Hey folks, welcome back. This is Andy and this is the Port Porels Almanac.

Today we're going to be talking about cows and

bees with Dr. Ryan Schmidt and Katya Bucennitz from the Echdices Foundation. In this

conversation we talk about the relationships between grazers and bees, both honeybees

and native pollinators. I think you guys are going to really enjoy this

conversation as it ties together a lot of

the different subjects that we've talked about over the last three years. So take a listen and let us

know what you think. Katia and Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the talk. Please introduce

yourself. Hi, I'm Katia Buslitz. I'm a master's student

studying honeybees. And I'm Ryan. We're both at a Gdicis Foundation here, and I studied dung beetles

and beneficial insects for ranchers. I got to ask first for you, what came first? The cattle or the bees?

That's for you? Oh. so I kind of got thrown into bees. I've never been, I've never worked with bees before, and I came out here

to Edices, where we study agri-ecology and kind of like regenerative agriculture. And our boss,

John, he kind of just threw me out there.

He was like, go work with the bees.

This is a hive tool and this is a suit, you know.

So I got thrown out there.

So for me, the bees came first.

And then Ryan's been doing ranching, ranceling stuff for a while.

Yeah, I grew up on a small cowcalf operation in Northwest Iowa.

So that's where I first got interested in cattle and livestock management.

And took a weird turn, studying insects for quite a while.

...