Pollinator Week 2025 with Pollinator Partnership (338)

338 - Pollinator Week 2025 with Pollinator Partnership

Andy Bransfield: I'm Andy Bransfield from Knoxville, Tennessee, here at the North American Honey Bee Expo. Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com.

Hey, thanks a lot, Andy Bransfield from Tennessee. What a great opening for us, Becky.

Becky: I could hardly tell he was from Tennessee. Nothing really gave it away.

Jeff: [chuckles] It's another state colored in on our map of listener openers.

Becky: Thank you, Andy.

Jeff: Yes, Andy. Thanks. That's a fantastic opening. Not only is this another state filled in on our listener opener map, this is the start of the eighth season of Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Becky: Jeff, how does that make you feel?

Jeff: Old.

Becky: That's pretty exciting. Old. [laughs]

Jeff: Old. No, no.

Becky: Smart?

Jeff: Yes, smart.

Becky: Smart after talking to all these guests?

Jeff: That makes me feel really smart. It's been a fun ride. Kim and I started it way back in 2018. Actually, I listened to that very first episode and boy, oh boy, have we improved our production and quality, blah, blah, blah.

Becky: Yes, we should link to that, right?

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: Anybody wants to reminisce?

Jeff: Yes. [chuckles] If anyone wants to go out there and hear Kim's voice and also how much we've improved, I think, since then. Yes, this is a celebratory episode, the beginning of pollinator week, and that's why we've invited our guest, Kelly Bills, who's the executive director of Pollinator Partnership to the episode today, just to help celebrate the start of this eighth season and continue the tradition of B2 being here on this episode.

Becky: Sounds great.

Jeff: We've mentioned this before, Becky, and I want to make sure we say it again, you do a fantastic job on that newsletter that goes out every week. If you're not getting it, and you signed up for it, you need to check your junk mail, your spam filter, make sure it's not getting collected in that filter.

Becky: Right. The system does do a confirmation email too, so they might want to check for that confirmation email and that'll just, I think, communicate that, "Yes, I want to receive this email." Look for that, otherwise look for all those back episodes in your junk or spam mail.

Jeff: Becky puts a lot of effort into the newsletter each week. It's a nice recap of everything we're doing and what's coming up. Sometimes there's a special in that message somewhere, so you want to read that newsletter every week.

Becky: It's nice to have everything that Beekeeping Today Podcast is doing and Honey Bee Obscura in one link so you can actually share it too. If you hear an episode that you want to share with another beekeeper, it's a great way to forward that information, and then they can just click on the link and get right to the episode.

Jeff: Yes, it's fantastic. Thanks, Becky. The last thing I want to bring up before we bring Kelly into the show is we've alluded to the fact, Sherry and I are in the process of moving. We're in a temporary apartment housing situation where we're like on top of each other, living out of boxes, and Nat has put Frisco, our African gray parrot, he's almost right behind me about 10 feet away. For the last several episodes, those listeners who aren't happen to be driving a combine while listening to the show or driving down the road may hear Frisco speak up or hoot or holler somewhere along the line. I apologize for that, but hey, Frisco likes to be part of the podcast.

Becky: I think it's so much fun. I love to hear Frisco comment and laugh and join in. I hope we don't get any complaints about Frisco. I hope we only get pro-Frisco reviews and emails.

Jeff: He was warming up earlier because about 10 minutes before we started recording, he was singing Britney Spears' Baby Bye Bye Bye, so it's--

Becky: He could maybe have a more prominent role on the podcast. It sounds like he's got some talent.

Jeff: The opening song. I can see Kelly out there in the green room. We'll invite her in after these quick words from our sponsors.

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Jeff: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sitting across this great big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table, we have Kelly Bills from Pollinator Partnership. Kelly, welcome back to the show to celebrate, what, our eighth year.

Kelly Bills: Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

Becky: Kelly, you're in charge of this whole partnership, aren't you?

