Hello Bug Blog followers!
Well, I know you have all been waiting breathlessly for the next (and first!) installation of the Bug Blog and I finally have emerged from the marshes and the lab long enough to write it. So here goes- first post!
There are many places where I never imagined that my short and convoluted career would take me. A conference of chihuahua fanciers, for example, or a actuaries summit, or a toll booth workers union meeting. Or a trade show for cranberry growers in the middle of Wisconsin.
Which was where I found myself on Wednesday.
Those of you who have not been following my (soon to be illustrious) entomology career may wonder what on Earth I was doing here. I am now working in the UW Extension Fruit Crop Entomology lab with an ardent desire to help cranberry growers use fewer pesticides. (Don't worry, I will probably get on my soapbox about pesticide usage in an upcoming post). I am studying a few species of moth whose caterpillars have a voracious appetite for everything cranberry: the juicy fruit, protein- rich seeds and tasty leaves. The cranberry is not many generations removed from its native North American ancestors, and so there are relatively few cultivars that have been bred. I will be running a series of lab experiments and field experiments to determine if there is one cultivar that these little bugs prefer over another.
If I discover that one variety has more natural insect resistance, that variety can hopefully be used by growers and breeders to cut back on their pesticide usage. This is all in its very preliminary stages and I HOPE that all of this research actually finds something.
But back to the trade show.
Our
little white university car was dwarfed by the surrounding heavy-duty
pickups as we pulled into the impromptu parking lot. Our group consisted
of myself, my French entomology advisor, Christelle Guedot, Patty
McManus, the UW Extension plant pathologist and her PhD student Lindsey.
The trade show was held at a giant cranberry cold storage facility in
Pittsville (yes, Pittsville) Wisconsin. Pittsville is tiny dot on the
map surrounded by miles of cranberry marshes and boasts that it is
located in the exact center of the state. The unofficial motto that I
saw posted near the entrance to the warehouse read "Where the hell is
Pittsville?"
The trade show and lunch tables took up a tiny corner of this huge and echoey warehouse-empty until late September, when a portion of the state's 4.5 million barrels of the cranberries will come flooding in. For those of you who like the hard economic facts, "Cranberries are Wisconsin’s largest fruit crop, accounting for almost 85 percent of the total value of fruit production in the state, and contribute nearly $300 million annually to the state’s economy and support approximately 3,400 jobs." (Thanks Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association for enlightening us!)
We walked in past growers talking in small groups, their camo baseball caps pulled low against the sun, tanned arms folded over beer bellies. A smattering of middle aged moms roamed around as their kids gleefully climbed in and out of huge cranberry storage containers that had been emptied of their previous schwag- large jars of free Craisins for visitors. Extension agents and insurance salesmen looked nervous in neat button up shirts and polos, ready to pitch their offerings or summarize the season's major bugs and viruses.
The day's riveting entertainment consisted of experts presenting summaries on the season's pests, new pesticides, new genetic testing methods, and an update on the dreaded Tobacco Streak Virus which showed up in some marshes this year. All was delivered with a handheld speaker who's sound was immediately swallowed up in the large, echoey building.
Having left Madison at 7 am, I was excited for the free lunch. Buffet tables were packed with reheated chicken sandwiches and large tupperware storage bins full of mayonnaise-based salads (with cranberries in most). Cranberry bars filled out the meal and, of course, there were cans of cranberry juice for drinks.
The trade show itself was a eclectic collection of booths full of miscellaneous engine parts, water pumps, cranberry plants with runners trailing onto the floor, insurance figures, experimental cranberry drinks, and beehives.
But outdoors was the most fun. Giant backhoes towered over tractors and bulldozers, and a huge solar powered pump on a trailer spread its panels skyward. Cranberry growing is all about moving water from one place to another, and there were dozens of enormous pumps and pipes on display.
Besides putting faces with the voices that had kindly doled out advice to me over the phone, I had the opportunity to meet the cranberry propogator from Sturgeon Bay who had offered to provide me with all of the plants I need for my research. As I will probably discuss in other posts, I and everyone in my lab are TERRIBLE at growing cranberries. All of our attempts are fraught with powdery mildew, spider mites, and random unexplained plant death. Basically, over the next two years, Ron from Evergreen Nurseries could become my new best friend.
