Transcript

Good to see everybody. So, this will not be a long session, but I think it's going to be a fun session.

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Maureen jais-Mick: And the… I know that we have… I'm not sure how many folks we'll have here, because I know it's kind of…

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Maureen jais-Mick: people are doing stuff for the holidays and all, or getting ready for Thanksgiving, but it doesn't matter, because one of the fun things we're doing is we're recording it, so then it's going to be available to the other folks who, support it, the Bee Impact

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Maureen jais-Mick: Fund last year and supported this particular project, so…

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Maureen jais-Mick: this is just, you know, a part of the presentation. So, it is 7 o'clock… oh, 7.01, so it's time to start. So, if we may, Allegra, I'm going to turn it over to you. If you would just tell us, perhaps, a little bit about yourself, and I'm going to ask everybody, including me.

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Maureen jais-Mick: To, turn off their audio.

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Allegra Marcell: And I'm just gonna get my presentation up. Can you hear me okay?

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Maureen jais-Mick: Yes?

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Allegra Marcell: Okay, let me just share here… And then…

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Allegra Marcell: Like, if I do this… let's see…

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Allegra Marcell: Can you see just the slides?

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Maureen jais-Mick: Yes.

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Allegra Marcell: Okay, awesome, figured it out.

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Allegra Marcell: So I have a little introduction about me embedded in here, but, I guess just before that, so I live in Baltimore. I got my master's degree at the University of Maryland. I have two kids who are 11 and…

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Allegra Marcell: 13?

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Allegra Marcell: And, part of my master's research was actually at, the… what is now known as the Eastern Ecological Science Center, formerly known as Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, which is where the Bee Lab is, but I did some research with ducks back then.

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Allegra Marcell: So, and… but I will get started, and I'll share a little bit more.

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Allegra Marcell: So, I'm Allegra Marcel.

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Allegra Marcell: I'm going to be talking about a project that I'm working on with Sam Droege. I'm an independent ecologist, and Sam is with the U.S. Geological Survey, and we are looking at documenting the native and honeybee use of flowering shrubs and trees using timed surveys.

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Allegra Marcell: And this is, generously funded by, you, you all, the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association Bee Impact Fund.

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Allegra Marcell: One second here…

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Allegra Marcell: First, a little bit about us. Sam Droege is a wildlife biologist at the Eastern Ecological Science Center in Laurel.

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Allegra Marcell: And, sorry, I'm just trying to move my…

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Allegra Marcell: my view of all the people. Okay, and that's a division of the U.S. Geological Survey. He created the Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab, also known as the Bee Lab there, and

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Allegra Marcell: With partners from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sam advises researchers around the world on how to track and monitor bees.

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Allegra Marcell: I'm Allegra Marcel, and I've been doing the field surveys of bees for this project. As I mentioned, I'm an independent ecologist, and my background includes studying birds, as well as surveying pollinators, including bees, in community gardens.

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Allegra Marcell: Today, I will describe the goals of this project, review our methods, present preliminary data, and discuss some of the practical applications of this work.

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Allegra Marcell: This project aims to collect data on native and honeybees, on plants in full bloom in Maryland and Washington, D.C, to determine which species of bees use each species of plant, so both native and non-native trees and shrubs.

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Allegra Marcell: As well as which species of flowering plants best support bees.

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Allegra Marcell: These data will help inform ideal plant selection for planting bee habitat in Maryland and the region, and help us to better understand bee-plant relationships.

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Allegra Marcell: As you know, this work is supported by a generous grant from the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association's Bee Impact Grant, now called the Bee Impact Fund, I believe, and is being administered through the Polistes Foundation.

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Allegra Marcell: Our survey sites for the 2025 field season included the National Arboretum in Washington, DC, the Beltsville Germplasm Lab, which is a U.S. Department of Agriculture research facility.

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Allegra Marcell: Included Patuxent Patuxent Research Refuge, Sam's Property in Upper Marlboro, and also Irvine Nature Center and Cromwell Valley Park in Baltimore County, and Sylburn Arboretum in Baltimore City, which are all up near me.

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Allegra Marcell: We collect bees using a standard netting technique, which is timed on plants in full bloom. This enables Sam and his colleagues at the bee lab to identify the native bees we observe to species. A lot of this identification needs to be done microscopically, which is why we can't just identify the bees in the field.

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Allegra Marcell: The survey time per plant varies, but is generally between 2 and 10 minutes, with a minimum search time typically of about 4 minutes.

