Join us for this free weekly webinar series on Fridays at 10AM EASTERN

October 14th through November 11th

Register here for any/all sessions!

10/14: Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware

Pollinators’ Best Hope: A New Approach to Pollinator Habitat That Starts in Your Yard

10/21: Harland Patch, Penn State University

Creating Pollinator Gardens: the Role of Plant Choice and Design

10/28: Heather Holm, Author and Biologist

Creating and Managing Habitat for Native Bees

11/4: Matthew Shepherd, The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Deciding To Create A Pollinator Garden Is The Easy Step — What To Do Next?

11/11: Shana Byrd, The Dawes Arboretum

Getting Started with Wildflower Patches, Flower Strips, and Meadows

Each session will last approximately 60 minutes plus questions. Register once to attend any/all sessions. All webinars will be recorded and posted on the Bee Lab website.

This program is funded in part by a USDA/NIFA Integrated Pest Management Pollinator Health grant.

Native Plants and Every Gardener’s Role in Fostering Biodiversity

Register Here

Tending Nature registration is now open! This new 6-session webinar speaker series focused on the ecological roles of native plants and some of the creatures that depend on them. We’ll meet virtually each Friday for 6 weeks from January 7th through February 11th.

All sessions are on Fridays at 10AM EASTERN and will last for approximately 60 minutes plus questions. Join live sessions or connect to webinar recordings. This series and all of our webinar offerings are free.

1/7 Mary Gardiner: Beneficial Insect Biodiversity: What It Is and Why It Matters

1/14 Doug Tallamy: Bringing Nature Home: The Importance of Native Plants

1/21 Lisa Olsen: Cultivating a Community of Support for Native Plants

1/28 Bryan Danforth: Host-plant Specialist Bees – Biology, Biodiversity, and Conserving Them in Your Backyard

2/4 Heather Holm: Bumble Bee Banquet: Selecting Native Plants for Bumble Bees

2/11 Debra Knapke: Native Plants in My Garden? Absolutely!

Sponsored by the OSU Department of Entomology and The Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens and is funded in part by a USDA/NIFA Integrated Pest Management Pollinator Health grant.

Coordinated by Denise Ellsworth, OSU Department of Entomology. Questions? contact Denise at ellsworth.2@osu.edu

Register once to attend any/all sessions. The same link will allow you to join each webinar.

This event will be presented with automated closed captions. If you wish to request traditional CART services or other accommodations, please contact Denise Ellsworth at ellsworth.2@osu.edu. Requests made by will 12/31/21 generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Find all of our recorded webinars here.

The recording from today’s webinar with Doug Tallamy is now posted on The Living Landscape Speaker Series webpage. You can also register for our next session on Friday, January 22nd at 1PM EASTERN.

Marne Titchenell: Enhancing Your Landscape for Birds and Other Wildlife

https://u.osu.edu/certify/living-landscape-speaker-series/

Need inspiration to make it through the winter? Join fellow gardeners and nature enthusiasts for The Living Landscape Speaker Series. All sessions are free via Zoom, but preregistration is required.

January 15th@10AM  Doug Tallamy: Restoring Nature’s Relationships at Home

January 22nd@1PM  Marne Titchenell: Enhancing Your Landscape for Birds and Other Wildlife

January 29th@10AM  Deb Knapke: Eco-Conscious Gardening: From Concept to Design

February 6th 10AM – 11:30AM Rick Darke: Dynamic Design and The Art of Observation

Find detailed program descriptions here.

Register here for the first three sessions. Check back on January 15th for the link to register for our final session with Rick Darke.

The Living Landscape Speaker Series is co-sponsored by OSU Entomology and The Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Garden, in cooperation with the Franklin County Master Gardener Volunteers and the Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Garden Volunteers. Funding is provided in part by the Manitou Fund and NIFA’s IPM Pollinator Health grant.

The goal of this statewide survey is to identify all bee species in Ohio. While other states have conducted surveys of wild bees, this is the first survey undertaken in Ohio.

Although Covid-19 changed our survey strategies and methods of volunteer training, we were still able to recruit and train 154 bee collectors across Ohio in 2020. Instead of in person meetings to train collectors and distribute survey kits, participants were trained via live Zoom webinars conducted by survey director MaLisa Spring. Despite university closures and shipment challenges, survey kits were compiled and mailed to participants in each of Ohio’s 88 counties in April and May. Specimen collection began in May and continued weekly through September for most collectors. Drop-off days were held in October across the state to provide safe (socially-distanced) opportunities for collectors to submit samples.

To keep our collectors motivated and updated, MaLisa posted weekly updates on the Ohio Bee Survey website. Bee collectors (and assorted bee fans) looked forward to these lively, informative updates to learn more about what bees (and bycatch) were collected in 2020. Here, MaLisa’s post includes use of a grain of rice for a size comparison:

Rice for scale really throws you for a loop when you realize that a dull green sweat bee (Dialictus sp) is about the same size as a grain of rice.