However, the booth that the plant pathology (or "plant path") folks had to finally drag Christelle and I away from was the bumble bee booth. The booth was staffed by a Venezuelan woman working for a Canadian company in Michigan. She immediately picked up on my advisor's accent and exclaimed
"Oh, so you are the person everyone says I should talk to you because they think I sound French!"
Her
wares were bumble bee hives. As it turns out, bumble bees are much
better pollinators than the ubiquitous honeybee. They work longer hours
in worse weather and are strong enough to pollinate plants that
honeybees can't. They do something called "buzz pollination" where they
latch onto the center of a flower with their bumblebee jaws (mandibles)
and vibrate their wings really fast to knock the heavy pollen loose. The
greenhouse tomato industry, for example, uses bumblebees much of the
time. Contrary to popular belief, bumblebees are not the solitary bees
that we see bumbling around gardens. They are social insects who make
their hives in holes in the ground, often inhabiting abandoned animal
burrows. And, bumblebees are native to North America, unlike honeybees which were brought in by European settlers.
After showing us the (empty) hives, the salewoman directed us to one of their products called the "Flying Doctors" The Flying Doctors package is a small cardboard box that houses a bumblebee hive. There is a specially designed exit to this hive, in which the bees have to walk through a small tray on their way out. If a crop is infested with a flower-bourne disease, the grower can place an organic (bee safe) pesticide or fungicide powder in the tray. The outbound bees will walk through the tray, pick up the substance on the hairs on their body, and deliver it directly to the flowers of the plants in their pollinating rounds. The substance can go exactly where it is needed with very little waste or overspray. Pretty cool!
I left that day full of some serious antioxidants, and with a new appreciation for just what a cranberry grower has to know. Hydrolics, global economics (one of the big articles in the newsletter was about the booming Craisin market in China), crop insurance, heavy machinery, horticulture, plant pathology, entomology and human resources are just a few of the things that your average farmer deals with on a regular basis. I have decided to stick with graduate school instead-it's easier!
Tune in next time for my next (dubiously) exciting adventure! Meanwhile, please enjoy this bulldog in a ridiculous bumblebee costume. He is thanking all of the photographers who I have blatantly ripped off by taking their photos from the internet because I am too lazy to post credits. Thanks guys!
Well, I know you have all been waiting breathlessly for the next (and first!) installation of the Bug Blog and I finally have emerged from the marshes and the lab long enough to write it. So here goes- first post!
There are many places where I never imagined that my short and convoluted career would take me. A conference of chihuahua fanciers, for example, or a actuaries summit, or a toll booth workers union meeting. Or a trade show for cranberry growers in the middle of Wisconsin.
Which was where I found myself on Wednesday.
 | |
| Sparg! One of my moths. Kinda pretty, right? |
Those of you who have not been following my (soon to be illustrious) entomology career may wonder what on Earth I was doing here. I am now working in the UW Extension Fruit Crop Entomology lab with an ardent desire to help cranberry growers use fewer pesticides. (Don't worry, I will probably get on my soapbox about pesticide usage in an upcoming post). I am studying a few species of moth whose caterpillars have a voracious appetite for everything cranberry: the juicy fruit, protein- rich seeds and tasty leaves. The cranberry is not many generations removed from its native North American ancestors, and so there are relatively few cultivars that have been bred. I will be running a series of lab experiments and field experiments to determine if there is one cultivar that these little bugs prefer over another.
If I discover that one variety has more natural insect resistance, that variety can hopefully be used by growers and breeders to cut back on their pesticide usage. This is all in its very preliminary stages and I HOPE that all of this research actually finds something.
But back to the trade show.
Our
little white university car was dwarfed by the surrounding heavy-duty
pickups as we pulled into the impromptu parking lot. Our group consisted
of myself, my French entomology advisor, Christelle Guedot, Patty
McManus, the UW Extension plant pathologist and her PhD student Lindsey.
The trade show was held at a giant cranberry cold storage facility in
Pittsville (yes, Pittsville) Wisconsin. Pittsville is tiny dot on the
map surrounded by miles of cranberry marshes and boasts that it is
located in the exact center of the state. The unofficial motto that I
saw posted near the entrance to the warehouse read "Where the hell is
Pittsville?"The trade show and lunch tables took up a tiny corner of this huge and echoey warehouse-empty until late September, when a portion of the state's 4.5 million barrels of the cranberries will come flooding in. For those of you who like the hard economic facts, "Cranberries are Wisconsin’s largest fruit crop, accounting for almost 85 percent of the total value of fruit production in the state, and contribute nearly $300 million annually to the state’s economy and support approximately 3,400 jobs." (Thanks Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association for enlightening us!)