Kelly: Yes, I am. That's very true. I am the executive director of Pollinator Partnership. I have been in this role for three years, but I've been with the organization for 12 years. I've held a lot of different roles along the way, but yes, happy to be in the leadership position now.

Jeff: Where are you physically located? I know Pollinator Partnership's spread across the country.

Kelly: That's right, yes. We are based in San Francisco, California, and that's where I am. We've got about six staff here, but then we have staff all throughout the US and Canada. We have, I think, staff in 11 states and three Canadian provinces at this point.

Jeff: For our listeners who don't know you and don't know Pollinator Partnership, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and then the background of Pollinator Partnership?

Kelly: My background is in environmental management. I have a degree from University of California, Santa Cruz in environmental studies and a master's in environmental management with a concentration in ecology from University of San Francisco. I had worked for some other environmental non-profits, and then I joined Pollinator Partnership actually as an intern very randomly 12 years ago.

I loved pollinators, but didn't really see it as my career, but it has blossomed into my passion. I work with a lot of different stakeholders, land managers, really focusing on large-scale habitat, but our team and our organization really works to protect all pollinators across North America. We do work across borders, given that pollinators don't abide by political boundaries, and really everyone has an opportunity to support them.

We work with the government, we work with corporations and businesses, we work with farmers, ranchers, beekeepers, of course, and really everyday people just to provide tools, to do research, and to improve landscapes for pollinators.

Jeff: We've had you and other representatives from pollinator partnership on the podcast many times and I encourage our listeners, we'll list some of those shows or if not all of them in the show notes, to go back and listen to at least those excerpts of those episodes. The work that you do and your team does is fantastic for pollinators.

Kelly: Thank you very much. You can always find us at pollinator.org. Our website's very easy to remember and a lot of tools and resources and programs there for everyone.

Jeff: We've invited you here today because this is the first day of Pollinator Week. What is Pollinator Week and why are we celebrating it?

Kelly: Pollinator Week, it started as a national celebration but it really is a global celebration of pollinators. It's a one-week period. It's always the third week of June every year. You can always remember it starts the Monday after Father's Day. It is a time to celebrate pollinators, their importance to our daily lives, to spread awareness and education, to really just have fun celebrating the wonder that are pollinators and spreading the word and getting other people engaged in their conservation.

Jeff: Each day has a separate activity or a special focus?

Kelly: Somewhat. It really is a choose your own adventure type of celebration. Pollinator Partnership does conduct and offer some events and activities throughout the week. We do Facebook lives, Instagram lives. We do different webinars and launch different videos, educational things. We do have a map on our website where anyone can look and search for local activities that might be taking place in your area.

On the other hand, you can also post an event that might be taking place. There are plant sales, planting events, garden walks, beekeeping classes, things like that going on all over the world really that everyone can participate in. Pollinator Partnership did start and initiate Pollinator Week. It was actually modeled after Wildflower Week, which was launched by the National Botanist of the Forest Service long ago. We thought, "Oh, what a cool idea."

We actually were working with that person. His name is Larry Stritch at the time. We decided to emulate that into National Pollinator Week. We got support from the Senate, actually. They did a resolution to proclaim National Pollinator Week. Now each year, governors of different states also proclaim it as officially National Pollinator Week.

Jeff: It's taking off. It's fantastic.

Kelly: Yes, absolutely.

Becky: I've never heard of Wildflower Week, but boy, have I heard of Pollinator Week. [chuckles]

Kelly: Yes, we're so proud with how it has expanded and really gained recognition. The goal was always to let people have the tools and the ideas to be able to celebrate themselves however they'd like. It's not that we need to be involved in all the activities going on. We might plant the seed, give the idea, and then everyone can participate and celebrate however they'd like. We've created things like Pollinator Cookbook. If you want to host a different type of meal or a cocktail party or something like that at your home or office, we give a lot of fun ideas to folks to be able to celebrate pollinators.

