Extraordinary Students Doing Extraordinary Research - James Watson

Welcome to the "Extraordinary Students Doing Extraordinary Research" podcast series, which highlights students from the UM's RBC Scholars in Sustainable Agriculture Program and their research.

In this episode, host Peter Frohlich, research development coordinator with the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment talks with RBC Scholar James Watson, a student in the Faculty of Science. James discusses the importance of bees in agriculture, their health and why studying bees contributes to creating sustainable agriculture systems in Manitoba and beyond.

Transcript

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Peter Frohlich 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Extraordinary Students Doing Extraordinary Research podcasts. This podcast Explore how students at the University of Manitoba are contributing to research that enhances the sustainability of food production in the province and beyond. My name is Peter Frolich. I am the research development coordinator for the National Center for Livestock and the Environment located right here on campus at the University of Manitoba. Today I'm joined by James Watson, who is working on his Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences with a minor in entomology. James is also one of 11 students, both graduate and undergraduate, who are recipients of research funding through the RBC Scholars in Sustainable Agriculture Program. This program in its first year at the University of Manitoba provides opportunities for students to carry out research and receive hands-on training at the University of Manitoba state-of-the-art, livestock, and cropping facilities. In the program, the students also engaged with producers and industry organizations. Recently, James and the RBC scholars met with several representatives from the AG commodity groups at the University of Manitoba Glenlea research station just south of Winnipeg in the beautiful Manitoba prairie. This is where I met James as he provided an update on his summer project along with other students in the RBC program. James is working with Dr. Kyle Bobbiwash, who is an assistant professor and indigenous scholar, and also with Kyra Peters a master's student, both from the Department of Entomology and the University of Manitoba. Welcome, James. Before we discuss entomology and your excellent projects, please tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get interested in this area of study?

James Watson 1:39

Thank you. You did a great job of introducing me. I'm doing, as you mentioned, the degree in the faculty of science biology degree. And this kind of happened because I've always been interested in the sciences. I used to love watching science documentaries growing up. So when I graduated high school and it was time for me to decide what I wanted to do, a bachelor of science seemed like a good decision. And ultimately I ended up specifically in entomology of all places because in my first year of my undergraduate degree I took an elective course, an introductory entomology course, and it kind of helped me fall in love with this field.

Peter Frohlich 2:14

Yeah, you're in love with field. Excellent. So why did you choose to work with bees ?

James Watson 2:19

So right after I took that introductory course, I ended up getting a job at the U of M'S research apiary , which is actually located right on campus. At the time, I knew I liked insects, but I was really just looking for work. So as I worked that summer in their apiary, I ended up becoming fascinated with like the complexities of bee colonies and bee behaviour and just all of the intricacies that go into beekeeping. After that, I decided to stick on bee research and I got a URA , an undergraduate research award with Dr. Jason Gibbs studying native bees and native bee taxonomy in Manitoba.

Peter Frohlich 3:00

Very cool. So what made you apply to the RBC Scholars program?

James Watson 3:04

I'd already been talking with my current supervisor, Dr. Kyle Bobbiwash, about joining him on this new project. He was kind of starting looking at B viruses on canola, and when they announced this new RBC program , um, it seemed like I would make a , a good fit for it.

Peter Frohlich 3:21

Excellent. So let's get into this study itself. It's a really cool study. So James, tell me what are the objectives of this study that you're working on this summer?

James Watson 3:29

Our project is looking at the prevalence of honeybee viruses in native bees and honeybees on canola for a bit of background info. Every year the parasitic Varroa mite is found in honeybee colonies and it vectors. These viruses can be responsible for up to 60% colony losses, especially during the winter when colonies are smaller and they have fewer available resources, which leads to them being more vulnerable to these viruses. So these have become kind of an increasing problem since the nineties when the parasiticide first jumped into honeybees. Well, we know that these viruses are also moving into native bees. There's been some research that has detected the viruses in honeybees and several other bees of other families as well.

Peter Frohlich 4:15

So you've mentioned native bees and honeybees. 2 different types of bees. Which crops in Manitoba are grown and which crops need bees for pollination?