We walked in past growers talking in small groups, their camo baseball caps pulled low against the sun, tanned arms folded over beer bellies. A smattering of middle aged moms roamed around as their kids gleefully climbed in and out of huge cranberry storage containers that had been emptied of their previous schwag- large jars of free Craisins for visitors. Extension agents and insurance salesmen looked nervous in neat button up shirts and polos, ready to pitch their offerings or summarize the season's major bugs and viruses.
The day's riveting entertainment consisted of experts presenting summaries on the season's pests, new pesticides, new genetic testing methods, and an update on the dreaded Tobacco Streak Virus which showed up in some marshes this year. All was delivered with a handheld speaker who's sound was immediately swallowed up in the large, echoey building.
Having left Madison at 7 am, I was excited for the free lunch. Buffet tables were packed with reheated chicken sandwiches and large tupperware storage bins full of mayonnaise-based salads (with cranberries in most). Cranberry bars filled out the meal and, of course, there were cans of cranberry juice for drinks.
 |
| Cranberries? |
 |
| cranberries. |
The trade show itself was a eclectic collection of booths full of miscellaneous engine parts, water pumps, cranberry plants with runners trailing onto the floor, insurance figures, experimental cranberry drinks, and beehives.
But outdoors was the most fun. Giant backhoes towered over tractors and bulldozers, and a huge solar powered pump on a trailer spread its panels skyward. Cranberry growing is all about moving water from one place to another, and there were dozens of enormous pumps and pipes on display.
Besides putting faces with the voices that had kindly doled out advice to me over the phone, I had the opportunity to meet the cranberry propogator from Sturgeon Bay who had offered to provide me with all of the plants I need for my research. As I will probably discuss in other posts, I and everyone in my lab are TERRIBLE at growing cranberries. All of our attempts are fraught with powdery mildew, spider mites, and random unexplained plant death. Basically, over the next two years, Ron from Evergreen Nurseries could become my new best friend.
However, the booth that the plant pathology (or "plant path") folks had to finally drag Christelle and I away from was the bumble bee booth. The booth was staffed by a Venezuelan woman working for a Canadian company in Michigan. She immediately picked up on my advisor's accent and exclaimed
"Oh, so you are the person everyone says I should talk to you because they think I sound French!"
Her
wares were bumble bee hives. As it turns out, bumble bees are much
better pollinators than the ubiquitous honeybee. They work longer hours
in worse weather and are strong enough to pollinate plants that
honeybees can't. They do something called "buzz pollination" where they
latch onto the center of a flower with their bumblebee jaws (mandibles)
and vibrate their wings really fast to knock the heavy pollen loose. The
greenhouse tomato industry, for example, uses bumblebees much of the
time. Contrary to popular belief, bumblebees are not the solitary bees
that we see bumbling around gardens. They are social insects who make
their hives in holes in the ground, often inhabiting abandoned animal
burrows. And, bumblebees are native to North America, unlike honeybees which were brought in by European settlers. After showing us the (empty) hives, the salewoman directed us to one of their products called the "Flying Doctors" The Flying Doctors package is a small cardboard box that houses a bumblebee hive. There is a specially designed exit to this hive, in which the bees have to walk through a small tray on their way out. If a crop is infested with a flower-bourne disease, the grower can place an organic (bee safe) pesticide or fungicide powder in the tray. The outbound bees will walk through the tray, pick up the substance on the hairs on their body, and deliver it directly to the flowers of the plants in their pollinating rounds. The substance can go exactly where it is needed with very little waste or overspray. Pretty cool!
I left that day full of some serious antioxidants, and with a new appreciation for just what a cranberry grower has to know. Hydrolics, global economics (one of the big articles in the newsletter was about the booming Craisin market in China), crop insurance, heavy machinery, horticulture, plant pathology, entomology and human resources are just a few of the things that your average farmer deals with on a regular basis. I have decided to stick with graduate school instead-it's easier!
Tune in next time for my next (dubiously) exciting adventure! Meanwhile, please enjoy this bulldog in a ridiculous bumblebee costume. He is thanking all of the photographers who I have blatantly ripped off by taking their photos from the internet because I am too lazy to post credits. Thanks guys!
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