Jeff: I know in the past, you've had different cities light up their buildings or bridges in the colors of Pollinator Partnership. Is that going on this year? Is there anybody celebrating that way this year?

Kelly: Yes, we actually have a very exciting landmark lighting up, which is Niagara Falls. That's a very fun one. Again, in the past, we've had the Empire State Building and the CN Tower, a lot of big skyscrapers, San Francisco City Hall here, local to me. That's a really great way to maybe pique people's interest. They see the yellow lights and they think, "Oh, what's that about?" Then they'd be able to dig in and figure out why it's lit in those colors. I always like to note, these are buildings that are already going to be lit up, not adding to light pollution. We are encouraging the institutions and landmarks to change their colors for Pollinator Week.

Jeff: The photographs I've seen are spectacular. I'd love to see the Niagara Falls lit up that way.

Kelly: We will definitely be sharing it on our social media, so keep an eye out.

Jeff: Is that on a specific day or is that every day of Pollinator Week?

Kelly: No, it's just one day. It's going to be Wednesday of this week.

Jeff: All right, so that'd be the 18th.

Kelly: Yes. One other fun event taking place that has I'd say, branched off as an offshoot of Pollinator Week is we have the Pollinator Power Party, it's called. This is something that we started with a partner of ours. They're called the Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI, and they work with a lot of power companies, so utility companies, solar companies. They were a very motivated group of land managers to get together to support pollinators.

EPRI and Pollinator Partnership have been collaborating for the past five years to host this power party. It started with an emphasis on power companies and engagement, but now it's really expanded to the general public. We have really fun resources and different educational videos that we put out all throughout the week. We highlight different obscure pollinators, things like different mammal pollinators in the tropics or reptiles. We also have different activities like how to get kids involved.

We have origami folding, for example, in shapes of different pollinators and things like that. We have also dispatches from the field. Some of these power companies talk about their habitat work and their vegetation management plans that all go to support pollinators. It's a really cool, fun party. I always encourage people to check out.

Jeff: Full roster of activities. Those are listed on the website as well?

Kelly: Yes. You can find that at pollinator.org on the Pollinator Week page.

Jeff: Pollinator Partnership has many other programs involved too, year round, not just Pollinator Week that you're actively involved in. What other programs do you have available?

Kelly: Yes. We have quite a few programs related to honeybees. I always like to point out that Pollinator Partnership is about supporting all pollinators. Honeybees, absolutely native bees, native pollinators too. We have some great honeybee focused programs, one of which we call our Honey Bee Health Grants. Those are grants that we fundraise for and we distribute to different researchers.

We've been doing this for 13 years. We have given out over $1 million to honeybee research. We're very proud of this. USDA Fest has been the main funder, so we usually get a grant every year to do this. We also fundraise to other companies, and even just we get individuals giving us $25 here or there. We pool it all together and see how much we can give out to the researchers, so it's wonderful.

We work with APHIS. We also have a task force of honeybee experts and researchers and beekeepers themselves that come together and come up with priorities for the research project. They're all related to things like pathogens and pests, nutrition, pesticide issues. We have different approaches to things like genetic stock, climate, and environmental variability as well. Also, an emphasis on development of diagnostic tools or others to help identify and rectify these issues of pests and pathogens and diseases.

We usually give out $10,000 per researcher, and we usually give about four to eight each year depending on how much funds we have to distribute. This is a wonderful program. We actually highlight these researchers the following spring and ask them to give a little bit of an update on their research, which is great.

We host an online virtual symposium with these researchers, and we invite anyone to really observe and ask questions and it's a great way to shine light on a lot of these researchers, some of which are part of a lab that has been well-established we know for a long time, but some might be really maybe newer up-and-coming researchers that really need this smaller grant to get a start. We're really proud of it and we think it's had a really positive impact.

Jeff: When is the next symposium?