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Allegra Marcell: At the arboretum sites, plants are conveniently labeled to species, or cultivar, and at sites where this is not the case, we identify plant species based on our own knowledge or, with the support of tools like iNaturalist.

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Allegra Marcell: We then immerse the collected bee samples in a soap solution, and then pack and label them by individual plant in zip packs, and freeze them until they're delivered to the bee lab in Beltsville for identification.

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Allegra Marcell: Sorry, in Laurel. At the BU Lab, samples are washed, dried, pinned, labeled, and then identified to species.

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Allegra Marcell: The B Lab then logs these data into their national database, which is accessible to the public, and we continue to expand the geographic area for which previous data in the region have already been collected.

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Allegra Marcell: All of the data about the bees we're collecting are in the public domain and available at Discover Life and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

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Allegra Marcell: or GBIF. For survey sites that are interested, we'll also create for them a set of specimens in a box, for them to display for visitors and staff, which will include bees collected during our surveys.

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Allegra Marcell: Bee samples from early in the 2025 field season have been identified in log. Samples collected through the summer still need to be processed, identified, and log, which will resume now that the bee lab staff are back and resettling in at the B lab.

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Allegra Marcell: So, maybe a quarter or so of samples have been logged, so the results I'm presenting are still pretty preliminary.

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Allegra Marcell: There are a few limitations. I just want to mention samples are still being identified and processed, so some of the report… the results I report here are based on very small numbers of bees.

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Allegra Marcell: Data are also not yet standardized by search time, we can apply that later, because we do have search time for each sample that was collected.

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Allegra Marcell: And, so the data that I'm reporting could be interpreted as trends, but we haven't yet performed any statistical analyses to make more concrete conclusions yet.

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Allegra Marcell: So here's an overview of some numbers. Sam had done some analysis of prior data for samples collected in Maryland and DC, which I think he may have presented to this group previously. Those numbers are in white font on the left side of these next several slides.

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Allegra Marcell: And I think ranged from about 2022 to 2024. So these are… the questions we're asking are ones that he's been interested in for a while. So he had already done some preliminary work before, he received the grant from, from this group.

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Allegra Marcell: And then,

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Allegra Marcell: the… you'll see the very preliminary 2025 data in green on the right side of these slides. And then we'll ultimately combine all of these values across years and analyze the compiled data once the samples from 2025 are all processed.

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Allegra Marcell: In terms of samples that have already been processed for this field season, so far we have, about 25 plant species logged, 211 bees collected, but this number will go up a lot, and at least 50 different bee species identified.

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Allegra Marcell: Of the total number of bees logged so far, 25 were honeybees, which represents about, 12% of the sample.

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Allegra Marcell: And of note, 15 plants did not have any honeybees present at all, although 40% of plants did have honeybees present, and one plant had no native bees, and only honeybees were present, and then some bees sampled had no bees.

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Allegra Marcell: sorry, some plants sampled had no bees. I think I said that wrong the first time.

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Allegra Marcell: So, here's a list of the… whoops, here's a list of the bees that we, have, logged so far from this current field season. In addition to honeybees, we found about 49 species of native bees. You can see, honeybee called out in orange there.

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Allegra Marcell: And these are just from the surveys done at the beginning of this year's field season. I think it's about, like, May to June.

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Allegra Marcell: As with honeybees, each of these native bee species is complex and has its own interesting life history.

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Allegra Marcell: So far this field season, we've seen just one plant that had only honeybees, as I mentioned, and that was the Fort McNair Red Horse Chestnut, and we'll also re-evaluate this, all of the plants once we've compiled data across, field seasons.

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Allegra Marcell: So let's zoom in on honeybee plant preferences. Again, you can see here, the baseline analysis from previous years on the left in white font, and preliminary results from this year's field season on the right in green.

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Allegra Marcell: Some more preferred plants, this year were the red horse chestnut, as I mentioned, the Virginia sweet spire, Beauty Bush, and Hawthorne. One interesting note is that non-native tree lilacs don't seem to be humming with honeybees, while I believe regular bushy lilacs are more preferred.

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Allegra Marcell: And then keep in mind that some of these plants are not native, and I'll talk about honeybee presence on native versus non-native plants in a bit.

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Allegra Marcell: I'm going to hold off on talking about plants with a high presence of honeybees from this field season, because we just don't have enough samples logged yet to pull that list out, but you can see some popular plants from the prior year's data that Sam had pulled together last year.