In total, 118 collectors returned kits with frozen samples. The bees (and other collected critters) were transferred to Dr. Karen Goodell’s lab at OSU Newark for pinning and identification. This process will likely take 18 months due to the volume of collected bees and the Covid-19 limits on volunteers and students working together to process samples.

As an exciting offshoot of the survey, one of our bee collectors with impressive graphic design skills worked with MaLisa Spring to create a bee field guide, Bees of Ohio: A Field Guide. This guide will be invaluable to train and support collectors, students and bee enthusiasts in Ohio. Many thanks to Amy Schnebelin for taking lead on this project!

The Ohio Bee Survey is a new OSU project that aims to inventory the richness of Ohio’s wild bee species over two years. We are recruiting volunteer bee collectors who will set out and collect small bee bowls once a week for 21 weeks from May through October. The weekly catch will be frozen, then delivered or mailed to a central locations for pinning and identification later in the year.

Our goal is to have at least one bee collector in each county. We began recruiting bee collectors in the last two weeks, and now have good coverage in many areas across the state. However, we still have about 30 counties without a collector (see list below).

Supplies and training materials are all provided by U.S. mail to collectors. Bee collectors can be Master Gardeners, OCVN volunteer naturalists, OSU employees or others not affiliated with OSU. Collection areas can be in home landscapes, farms or gardens, so travel is not required. (Specific locations such as parks may have permitting requirements, but there are not overall permitting requirements to participate).

Small painted bowls are filled with soapy water, left in the landscape for 24 hours, then collected, strained and the contents frozen. Collection happens alone, so collectors can easily comply with social distancing requirements.

If you or someone you know in a county below would like to participate in the survey, please visit this website:

http://go.osu.edu/beesignup

For more information about the survey, visit:

http://go.osu.edu/beesurvey

For questions, please contact Denise at ellsworth.2@osu.edu or survey coordinator MaLisa Spring at spring.99@osu.edu

Counties in need:

Adams
Allen
Auglaize
Brown
Fayette
Fulton
Guernsey
Hancock
Hardin
Harrison
Henry
Lawrence
Lucas
Marion
Meigs
Mercer
Morrow
Noble
Paulding
Perry
Putnam
Ross
Sandusky
Scioto
Shelby
Van Wert
Warren
Washington
Williams
Wyandot

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Ohio is home to more than 450 species of bee. They’re bumble bees, carpenter bees, cuckoo bees and others, and you can identify more than a dozen of them — types you’re likely to see in your garden — using the pocket bee card from The Ohio State University.

And how about some love for wasps? Ohio has an amazing diversity of wasps, including paper wasps, golden digger wasps and potter wasps. Not fond of wasps? They serve as pollinators, are important in the biological control of caterpillars and other pests, and add to the diversity and beauty of our landscapes.

To celebrate National Pollinator Week, The OSU Department of Entomology is offering a free copy of the 4-by-6-inch bee and wasp identification cards. Common Bees of Ohio and Common Wasps of Ohio cards can be requested through July 5th by sending a self-addressed, stamped, business-size envelope to “Bees and Wasps” c/o Denise Ellsworth, OSU Entomology, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691. One copy of each card will be sent per envelope.

Multiple copies of the bee and wasp cards can be purchased through the OSU Extension Publications website.

The Gardiner Lab at The Ohio State University is developing a youth-focused citizen science program called Dandelion Detectives. The lab is seeking individuals, school groups, and other youth organizations to participate in this collaborative project! Dandelion Detectives aims to measure the value of lawn weeds for bees and other insects by having school age kids (targeting 3-7th graders) monitor an “Observation Dandelion” and collect data about the richness of blooming weeds (or lack thereof) found in their yard. Dandelion Detectives will take place over the summer of 2019 and is open to anyone who has access to a yard.

The project will take ~5 hours to complete and involves: completing a pre and post questionnaire about insects and their importance; observing insects at an “Observation Dandelion” created using simple provided materials and sugar water mixture; and conducting a lawn weed survey. Participating Dandelion Detectives will be able to upload all of their findings to a project website. At the end of the project, students will receive a “Student Scientist” certificate and be invited to attend an optional event in Columbus Ohio where they can meet OSU scientists who study insects and see what their data and participation has contributed to!

Sign up here to become a Dandelion Detective!

What threats do bees face, and what steps can we take to protect them? Gather in Columbus with bee biologists, conservation experts, educators, gardeners and citizen scientists to learn and network.

OSU Pollinator Summit: Our Threatened Bees

Keynote Speaker:

Laurence Packer, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at York University and author of

Keeping the Bees; Why All Bees Are At Risk And What We Can Do To Save Them and co-author of Bees: An Up-close Look At Pollinators Around The World.