Give Bees a Chance: My feature in Science Notes!

To get a harvest a big part of an almond farmer's late winter and early spring is absorbed in ensuring enough pollinators make it into the orchard.

A big part of my late winter and early spring this year was absorbed in reporting on a small, but growing movement to get native bees to help. Out of the field visits and phone calls came my first feature story: Give Bees a Chance.

The story recently went live on Science Notes, the hallmark publication of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. The piece is gorgeously illustrated by the hyper-talented Chelsea Crist (image above) and Julie Naylor (right) from the CSU Monterey Bay Science Illustration Program.

Wander around, you'll read about the problems facing our honeybees, the wild, glorious diversity of California's native bees, challenges facing farmers like the almond-growing Chris Schlies and the efforts of Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at UC Berkeley, to change the face of large-scale farming. It comes with a video and a podcast, both narrated by yours truly and featuring buzzing of bees.

As a final bonus, the piece got a lovely shout-out by Charlie Petit over at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker.