No Mow May: Count all the flowers and bees

This week on the podcast we're talking about mowing lawns - or rather not mowing lawns - and the impact it can have on urban bees.

You may have heard about No Mow May, an initiative from Plantlife in the United Kingdom which encourages people to stop mowing for the entire month. One of the communities participating in the initiative was Appleton, Wisconsin.

And Israel Del Toro, an assistant professor at Lawrence University, went out and surveyed the bees of Appleton at the end of No Mow May. So he and I chat about the fieldwork, the results and what it was like working with the city government to make this happen.

Israel Del Toro
• Twitter @IsraelDelToro

WEEKLY UPDATE
• Leafcutter bee video (Twitter, Hella Bee Nerd @sfbaybees) https://bit.ly/3g5h5UR

• Is #PollinatorWeek just #beewashing? (Twitter, Charlotte de Keyzer @cwdekeyzer) https://bit.ly/2Yzw2Z7

• EPA signs first ever Pollinator Week Proclamation (Environmental Protection Agency) https://bit.ly/3dBRFMN

• ‘National nature service’ needed for green recovery in England (The Guardian) https://bit.ly/3i59Wpl

• Entomological Society of America donates 100 two-year memberships to EntoPOC (Twitter, Entomologists of Color @EntoPOC) https://bit.ly/31ig1Zy

• Database being assembled for early career pollination ecologists (Twitter, John Mola @_JohnMola) https://bit.ly/3eAWmb4
- Enter info at https://bit.ly/2YwHzbN
- Database at https://bit.ly/3i3h6ug

• Scientists decode honey bee queen toots and quacks in hive (BBC) https://bbc.in/381nDkp

• Soap bubbles could assist with pollination (CNN) https://cnn.it/3g23WLU

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Get in touch at tbr@bymattkelly.com.