Kelly: It actually just took place in April, so it will be not for another year about. We just distributed the funds for the '25/2026 year. Next spring we will be able to hear from the researchers again.

Becky: Kelly, if somebody wants to get a heads up about the next symposium as well as some of this information, do you have a newsletter that people could sign up for?

Kelly: It is called the Pollinator Action Team and you can go to our website pollinator.org. If it's the first time you've been to our website, actually a box will pop up where you can put in your email for our newsletter list or you can go to our Get Involved page and sign up there.

Jeff: What are some of the other programs that you're working on?

Kelly: Another program I think the listeners would be interested in is a new program that Pollinator Partnership has been leading called Tropi STOP. It's all about tropy lay laps and as most folks I think listening will know, this is a mite that has not yet come to the United States, but it is originating in Asia and it is, though not here yet, a real threat, one that we need to be prepared for. We got a grant from APHIS, again, USDA, and it's to establish really a education and awareness program all around Tropilaelaps so that we can be prepared for, what I am told from beekeepers and honeybee experts, it's not if Tropi is coming, it's when Tropi comes, and it can be really devastating. We know obviously how detrimental Varroa is to the beekeeping industry and Tropi, while it is a little different, it will because a big impact, so we want to be prepared.

We are teaming up with not only USDA, but the Apiary Inspectors of America, Auburn University, the Honey Bee Health Coalition, and Project Apis m. to create tools, resources, a lot of educational websites and videos all about Tropi. We are teaching, what it is, why it's a threat, how to identify it, and then what to do if you think you detected it. It will be very important for all beekeepers to know about Tropi and to know what to do if they suspect they may have found it.

Becky: It's nice to see organizations trying to get ahead of the problem instead of reacting to it because with Varroa, I think it just sat there and boiled for a while before all of a sudden everybody saw great losses. It's fantastic that you are on it so early.

Jeff: Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break, hear from a couple of our sponsors, and we will be right back.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Okay, Kelly, let's move on from sad topics like mites and let's move on to a happier topic like flowers and habitats. Do you have any great habitat programs you can talk about or resources for people who want to support honeybees and other pollinators? Yes, we do, absolutely.

Kelly: Yes, we do. Absolutely. We have a lot of resources to give people ideas of what to plant. As we know, there's a lot of threats on pollinators. We have things like pest diseases, but also habitat loss is probably the biggest impact. It's also arguably the relatively easiest thing we can do to help them is to install habitat, to create habitat, and to protect habitat. We have a series of resources we've probably talked about before called our ecoregional planting guides.

These are a series of guides for each ecoregion of the United States. We have most of Canada covered too, actually. These are long PDF documents that talk about what is in each ecoregion, what defines each ecoregion. They're all defined by the historical plant communities. The bulk of it is that we give a list of all, not all, but a good subset of the native plant species that will support different pollinators.

Now, what we did a couple of years ago was we took the database of all the plants and we turned it into an online resource called Find Your Roots. You can now put in your zip code, and you can come up with-- You can actually filter by different characteristics. Let's say we want to search for flowers that support honeybees and that are purple, we can actually get a list and export it to Excel and bring it to our plant nursery and be able to find some species that'll support, what the goals of our garden are or a different habitat project. We're really proud of that online resource, Find Your Roots.

We, also, as a little bit of an easier entry point for folks that maybe just want to do a smaller, simple garden, or maybe only have space for a balcony or window box or something like that, we have garden recipe cards. These are for each region of the United States in a larger region, usually like multi-state region. It gives the basics of how to start a garden, what's important. We usually talk about the three-by-three rule, so having three different flowering plants for the three seasons of the year. It's really important because when we talk about native pollinators, they are active at different times throughout the year.

