring all the way to the fall, then you are providing a balanced diet for pollinators, because like us, they need food year round or during the times when they're out, not just in the middle of summer when we're having our barbecues, but all the way into fall from early spring. There are also pollinators that [00:20:00] only visit certain types of plants in the early spring, and then they're gone in fall. There are species that come out in the fall.

So that balanced diet is really important.

So one of the things when I talk to people about bringing pollinators to the yard, there is a bit of a fear that, "okay, if I'm bringing these bees to the yard, um, you know, what's going to happen? Am I going to be stung?"

Well, the good news is that again, honeybees are non native species, uh, amazing animal, but they are the ones that sting people the most, because they have these large larders of honey that they want to protect. But, most bees are solitary. They're not only super tiny, too tiny to sting, but most are solitary, which means that the bees that you see oftentimes in your yard, the ones that are not honeybees, are like hardworking single mothers, if you will.

They are providing pollen and nectar for their brood. They don't have anyone else to help them. They're just doing that on their own. And so, if a female bee dies, a mother bee dies trying to sting someone, that means that there's no one [00:21:00] to provide for her young. So, they're really incentivized not to get into a tussle with you. And the other part of it is that only female bees sting because stingers are modified egg laying ovipositors, or those egg laying structures on a bee. So, male bees don't sting at all. And most of those species are around now, and you don't even know that they're there because we're thinking about, I mean, honestly, usually thinking about honeybees or wasps, which, you know, a few wasps are more aggressive than others. But even with wasps, even with all of these other insects, again, they're doing a lot of really good things and they're very disinterested in bothering you.

So, I just want to dispel that fear if it exists. So getting back to what bees need, I think the other part of it is providing someplace for nesting. And that can be a bee box. We see a lot of these bee boxes now for sale that can be helpful for bees like mason bees, but also just leaving part of your yard a little bit more natural.

So, I always suggest for people to remove their lawn or plant [00:22:00] native wildflowers within your lawn. Mow less so that you have less disturbance on your lawn. But also just having a mulch pile or a pile of bare soil is a great place for bees to nest. And the nesting holes are so tiny, you might think it's like an ant nest, but it's oftentimes a little bee nest.

And then finally, just try not to spray or avoid spraying pesticides in your yard. Because what you'll find is that if you have a more naturalized yard, and naturalized can be beautiful, it can be neat within places. Like, it doesn't mean that you have to let your yard go crazy, but allowing it to restore some of that natural balance means that you have natural predators coming in, species that keep other species in control.

And, the need for spraying is going to be eliminated naturally, and then you can feel better about what you're doing in your garden. You're going to have more beautiful butterflies, more beautiful bees to look at, and your garden is going to really thrive. I think ultimately what I'm trying to say is "just be lazy".

Just be lazy, plant some native wildflowers and be lazy and let nature do the work. And it's [00:23:00] really good at doing the work. It's been around a lot longer than we have.

These species have been around millions of years before we even set foot on the earth. So, they're pretty good at their jobs.

Alexander: That's got to be the best piece of advice anyone's going to ask for. Just be lazy. That's great. And let nature do its work. It's been so great getting to learn so much from you, Clay. I just want to leave you with one final question, cause I'm just curious to know, what does the future you hope to see look like for bees and other pollinators?

Clay: Alexander, I'll expand this a little bit further to just thinking about insects in general and say that we don't all have to love insects as much as I do. I'm a little bit of a fanatic. Um, it's just wired into my DNA. And I understand that it's been a, it's been a long process of therapy to recognize that everyone's not going to love insects as much as me.

But, I think at least if we can get to the point where we have a live and let live mentality, that would be so much better because, I kind of relate it to like, this might be a weird example, but thinking [00:24:00] about like our kidneys, like nobody's going like, "oh man, I love a kidney. I just, I just love a kidney. They're so cool looking and whatever."

Like, no, they're, I mean, they're kind of gross. Right? But we know that they're important, and we allow them to exist. And we try to drink lots of water and do things to keep them healthy.

Insects are the same way. You can think they're beautiful. You can watch them. You can be amazed by them. But at the very least, just recognizing the fact that, okay, yeah, we kind of need them to play the roles that they play in the world. If we could even get to that point, we would be so much better off.

And so that is my hope: just live and let live, man.

Alexander: I can't think of a better way to put it. That's really beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Clay. Well, I just want to thank you so much again for stopping by for a Wildlife Café chat and for sharing all your knowledge and experiences and just all of the great work that you're doing.

Clay: Thanks. It was a pleasure. I'd be happy to come back anytime.

Alexander: Be sure to stay up to date on all future episodes we're brewing up at the Wildlife Café.