James Watson 4:24

So there are some larger crops in Manitoba that are wind pollinated, meaning they don't rely on bees at all. Cereals in particular are wind pollinated. So your wheat, your corn, they don't really benefit from insect pollination. However, in terms of what is pollinated by bees, there's all the way from small wild harvested fruit crops, like your strawberries, if you've ever been to a U p ick farm, those are very heavily reliant on bees. And then on like the larger scale of insect a nd bee pollinated stuff in Manitoba, there's sunflower, there's canola, it benefits from insect pollination, there's flax. So you kind of have a full spectrum of different kinds of crops.

Peter Frohlich 5:07

And which bees are responsible for crop pollination? Is the native bees or the honeybees?

James Watson 5:12

Well they are both responsible. You know, over the past several hundred years we've brought in a lot of European crops into Manitoba and they bring us all sorts of delicious food. They are heavily reliant usually on the European honeybee, which we brought over also from Europe . And they provide a very valuable pollination service for free to our crops. We also have native bees both on the introduced crops as well as on our more like native crops like our squash and our sunflower that tend to be full of all kinds of really unique native bees.

Peter Frohlich 5:42

So James, why is this work important and how can producers use the results from your work?

James Watson 5:47

We're actually trying to fill known knowledge gaps right now in how these viruses work. And there's of course there's no easy solutions, but what we're hoping for is to be able to work with beekeepers and farmers in Manitoba to manage potential risks in these interactions. So if a beekeeper is trying to decide between 2 locations, they could put bees, you know, what factors should they look for that would lead to hopefully healthier bees and better outcomes.

Peter Frohlich 6:14

Now I read somewhere that there's 400 native bee species in Manitoba alone . Is that correct?

James Watson 6:19

Yes, it is. Which is, you know, a pretty astonishing number, especially if you're really only familiar with like, you know, a bumblebee and a honeybee. But there's 400 species from six different families and they represent an incredible diversity from bees that are like about the size of a grain of rice all the way up from bees the size of your thumb basically. And part of my work is actually distinguishing the different features of these bees, which ones are which The very first thing you have to do is to make sure you actually have a bee. There are some flies that do a very, very good job of mimicking bees. And so when I'm starting out and I'm trying to figure out, you know, I have this bee on a flower and I want to know what kind of bee it is, I have to look first and count to see if it h as two wings or four wings, because flies have two wings and bees always have four wings. Right after that we use all kinds of tools to figure out exactly what kind of b ee we have. There's these keys which kind of list traits. And then, you know, it says, oh, does the bee have yellow on its back or does i t have orange on its back? And so then you would go to like the next step on the key and the other tools we use, we have access to the Walls Roughly Museum of Entomology reference collection, which is actually right next door. And that has a synoptic set of every species o f bee in Manitoba for us to use in reference. Which is very helpful. And we also have access to Dr. Jason Gibbs, a bee taxonomist, who can sometimes help us with tricky problem s pecies.

Peter Frohlich 7:48

It sounds like, you learned volumes and volumes of information this summer.

James Watson 7:52

Yeah, it's, it's been a real adventure.

Peter Frohlich 7:55

So tell me, what are the highlights of your summer experience in the program?

James Watson 7:58

Of course, getting to go in the field and catch bees has been tons of fun for me. And I always enjoy getting the opportunity to do that. But I think another real highlight for me has been that this RBC program has given me the opportunity to do tons of outreach this summer. So I did science rendezvous right at the beginning in May, which is... it's with the whole university, all of the different faculties do kind of science outreach programs for kids. And we got to talk about insect diversity in Manitoba. We gotta talk about honeybees and we gotta talk about crop pests with school aged children.

Peter Frohlich 8:32

And that's a really great audience to talk to because they're just learning about, about agriculture and the benefits of agriculture and their daily lives. So that's a great, yeah . Great way to share information for sure.

James Watson 8:43

It was really interesting. We got to talk to kids from all over the province, you know, from rural communities, from the city. We even got to talk to some northern students who'd come all the way down. It's really interesting getting to like share our perspectives and hear theirs.

