How it all began...

In 2013, I began my graduate work with Dr. Claudio Gratton here at UW Madison. I was brought on to work on a project attempting to understand how we as scientists could predict where wild bees would be in agricultural areas to see if crops that require bee pollination (like cranberries) had the potential workforce in bees to provide their services. A number of existing models for other organisms had already been developed that I could work with. Easy enough, I figured. We'll just co-opt the existing models and do a bit of modification.

Not so fast...

Almost all of the other models were extremely rudimentary, and didn't take into account some of the most important aspects about how these wonderful little organisms function. Bees are some of the coolest things on the planet, and yet our understanding of them barely scratches the surface.

For example, we don't know how far certain species of bees can fly. This is crucial for understanding if a huge population of bees miles away will be able to pollinate your apple orchard.

We also had no idea what types of environments bees prefer to live in and what about the environment makes it preferable. Past methods had assumed that areas where there were a ton of or a large diversity of bees were indicative of a "good" habitat. We didn't understand how bees used their resources (flowers) and how the amount of flowers affected their decisions and foraging behaviors (and thereby their pollination services).

All of these unknowns led me to think that before we could build a fancy model, we needed to understand how these cute little critters worked, first.

 

Foods like cranberry, apples, blueberries, coffee, chocolate, peppers, cucumbers, melons, and many more all depend on bee pollination to be produced.