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Allegra Marcell: On the left.

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Allegra Marcell: Here are some plants that support

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Allegra Marcell: So, native and honeybees mixing it up, so plants that support both the native and honeybees.

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Allegra Marcell: New additions to this list from the 2025 Field Season are Dogwood, Hawthorne, Dudsia, which is a Hydrangea, Virginia Sweet Spire, Beauty Bush, Multiflora Rose, Willow, and a couple varieties of Japanese Tree Lilac.

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Allegra Marcell: And then these are what Sam refers to as meh bee plants. Looking at the list of plants that didn't have a lot of bee activity overall, we're preliminarily adding to our list the Fort McNair Red Chestnut. It didn't have that many honeybees on it. Northern Catawpa.

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Allegra Marcell: Philadelphia Fleabane, Golden Alexander, Black Cherry, and Japanese French Tree.

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Allegra Marcell: And then, as with the meh bee plants, perhaps one of the most interesting pieces of information that we're gathering through this study is to identify which plants didn't have any bees at all, and here's a preliminary list of plants where bee activity was totally absent.

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Allegra Marcell: So far.

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Allegra Marcell: And then, looking at the percent of honeybees versus native bees on exotic plants, which was this year 23% honeybees, is pretty similar to the percent, found on native plants, 26% honeybees.

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Allegra Marcell: And this is similar to findings from previously collected data on the left side of the slide, with 15% of bee visitors to exotic plants being honeybees, and 20% of bees visitors to native plants, to native plants being honeybees.

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Allegra Marcell: So let's look at…

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Allegra Marcell: The plants with honeybee visits, 39% of the plants honeybees visited were non-native in prior year surveys, and 50% according to this year's surveys.

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Allegra Marcell: We haven't, again, statistically analyzed these data, but the information we have here would seem to indicate that the distribution of honeybees among native versus non-native plants isn't notably different, but it'll be interesting to take a look at this again when we have processed all of this year's samples and then pooled the data with prior years.

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Allegra Marcell: So we're very interested, say I'm in the bee lab, and me as an ecologist, we're interested in the patterns of native bees, and here are a few highlights from the samples we've processed so far, which are kind of interesting. During our surveys, we found at least one species in need of conservation in Maryland, otherwise known as a species of greatest conservation need.

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Allegra Marcell: A black and gold bumblebee on Bombus auricomus, which is on the left. This bee was on Baptisia Australis at the National Arboretum.

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Allegra Marcell: And we also found, a fragile minor bee, Andrena fragilis, and a bear dogwood minor, Andrena integra, during surveys. These are pollen specialist bees. So, pollen specialist bees represent about a quarter of the native bees in the U.S,

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Allegra Marcell: These bees have evolved to have a pollinator relationship with a limited number, and sometimes just one plant species, and

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Allegra Marcell: then their life cycles are timed with the emergence of their particular plant during the growing season, and because of this unique relationship, these bees are especially at risk of harm from habitat loss, pesticides, invasive species, and climate change.

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Allegra Marcell: There are other rather uncommon species that we found, though these are not of special concern or

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Allegra Marcell: life history. Most of these bees are generalists, meaning a variety of plants can support them, and examples are the southern minor bee, and these are on the left of the slide, the Hawthorne minor bee, Dunnings minor bee, Andrena hilaris, which I don't think has a common name, and the black-tailed Longhorn bee.

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Allegra Marcell: And we also found some new records for Baltimore City, and this would have been at Sylburn Arboretum, bees that haven't been documented there before. That doesn't mean that they weren't there, it just means that we didn't necessarily know or previously document that they were there. And these are, the cherry miner bee, again, the Hawthorne Minor Bee, and the goats beard minor bee.

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Allegra Marcell: And these findings, again, highlight the importance of this work. If we don't know which species are present, we don't know what might go missing or how to support them.

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Allegra Marcell: So, what can we do with all of this information? I'll talk a little bit about, practical applications. One major application of our study is to inform beekeepers.

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Allegra Marcell: gardeners and natural resources managers about plants that will support various bee species. The application of the information would depend on the goal of the end user, whether they're aiming to support honeybees or native bees.

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Allegra Marcell: or specific bee species, or all of the above. One thing to consider is that we're surveying a wide variety of blooming plants, so, you would need to use some discretion regarding any exotic or invasive plant species.

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Allegra Marcell: Through this study, we're also learning about the behavior of honeybees and native bees in terms of to what degree these bees use the same or different plant species.