We have lots of different resources for gardening and planting and habitat. Then we also have some programs that people can participate in. One is called Bee Friendly Gardening. That's a member-based program where if you have a garden, you can register it and upload photos of it, become part of a community and get a sign to then put in your yard. The sister program of that is actually called Bee Friendly Farming. That one is all for farmers and ranchers, for agricultural producers, to be able to register and certify their farms. That's another one. That definitely is in high collaboration with beekeepers as a lot of the farmers are using and renting commercial beekeeping hives for their operations.

Becky: Kelly, you're an ecologist. Can you share with us the importance of native flowers as far as for taking climate change action? Just connect the dots for us.

Kelly: Absolutely. Native flowers, they've evolved with the native pollinators. They're really important. Non-native, always non-invasive plants can be great too. Native flowers will have evolved with native pollinators so that they complement them and provide what they need at the particular time of year and for the particular biology and physiology of a pollinator.

For example, there's going to be a particular flower in the early spring that will emerge for bumblebees. Those bumblebee queens, when they emerge from overwintering are going to need to be able to find these particular flowers to be able to support their early spring nutrition. That type of relationship happens throughout the year. That's really important in terms of like a phenology perspective.

Then also in terms of climate change, native plants really contribute a lot to carbon sequestration. They have really long tap roots as opposed to some-- If you just have turf grass out there, that's really not doing much for carbon sequestration. These native perennials and even native trees too are going to be helping to combat climate change. Also, with those native long tap roots, they usually are drought tolerant, they require less water, they require less maintenance. Unlike maybe a non-native invasive species, or we have a lot of trouble with these European grasses that just spread like crazy and are hard to control. They ultimately can out-compete the native species that we really need.

We always try to promote, native plants first, but if not always possible, because they can be expensive, they can be hard to grow in some cases, you can opt for some of those non-native, but non-invasive plants too that can be great as well.

Becky: Dr. Andony Melathopoulos shared with us on an episode, the importance of really investing for native pollinators and spending the money on seed for them, and then being able to maybe spend a little bit less money when you're planting for honeybees. I think long-term it's great for beekeepers to understand that those native flowers are a great investment for their bees too.

Kelly: Absolutely. For farmers in particular as well, those native plants are going to invite a lot of other beneficial insects to their operations, natural enemies of pests so that they can use less pesticides, and then the honeybees and other pollinators will be more healthy. It really is a win-win situation.

Jeff: You also have Bee Friendly Farming listed. Can you tell us a little bit about that as well?

Kelly: Absolutely, yes. Bee Friendly Farming is a certification program for farmers and ranchers and it is all about providing tools, resources, and actually we provide technical assistance and sometimes financial assistance to farmers so that they can be more Bee Friendly in their operations. We offer criteria that they must meet in order to get certified and become a Bee Friendly Farmer in which case then they get access to really the benefits of the brand and the program.

Becky: This would be nice to include when people are giving yard rent to their farms where they're keeping their bees, maybe a little bit of a link or some more information so they could check out the programs.

Kelly: Absolutely. The program is at beefriendlyfarming.org. It tells you all about how you can get involved and share information about the program. the criteria is pretty achievable, and we're not looking for perfection here. You don't need to be organic farmers, you don't need to have everything figured out. We just ask for you to make some improvements and to partner with us to create a little bit more of a better landscape for the bees and the other pollinators.

We're looking for at least 30% of your land should have nutrition and forage for pollinators and that can be temporary in cover crop, for example. We're looking for blooms and flowers throughout the season. We're looking for clean water for bees. We do want some permanent nesting and other habitat features. IPM is absolutely a pillar. We want to make sure you have a good IPM program established.

Then it's just a $45 certification fee annually. Then every three years we do a compliance where we make sure to verify that you're still keeping up with the criteria and still maintaining your certification. The program is meant to be achievable and it's meant to appeal to a lot of different type of cropping systems and operations.

Jeff: Sizes as well. From your five acre farm to thousands of acre farm.

