Paige Embry

Here’s a reference sheet that I meant to have for people attending my most recent talk at Swanson’s Nursery but all are welcome to a copy. Paige

Embry Meet the Neighbors

Osmia atriventris (female) Photo courtesy of the USGS Bee Lab Flickr page

I try really hard to never watch, listen to, or read anything I’m involved in once it is live. I’m pretty sure this makes me a weenie.

Thanks to the great response I’ve had to Our Native Bees this means that there is a lot more of this kind of material out there than I expected when I was writing the book. On the plus side, I’ve learned about all sorts of websites, magazines and podcasts that I hadn’t known about before. It’s also led to a number of interviews of one sort or another that has forced me to acknowledge my general weenieness. Part of the problem is I’ll hear or see the inevitable mistakes and I can’t DO anything about them. It makes me appreciate writing a book. You get to edit and edit and edit and hopefully get it just the way you want it.

That said, if you would like to read, hear or watch something that tells you a bit more about our bees, here’s the latest–and thanks to these folks who gave me a chance to talk up the bees!

I did an interview with Tom Oder for the Mother Nature Network that focused on gardening for bees as did the Skype interview with Mike Podlesny of Mike the Gardener. Lastly, for the original essay section of the Powell’s Books blog, I wrote about the bee story that made me decide to write a book.

Augochloropsis sumptuosa female from the Sandhills area of NC. From the USGS Flickr website.

As part of my southern wanderings I went to Asheville, NC. It was early March and I was only there for a night but I wished I’d brought a warm hat since periodically, little bits of snow would spit down from the sky. Fortunately, it was minor and didn’t keep folks away from either of my talks. Continue reading

I am in the Deep South. It is March and therefore there should be a high chance of lovely weather–only it’s snowing. I admit that I am in Chapel Hill, NC right now, not the deep, deep south–but still. My husband told me that yesterday he pulled out the chair cushions and was lounging in the sun on our deck in Seattle–something is wrong with this picture. Continue reading

I am in Missoula visiting my daughter who goes to the University of Montana. My great publicist at Timber Press arranged a radio interview (daunting) with Sarah Aronson at MT Public Radio. She hosts The Write Question that features western authors and you can find podcasts of old episodes online. I’ve been listening to some and thoroughly enjoying them.  My interview should come out at the end of March or beginning of April and I am preparing to gird my loins (ha! how often does one get to use that idiom?) and listen. The problem with speaking rather than writing is you don’t get to go back and edit. Continue reading

Megachile (Xanthosaurus) fortis from Badlands National Park, SD. Photo courtesy of the USGS Flckr stream

When I was writing the book I spent a few days with Jerry Rozen, the curator for bees from the American Museum of Natural History. Jerry is the guy to talk to about the life of solitary bees in the nest, he’s been studying them for 60 year–maybe more.  When I asked Jerry how many species he’d found nests for, he picked up the Bee Genera of North and Central America by Michener, McGinley and Danforth (which sadly and oddly seems to be out of print, they start at $379 on Amazon), opened it up and started listing bees and I frantically started writing. When I looked at my notes later, I saw that I had written Heterosaurus. Heterosaurus? Sounds like a dinosaur–did I have some sort of brain warp back to my days as a geologist?  I couldn’t find any such bee so I let it go. But I was just looking through a list of the bees of Colorado (because that’s the kind of thing I do on what is probably one of the last sunny days to be seen in Seattle for months) and what did I see? Not a Heterosaurus but a Xanthosaurus!! Ha. I was only half wrong. It appears that the dinosaur-sounding bee is a sub-genus of the Megachile.

Buzz Off

Rose Eveleth wondered, “What would happen if the bees all disappeared?” Then, she got in touch with folks, including me, and asked that question. The answer is that it wouldn’t be the end of food as we know it. Very few food plants absolutely HAVE to have an animal pollinator to procreate.  Of course, if you are trying to grow food to sell, it’s not just about getting enough pollination to procreate. It’s about optimizing yields, fruit size, and fruit shape so you can make a living. Without pollinators, we’d still get most of our foods but it might be more expensive and growers would have to devote more land to growing food to make up the difference. Check out her podcast. It is fun and informative.

A male orchid bee from Guiana, courtesy of the USGS Flickr stream. This photo has nothing to do with the post. I include it only because it is glorious.

A science writer who is interested in pitching a review of the Our Native Bees asked me for a synopsis since advance reading copies aren’t available.  No problem, I thought, I can whip that out over the weekend.

Three weeks later, it’s finally done. I admit that life got in the way for part of that time but I found writing a synopsis was much harder than I thought.  Partly, because a synopsis seems like writing a book report. How many plodding versions of those did I write during my school years? Then to add to the agony, it’s about my book so I occasionally had to write about myself in the third person. Ick. Continue reading