[Pollinator] Portland's Sabin schoolyard abuzz with 'tickle' bees

[Matthew Shepherd (Xerces Society)]

Here's a nice story about acceptance of bees by school kids (and their parents). Apparently, the school is so enamourd by the bees, that they are going to adopt them as their mascot!

Matthew

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From: The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/05/portlands_sabin_schoolyard_abu.html

Portland's Sabin schoolyard abuzz with 'tickle' bees
By Katy Muldoon, The Oregonian 
May 03, 2010, 1:27AM

Mace Vaughan is a bee guy. So how perfect is it that a year ago he moved into a Northeast Portland home across from a schoolyard field abuzz an estimated 20,000 native bees, known to the kids as "tickle bees" for the way they feel when they land on your skin? 

"On a hot day in the spring you're just knocking into them all the time and you don't get stung," says Vaughan, pollinator program director for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. 

Now, Vaughan uses the story and photos of Sabin Elementary School's bees -- genus Andrena -- during lectures nationwide, just as he will in a May 14 pollinator workshop at the Oregon Zoo. Vaughan wants farmers, land managers, landscape architects, gardeners and others to understand the ecological and economic importance of North America's 4,000 native bee species; the Willamette Valley is home to 250 bee species, and the deserts east of the Cascade Range hold 600 to 800 species. 

By and large, they're misunderstood. 

"If you say bees," says Anne Warner, Oregon Zoo conservation manager, "people tend to think wasps, and getting bitten, or honeybees, and being stung ... They think: Get away from it or kill it." 

In general, though, native bees are solitary, gentle souls that, like those at Sabin Elementary, wouldn't harm a child. 

Plus, they're the labor force that keeps the natural world humming. 

Bees do the job for almost 70 percent of the world's flowering plants, including more than two-thirds of the world's crop species that require insect pollination to reproduce, according to the Xerces Society. 

The society, a Portland-based nonprofit working to protect invertebrates worldwide, puts the economic value of native pollinators at an estimated $3 billion a year in the United States. 

Plus, seeds and fruit that result from insect pollination feed birds and mammals, and bees themselves end up as food for animals, making them a keystone species in many places. 

"People don't necessarily appreciate the important contribution that native pollinators make to general ecological health and to the food that we eat," Warner says. "They're the unsung heroes." 

But bees are in trouble. 

Catastrophes striking honeybees -- from parasitic Varroa mites to the phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder -- have been widely publicized. Non-native honeybees are widely used in commercial agriculture. 
Less well-understood is how habitat loss, pesticides and diseases introduced by trucking honeybees from farm to farm may affect native bee species. 

In January, the Xerces Society and other conservationists submitted a petition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, asking for new regulations to protect wild bumble bees from threats posed by commercial bumble bees. In February, a coalition of more than 60 scientists submitted a similar request based on research that shows steep declines in populations of at least four species of formerly common North American bumble bees; disease spread from commercially produced bees transported throughout the country is believed to be a major threat. 

Western bumblebees, once common in the Willamette Valley, rarely are seen any more. 

All of it led the zoo's conservation department to team with the Xerces Society to spread the word about native bees, the threats they face, and the value they offer to Oregonians. Lectures at next week's workshop, $33 with reservations required, will cover habitat, bee biology, identification, challenges and ways humans can make life better for those hard-working native bees. 

"Anything we can do in our own backyards to make a bee friendly situation," Warner says, "will help in so many ways." 

-- Katy Muldoon: 503-221-8526

______________________________________________________
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
The Xerces Society is an international nonprofit organization that 
protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their 
habitat. To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our 
work, please visit www.xerces.org.

Matthew Shepherd
Senior Conservation Associate
4828 SE Hawthorne Boulevard, Portland, OR 97215, USA
Tel: 503-232 6639 Cell: 503-807 1577 Fax: 503-233 6794
Email: mdshepherd at xerces.org 
______________________________________________________

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