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Allegra Marcell: Our data, which include the presence and absence of individual species, may also be used to help inform our knowledge about the range of native bees. In a monograph about bees of Maryland and DC that's being developed, Sam and his colleagues

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Allegra Marcell: have written about species like the pollen specialist Andrena integra, which I mentioned a couple of slides back.

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Allegra Marcell: That are at the edge of their range in our area, so information about the presence or absence of these bees can reveal, more to us about the limits of an individual species range.

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Allegra Marcell: One takeaway so far is that, for the most part, honeybees and native bees appear on many or most of the plants that we've surveyed together. So, unless things get totally unbalanced with bee and plant populations, it would seem that current

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Allegra Marcell: plant species…

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Allegra Marcell: presence and usage can be sustainable for both honey and native bees. We can support both types of bees at the same time, and we can also try to avoid plants that don't support any bees. Some plants that we're planting aren't doing very much in terms of bee use.

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Allegra Marcell: We can also work to bring native plants back into the cultural landscape, which is largely filled with non-native plants, so we're supporting both honeybees and native bees.

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Allegra Marcell: So, what are our next steps? So, we actually have some carryover in our budget that will enable us to conduct surveys during another field season. We tend to see some different bees from field season to field season, so this will enable us to gather a more comprehensive view of bee presence and absence.

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Allegra Marcell: And plant selection, in addition to increasing the total number of bees that we're surveying, which will help with confidence in data analysis.

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Allegra Marcell: One aspect of our study that's novel is that we're using timed surveys, which are being incorporated into our large-scale database, and this takes us beyond capturing just presence or absence of different bees on different plants, and will enable us to quantify the preference of bees for individual plant types.

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Allegra Marcell: So, we can then compare between

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Allegra Marcell: plants to describe whether there are more or fewer bees per minute for each plant type. So, basically, it's like a plant popularity analysis with information about how much better one plant is than other plants from a bee's perspective.

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Allegra Marcell: We can also look at the data we're collecting.

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Allegra Marcell: To look at plants more closely from a bee use perspective, including looking at introduced versus not introduced plant species, perennial versus annual plants, spring versus fall blooming plants, hybrid versus not hybrid, and so on.

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Allegra Marcell: And we hope to use all of this information to generate summaries in the future to help inform plant selection by us, beekeepers, gardeners, natural resource managers, and to support all bee populations.

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Allegra Marcell: I'd like to thank you all, the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association, for your generous support of this project, as well as to acknowledge Sam, who's not here tonight, and the Bee Lab for their vision, their expertise, and identification work, as well as for bringing me in to be part of this project.

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Allegra Marcell: And we're also grateful to our many survey sites, who have allowed us to come visit many times to collect bee samples. And I thank you for listening, and I'm happy to try to answer any questions.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Thank you, Allegra, that was awesome. I… this is Maureen. I have a… I have a question. It's something that I've been talking with my neighbors about, so every… everybody, or many people, are very excited right now about

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Maureen jais-Mick: buying native plants for bees, right? I mean, the nurseries now have sections of… they're not, you know, big sections, but they're… so… so the thing that I… then I ask.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Kind of my neighbors is, okay, so you're feeding them, so how are you getting them through the winter?

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Maureen jais-Mick: You know, like, where, where, where does, you know, where they're gonna hang out, whether it's in a stem, it's underground, it's whatever. And I'm just wondering if there's any,

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Maureen jais-Mick: this is not, I think, particularly part of the project, but, what do the… these bees… if we have all these wonderful bees that are here now, and they're… they're…

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Maureen jais-Mick: you know, finding food to eat, they're finding forage, then what are they… what's happening later in their life cycle? And I don't know whether that's anything that, you know, are there plants that are…

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Maureen jais-Mick: better for them to, I don't know, hang out in overwinter and whatever, eat the leaves of…

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Allegra Marcell: That's a great question. I mean, I think the first thing that comes to mind is… You know.

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Allegra Marcell: habitat loss is… is a real issue, for all bees, and so it's wonderful to plant native plants, in your homes. I know…

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Allegra Marcell: you know, Doug Tallamy, who's an entomologist at the University of Delaware, you know, talks about, trying to create natural habitats collectively, you know, a little bit at a time makes a difference. And,

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Allegra Marcell: in terms of specific plant species, I think that's… that's something I would ask Sam. I don't know, you know, in particular, but, I mean, I would…

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Allegra Marcell: I would venture a guess that native plants are, you know, helpful for that respect. I know Sam recommends, you know, cutting your plants back maybe to leave a foot of growth.

