Washington Native Bees with Bee Atlas Volunteer Coordinator, Caleb Lankford
Meet Caleb Lankford, Volunteer Coordinator for the Washington Bee Atlas program under the Washington State Department of Agriculture. He enjoys working with people as much as working with bees. A former high school teacher, he found his way to native bees when he returned to college for a master's degree in Natural Science. In need of a part-time job, he found a local pollinator lab and was introduced to the Bee Ladies and quickly discovered the wonders of native bees. Caleb loves science and wants to make it accessible to everyone. The Washington Bee Atlas trains volunteers to survey native bees around the state. Community involvement and participatory science are the heart of this program. Caleb says his “true passion is engaging with the volunteers. I love to see the excitement they get when they first learn about native bees.” Native bees are vital to native flowering plants as well as many food crops. While honey bees are important pollinators, the pollen they collect is taken to the hive and turned into honey. Native bees use buzz pollination, which moves pollen from plant to plant so those plants can produce seeds for the next generation. Some native bees are also reliant upon certain plants and their pollen for their offspring, similar to the monarch butterfly being reliant upon the milkweed plant. Food plants, like blueberries, are reliant upon native bees' buzz pollination. “One third of all food humans eat is tied back to a pollinator”, Caleb says. “One in every three bites, you have bees to thank for that”. When most people think of a bee, they picture “the black and yellow striped honeybee or even the buzzy bumblebee” since they are most familiar. But native bees come in “all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors”. Contact Caleb Lankford here: https://agr.wa.gov/beeatlas caleb.lankford@ag.wa.gov WA Bee Atlas on Instagram @wsdagov WA Bee Atlas on Facebook @WaStateDeptAg Support Nature Detectives here: https://buymeacoffee.com/naturedetectives