Kelly: Exactly, yes. We have a really good participation from the almond industry. We're based in California and of course almonds are completely reliant on honeybees, so we have really large almond farms, but then we also have some smaller family farms that are growing different types of vegetables and berries and things like that. We have 750 about certified members across the world. We have Bee Friendly Farming going on in Australia. Then of course all of North America we run. That accounts for over 350,000 acres of certified land.

Becky: That's a good amount of land.

Kelly: Over 150 acres of habitat involved, so wonderful program. We have a lot of guides and resources out there too. State specific guides, crop specific tools and resources. We're really trying to help people get to where they want to be in terms of their Bee Friendly Farming practices.

Jeff: Is there a Bee Friendly Farming logo or brand mark that they can put on their product?

Kelly: Yes, there is. I'm glad you asked about that because we have a logo that is a green hexagon logo. That's the Bee Friendly Farming membership logo. Then we actually, last year I believe, we launched a third party verified option. This is an option that is a little bit more involved. It's for folks that want to use the logo on products and on packaging. We have to be a little bit more careful just with the auditing and the verification process. We do use a third party verifier to make sure these operations are hitting the marks and then they can use their logo on packaging.

We actually had a really exciting launch last year with Silk Almond Milk, putting the logo on their cartons. That was really exciting. We have some other big brands excited about that too. Looking forward to what's to come there for Bee Friendly Farming.

Jeff: One of the programs that you have that we haven't discussed is the BMD program. Can you tell us a little bit about that, which is something that's recently undergone some changes?

Kelly: Yes. The BMD is a program that we started a long time ago, probably 15 years ago. It was a web-based tool for beekeepers to be able to input symptoms that they might be experiencing in their hive if something's wrong, and they can come to basically a diagnosis. It's modeled after WebMD. If you know that, you've typed in, "I have a runny nose and this and that," and then it tells you what you have. That's the idea here for the BMD.

Two years ago, actually USDA APHIS approached us about our tool. They wanted to work with us to update it and transition it to their information technology platform, which is a website where they have a lot of different key-based identification and taxonomic tools. The BMD was a little bit of a unique one to join that complement of different tools they have. It is a key-based tool, which is, you're putting in certain criteria, which will lead you to two different paths throughout the data.

We worked with Dewey Caron, who is a beekeeper and former professor and wonderful honeybee expert to write up a lot of the materials. A lot of beekeepers and other collaborators have contributed photos, so we have photos for every condition that a beekeeper might be seeing or experiencing so they can verify, "Yes, this does look like what's happening or maybe not."

The BMD has now relaunched under the Information Technology platform. It's very user-friendly. We're happy with the outcome. There's pages of information and photos that people can learn about different diseases, past pathogens or conditions, or things like that. We're really excited about that. We hope to be able to transform it into a mobile app. Right now, it's just a web app, but it is mobile-friendly. We know when you're out in the bee yard, you obviously don't have your laptop with you most of the time, so we want it to be able to work on your phone.

With that, the mobile app would be great because we know cell phone service too can sometimes be spotty when you're out there. We hope to be able to do that too in the next iteration, but we would love feedback on it. We have a contact form on the website. If you just Google the BMD, you'll be able to find it. If you use it and you have suggestions or maybe something didn't work quite right, please let us know because there's a lot of information there and I'm sure there's always improvements that can be made.

Jeff: That's really great because the BMD is a really fun tool to even just pose questions to and work through the keys. I encourage people to check it out even if they think their bees are healthy. [chuckles]

Becky: Check it out before your bees need a doctor.

Kelly: That's right.

Jeff: Kelly, we're getting close to the end of our hour. It's always so much fun to hear about all the programs that Pollinator Partnership is involved in, and you've been doing it for so long. What are you working on for this next 12 months?

Kelly: For this next 12 months, I think we have two exciting things going on I'd like to mention. One of which is we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of our North American Pollinator Protection Campaign. NAPPC is a collaborative group of 170 different partner organizations, federal agencies, university researchers, other NGOs, nonprofits, businesses, and we're celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. That's very exciting for us.