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Allegra Marcell: For bees to overwinter in.

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Allegra Marcell: And, you know, with emergence in the spring, a lot… some bees are looking for, those native plants once they, you know, complete their, whatever winter life cycle, you know, when they emerge, you know, they need the availability of at least the native

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Allegra Marcell: Bee species need availability of native plant species.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Oh.

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Allegra Marcell: Particularly if they're specialists.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Thank you.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Any other questions, folks?

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Maureen jais-Mick: So, so Allegra, the next steps in this, you notice you said you're going to be keeping at it for a bit, which we're thrilled about.

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Maureen jais-Mick: So when might we get the next kind of report on, you know, when you start bringing all the data? When should we bother you again, I guess is the question I'm asking.

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Allegra Marcell: Yeah, I think, I mean, Sam and company had a bit of a delay with not having access to the B lab, so I think they're a bit more behind than we would have anticipated. Typically, the field season ends by, like, mid-October. I think I collected some samples in October at the beginning. And then,

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Allegra Marcell: Processing the samples, you know, is more of, like, a winter focus.

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Allegra Marcell: Since we're not out in the field as much. And then the field season kind of starts again, like, late March, so I would say

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Allegra Marcell: potentially in the spring, we will have more of a sense of what the 2025 field season results look like. And then, of course, hopefully we'll be able to do… I think we should be able to do a whole, you know, full field season again next year, and so, you know, we'll have more data, even by,

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Allegra Marcell: You know, probably, like, as winter's ending, what we have processed You know, the, the… 2026 data.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Thank you.

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Judy Treible: It's very exciting to get this. Anybody else?

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Judy Treible: This is… this is Judy. Hi, Allegra.

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Judy Treible: Hi, I'm really, excited that you're going to have a second year.

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Judy Treible: That's really great, a full season!

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Allegra Marcell: Yeah.

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Judy Treible: That's wonderful. I wasn't expecting that to happen, so that's… that's really great. I bet that's going to be very meaningful, too, as far as what you… results or what kinds of conclusions that you can draw.

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Allegra Marcell: Yeah, I think it'll be really helpful, not just to have more data points, but to add, the types of plants that we're looking at. You know, like I said during my presentation.

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Allegra Marcell: You just see, you know, slight differences in the bees that you see from year to year.

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Allegra Marcell: And… Yeah, it'll be exciting to see.

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Allegra Marcell: You know, what we can get out of an additional field season.

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Judy Treible: Excellent.

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Maureen jais-Mick: I have one more native bee question. This is Maureen, that I've wondered about.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Talking about, you know, like, doing native plantings at home, people often say, oh, I've got a whole, you know, garden at home, and it's just going to be so wonderful, the bees, and of course, it's, you know, 15 square feet of plants. And… but I do wonder about the

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Maureen jais-Mick: the distance that a lot of these native bees fly for food. I've always been under the impression that the native bees like to stay closer to home, whereas

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Maureen jais-Mick: honeybees, we know, can fly 2 to 3 miles, so that when I'm talking about putting in

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Maureen jais-Mick: native plants at home, maybe I'm talking more about, you know, the native bees. Do you have an opinion about the flight distances?

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Allegra Marcell: I don't know, and again, Sam would probably have a good answer to that question. I mean, I will say that…

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Allegra Marcell: I'm a native plant gardener myself, and, have seen some really interesting bees just in my yard, you know, so I know they're traveling some distance, because I'm in, like, a suburban

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Allegra Marcell: environment,

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Allegra Marcell: you know, and just the fact that we saw… I mean, Sylburn Arboretum, it's not humongous, you know, and we saw, these pollen specialist bees in Baltimore, you know, Baltimore City Arboretum. They're coming from somewhere, so I don't know, I will, have to follow up with Sam and get more information about exact…

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Allegra Marcell: You know, flight distances. But, you know, they're able to find these plants, even in our yards.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Thank you.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Folks, any other questions, comments, before we…

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Maureen jais-Mick: thank Allegra again, and let her…

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Maureen jais-Mick: Get back to whatever she would normally be doing in the evening with her children.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Okay.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Well.

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Allegra Marcell: Thank you so much for having me and for supporting this project. It's been an amazing experience and just gathering so much important information.

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Maureen jais-Mick: Well, thank you, and we look forward to learning more from you and Sam. Take care. Good night, everybody.