Peter Frohlich 8:55

So, cool. So tell me, when will the study be completed and how will producers in the public find out about the reSEARCH?

James Watson 9:01

Well, you know, science is never really done. Eventually in the next year and a half or so, maybe more, you know, science is never done. There's going to be a master's thesis and papers coming out about this, but in terms of the, the producers, we have been working directly with stakeholders this summer and we've planned to like kind of share our results as they come in. For instance, we work with this one grower who has canola and he doesn't want cross pollination on his canola fields . He wants to reduce the number of honeybees on his canola. And so we're kind of able to look at our data that we've collected throughout the summers. We sample and tell him how many honeybees are on his field, whether the honeybees we're seeing are on his canola or maybe they're on the Canada thistle in his ditch. So we kind of have like a direct line of communication with the growers we work with. As for the public, it's activities like this that we really get to connect with the public. We recently did an interview with Fort Whyte Alive as we used kind of some of their facilities to sample as well. And so like all of these opportunities where we get to kind of do something more public are really wonderful.

Peter Frohlich 10:09

Great program. You know, you've alluded to some of the skills that you've, that you've learned, but, but what are some of the main skills that you've learned in this program this summer?

James Watson 10:17

Yeah, so I've definitely learned a lot about telling different bees apart, you know, it's definitely like something you can spend a long time learning. I'm also really grateful to have the opportunity to learn like the more molecular side of things this summer as we are trying to analyze for viruses. We're doing R-T-Q-P-C-R, which is kind of the way that you detect virus levels in bees . And so that's been fun to kind of get to learn the beginnings of that process. And the other thing I really enjoyed getting to see this summer is all of the RBC scholars got a neat tour of Glenlea in their research facilities. And I think, as someone who's kind of on the more like obscure beekeeping end of things , I don't always get to see like these really interesting, wonderful facilities that we have that's like kind of neat to see like what everybody else here is doing.

Peter Frohlich 11:06

Yeah. Glenlea's an excellent facility . It's just south of Winnipeg and it's a place where research happens but also the public can come and see how their food is made and where it's grown. So excellent facility now, how has this experience shaped your view on sustainable agriculture and what would your message be to students considering this program?

James Watson 11:26

I love getting to interact with not only growers as I mentioned, but also beekeepers and kind of getting like a very like hands-on view of these fragile ecosystems we're working with that are very complex, very interconnected. So getting to see like how we can make better, more sustainable decisions together has been really wonderful. And if I'm talking to students who are maybe considering this program in the future, getting this opportunity to work with the leaders in sustainability of our future as well as, you know, to have fun is like such a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.

Peter Frohlich 12:05

There's a very good chance that there's even younger kids listening to this podcast. What is the message for them as they're sort of, you know, trying to figure out what they will do in the future and some of them may want to go into agriculture. What's the message for them?

James Watson 12:19

I'm speaking as someone who doesn't come from an agricultural background. And so I think that there's really a lot of people from all walks of life who could love and thrive in this field. Like it's not just, you know, one kind of person who would make a good researcher in this faculty. So I think, you know, there's all kinds of fascinating niches, all kinds of interesting questions to explore. I get to, you know, it's my day job, run around in a field and catch bees. Like there's so much wonder to be had over here.

Peter Frohlich 12:48

Did you get stung by bees this summer?

James Watson 12:51

Yes. I did get stung by bees this summer. In terms of bee stings, there's some small bees who stings don't hurt that much and then there are some larger bees. My advice if you're concerned about bees stings, is maybe don't pick up bees.

Peter Frohlich 13:07

Yes. That's great advice. Well, thank you so much, James. It's been a pleasure to meet you and to hear about your summer project.

James Watson 13:13

Thank you for having me.

Peter Frohlich 13:14

We are certainly looking forward to hearing more from the University of Manitoba researchers about the importance of bees as pollinators of Manitoba crops and how projects like you are on contribute to creating sustainable agriculture systems in Manitoba and beyond . And thank you all for listening. Please stay tuned for upcoming podcasts on the University of Manitoba extraordinary students doing extraordinary research that enhances the sustainability of agriculture and food production .