A cuckoo bee, native to Oregon – credit, August Jackson / Oregon State University
According to an inaugural report on the health of bees in Oregon, scientists at Oregon State University have found no incidences of pesticide-related bee deaths since 2021.
This significant achievement underscores the capacity that everyday citizens have to protect pollinators if given correct information, even in a state which hosts one of the most biodiverse and specialized populations of bee species in the country.
Mia Maldonado at the Oregon Capital Chronicle writes that it was down to a pesticide-related mass-mortality event in a parking lot in 2013 that the Oregon state legislature established a Task Force on Pollinator Health to address the causes of the event and others like it linked to pesticide use.
Oregon State was charged with developing a suite of educational materials to help inform private sector businesses and professionals who work with pesticides how to do so in a way that protects bees.
Then in 2018, the issue was expanded with the Oregon Bee Project, an initiative aimed at disseminating those educational materials to as many people as possible. Some 12,000 landscapers and agriculturalists were trained to best understand the risks of pesticides to bees and how to minimize them, while information was also provided to K-12 schools.
Further materials about how to tend a pollinator-friendly garden or landscape were developed in concert with Oregon State, which began working to better understand bee health.
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The university also compiled the Oregon Bee Atlas, the largest species inventory of bees in any state of the union which coalesced scientific observations and information on all 567 species of bee in the territory.
For gardeners and land managers, the atlas translates bee survey data into practical guidance. It includes top plant picks for every Oregon county and information that can help communities make more precise habitat decisions.
This incredible outreach operation—which extended to the point of commemorative state license plate issuance that raised $800,000 for the Oregon Bee Project—has paid off in spades, with no bees known to have been lethally-affected by pesticides since 2021.
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“Oregon has built one of the strongest bee survey and education networks in the country,” said Andony Melathopoulos, a pollinator expert at OSU’s Extension Service. “The public value is that we can now give people better information for protecting bees, improving habitat and making informed decisions in every part of the state.”
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