We run a lot of different task forces through this group, the Honey Bee Health Task Force being one, but we have pesticide education, we have a bumblebee group, we have a lepidopter group. It's just a wonderful group of people, group of partners, and we're celebrating our 25th this year. That's just super exciting for us and we definitely encourage new members and people are always welcome to join us. I would encourage people to check that out. It's nappc.org is the website.

Jeff: We'll have a link to that in our show notes.

Kelly: Then the other program I would definitely encourage folks to take a look at and one that's really expanding at the moment is our Pollinator Stewardship Certification. This is an online training module where you can learn how to be a pollinator steward.

Jeff: What is a pollinator steward?

Kelly: It's just a steward of pollinators. Someone that has the basic understanding and foundation to know the basic biology, conservation implications and requirements for supporting pollinators. We go through a module of pollinator 101 basics. We go through basics on gardening, pest management. We have an indigenous perspectives module. We highlight different pollinator groups. I believe it's a nine module series that takes place every spring. You can sign up and you can get a certification. You get a certificate from us. You can get a pin. It's something you can put on your resume to be able to show that you're a certified pollinator steward if it's relevant to your work or just something you're interested in and want to do. It's really for people, professionals, but also everyday folks as well that might just want to get a little bit more proficient in how to protect pollinators.

Jeff: That's really nice. I don't think I've heard of that before. That'd be a fun program for, I know many beekeepers would be interested in pursuing their education and broadening it beyond the honeybees.

Kelly: Yes. We have certified over 1,000 people so far. It's turning into quite a popular program. Again, we're always improving and expanding each year. It is available virtually, but we're also open to like if a particular bee club, for example, wanted to run their own and tailor it a little bit, we're open to working with folks on that too. It's definitely customizable, but we do offer this big annual offering every spring.

Jeff: We'll have links to that in the show notes. It'll be fun to look into that more. Kelly, it's been so great having you on the show to kick off our eighth year, but even without the eighth year start, having you back is fun. We look forward to hearing great news from Pollinator Partnership this coming year and look forward to having you back in 12 months. Happy Pollinator Week.

Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure and happy Pollinator Week to everyone. Thank you.

Becky: Thank you, Kelly.

Jeff: It's always great to kick off a new season of Beekeeper Today Podcast with Pollinator Partnership and this year was no different.

Becky: Such great information, but it was a little overwhelming. They're doing a lot of different things. It's a nonprofit organization and I guess it's because I used to work at a university and anything we did, we'd had to write a grant to do it or get a donation to do it and that's how they operate. Everything she just talked about, it was built on funds from donors or funds from grants that they wrote and received.

Jeff: Many of them from APIS, right?

Becky: Yes. A lot of USDA grants and it's overwhelming to think of how much work went into building that structure that they just keep adding to, which is fantastic.

Jeff: I like the fact that the work is continuing despite the many cutbacks that exist last several months and that impact beekeepers all the way around. This is good news from Kelly.

Becky: It's great news and it's great for a lot of beekeeping organizations or beekeepers who are looking maybe to want to get involved. A lot of beekeepers are very passionate about pesticides and habitat and they really do provide a home for people to go and join and learn more and they have programs and information. What a great start to Pollinator Week. Usually Pollinator Week is overwhelming, but I think I'm good with it.

For years, I used to share, they have a lot of different PDFs and one of them is No Fear of Stings! It's a PDF where people are worried about beekeeping stings or stings from honeybees or other bees that it just great information that you can just share and it provides help for beekeepers who are trying to spread the word about what the real risk is with getting stung. It's great public information.

Jeff: Pollinator Partnership, Pollinator Week 2025, start of Beekeeping Today Podcast, season eight. It's a great week.

Becky: Great way to start the next season.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab along the top of any web page.

We want to thank Betterbee and our regular longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:44:31] [END OF AUDIO]