Consider the Humble Bumblebee Which bee is better at pollinating blueberries? The Sustainable Farms team discovered the answer—and so much more.
The Full Package
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By Lisa Raleigh
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hen a family member inquired about his bee-monitoring field research project, UO senior Keane Daly had an authoritative explanation at the ready. Pollination can’t be done artificially, he informed his relative. But it is essential to agriculture. And the only way to accomplish it—and sustain the production of flowering crops—is naturally. Thus the vital importance of bees. Preferably healthy populations of prolific pollinators. Ideally native species. Like the bumblebee (Bombus spp.). These were some of the takeaways, in terms of knowledge gained, for the students participating in the Sustainable Farms project—one of the field experiences offered last year by the UO’s Environmental Leadership Program (ELP). Yet the indispensability of bees was only one lesson learned; students also acquired a host of collaborative teamwork skills along the way. Now in its twelfth year, ELP is a service-learning initiative that partners
t the same time, each undergraduate participating in an ELP project hones a comprehensive package of professional skills that, depending on the project, can include conducting field surveys, performing data analysis, formulating recommendations, writing reports, presenting their findings publicly and taking a role in team leadership. With the Sustainable Farms project, funded by the Katherine Bisbee II Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, students got exposure to all of the above. According to Daly, an environmental studies major, each of the nine team members was involved in every aspect of the project in some way, and each assumed a leadership role in a particular area, such as managing the website or writing a report. In Daly’s case, he was in charge of data collection on the six blueberry farms in the study, and he is now working to revise the final project report (coauthored by two other team members) to turn it into an article for both the Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal (see page 24) and also an outside professional publication, Northwest Naturalist. In this latter effort, he is collaborating with one of the student coauthors of the original report. Another student, Aaron Poplack, was the colead on the second phase of the project—a pollinator conservation plan written for the Berggren Demonstration Farm on the McKenzie River. The student-written plan makes specific and extensive recommendations for creating a habitat that will support native pollinators __ 4
and help the farm model effective practices to educate the public. “It was really different to collaborate on a document with nine people,” said Poplack, an environmental studies major with a minor in planning, public policy and management. And that’s not counting the multiple editorial reviews by a faculty mentor, a graduate student reviewer and the clients at Berggren, as well as a peer review by a botanist and an entomologist—all necessary steps toward the plan’s completion. “It was a very rigorous and exhausting process for them,” said Peg Boulay, the undergraduate coadviser for ELP. “But it allowed them to achieve professional-level work.”
Bee Prepared
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he Sustainable Farms project began in the classroom last winter, with the students learning first about methods for reviewing scientific literature and for conducting a monitoring project in the field. They also received training in another set of methods: the basics of professional team
The Sustainable Farms Team
teams of undergraduates with local community agencies in an effort to jointly address environmental needs. Projects range from restoring wetlands to educating schoolchildren about the value of the forest canopy—all resulting in a demonstrable impact in the real world.
The honeybee (above) is subject to colony collapse disorder and pollinates at only one-third the speed of the native bumblebee (above left).