How you can help save the bees, one hive at a time | Noah Wilson-Rich

63,084 views ・ 2019-04-10

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
Pollinator decline is a grand challenge in the modern world.
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Of the 200,000 species of pollinators,
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honeybees are the most well-understood,
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partly because of our long history with them dating back 8,000 years ago
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to our cave drawings in what is now modern-day Spain.
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And yet we know that this indicator species is dying off.
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Last year alone, we lost 40 percent of all beehives in the United States.
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That number is even higher in areas with harsh winters,
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like here in Massachusetts,
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where we lost 47 percent of beehives
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in one year alone.
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Can you imagine if we lost half of our people last year?
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And if those were the food-producing people?
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It's untenable.
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And I predict that in 10 years,
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we will lose our bees.
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If not for the work of beekeepers replacing these dead beehives,
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we would be without foods that we rely upon:
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fruits, vegetables,
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crunchy almonds and nuts,
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tart apples,
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sour lemons.
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Even the food that our cattle rely upon to eat, hay and alfalfa -- gone,
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causing global hunger,
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economic collapse,
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a total moral crisis across earth.
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Now, I first started keeping bees here in Cape Cod
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right after I finished my doctorate in honeybee immunology.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Imagine getting such a degree in a good economy --
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and it was 2009:
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the Great Recession.
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And I was onto something.
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I knew that I could find out how to improve bee health.
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And so the community on Cape Cod here in Provincetown
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was ripe for citizen science,
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people looking for ways to get involved and to help.
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And so we met with people in coffee shops.
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A wonderful woman named Natalie got eight beehives at her home in Truro,
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and she introduced us to her friend Valerie,
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who let us set up 60 beehives at an abandoned tennis court on her property.
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And so we started testing vaccines for bees.
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We were starting to look at probiotics.
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We called it "bee yogurt" --
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ways to make bees healthier.
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And our citizen science project started to take off.
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Meanwhile, back in my apartment here,
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I was a bit nervous about my landlord.
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I figured I should tell him what we were doing.
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(Laughter)
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I was terrified; I really thought I was going to get an eviction notice,
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which really was the last thing we needed, right?
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I must have caught him on a good day, though,
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because when I told him what we were doing
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and how we started our nonprofit urban beekeeping laboratory,
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he said, "That's great! Let's get a beehive in the back alley."
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I was shocked.
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I was completely surprised.
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I mean, instead of getting an eviction notice,
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we got another data point.
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And in the back alley of this image,
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what you see here, this hidden beehive --
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that beehive produced more honey that first year
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than we have ever experienced in any beehive we had managed.
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It shifted our research perspective forever.
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It changed our research question away from "How do we save the dead and dying bees?"
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to "Where are bees doing best?"
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And we started to be able to put maps together,
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looking at all of these citizen science beehives
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from people who had beehives at home decks,
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gardens, business rooftops.
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We started to engage the public,
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and the more people who got these little data points,
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the more accurate our maps became.
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And so when you're sitting here thinking, "How can I get involved?"
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you might think about a story of my friend Fred,
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who's a commercial real estate developer.
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He was thinking the same thing.
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He was at a meeting,
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thinking about what he could do for tenant relations
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and sustainability at scale.
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And while he was having a tea break,
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he put honey into his tea and noticed on the honey jar
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a message about corporate sustainability from the host company of that meeting.
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And it sparked an idea.
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He came back to his office.
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An email, a phone call later, and -- boom! --
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we went national together.
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We put dozens of beehives on the rooftops of their skyscrapers
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across nine cities nationwide.
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Nine years later --
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(Applause)
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Nine years later, we have raised over a million dollars for bee research.
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We have a thousand beehives as little data points across the country,
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18 states and counting,
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where we have created paying jobs for local beekeepers, 65 of them,
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to manage beehives in their own communities,
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to connect with people, everyday people,
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who are now data points together making a difference.
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So in order to explain what's actually been saving bees,
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where they're thriving,
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I need to first tell you what's been killing them.
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The top three killers of bees
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are agricultural chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, fungicides;
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diseases of bees, of which there are many;
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and habitat loss.
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So what we did is we looked on our maps
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and we identified areas where bees were thriving.
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This was mostly in cities, we found.
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Data are now showing that urban beehives produce more honey
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than rural beehives and suburban beehives.
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Urban beehives have a longer life span than rural and suburban beehives,
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and bees in the city are more biodiverse;
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there are more bee species in urban areas.
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(Laughter)
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Right?
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Why is this?
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That was our question.
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So we started with these three killers of bees,
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and we flipped it:
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Which of these is different in the cities?
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So the first one, pesticides.
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We partnered up with the Harvard School of Public Health.
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We shared our data with them.
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We collected samples from our citizen science beehives
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at people's homes and business rooftops.
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We looked at pesticide levels.
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We thought there would be less pesticides in areas where bees are doing better.
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That's not the case.
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So what we found here in our study is -- the orange bars are Boston,
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and we thought those bars would be the lowest,
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there would be the lowest levels of pesticides.
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And, in fact, there are the most pesticides in cities.
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So the pesticide hypothesis for what's saving bees --
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less pesticides in cities --
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is not it.
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And this is very typical of my life as a scientist.
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Anytime I've had a hypothesis,
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not only is it not supported, but the opposite is true.
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(Laughter)
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Which is still an interesting finding, right?
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We moved on.
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The disease hypothesis.
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We looked at diseases all over our beehives.
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And what we found in a similar study to this one with North Carolina State is:
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there's no difference between disease in bees
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in urban, suburban and rural areas.
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Diseases are everywhere; bees are sick and dying.
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In fact, there were more diseases of bees in cities.
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This was from Raleigh, North Carolina.
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So again, my hypothesis was not supported. The opposite was true.
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We're moving on.
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(Laughter)
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The habitat hypothesis.
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This said that areas where bees are thriving have a better habitat --
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more flowers, right?
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But we didn't know how to test this.
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So I had a really interesting meeting.
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An idea sparked with my friend and colleague Anne Madden,
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fellow TED speaker.
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We thought about genomics, kind of like AncestryDNA or 23andMe.
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Have you done these?
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You spit in a tube and you find out, "I'm German!"
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(Laughter)
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Well, we developed this for honey.
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So we have a sample of honey and we look at all the plant DNA,
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and we find out, "I'm sumac!"
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(Laughter)
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And that's what we found here in Provincetown.
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So for the first time ever, I'm able to report to you
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what type of honey is from right here in our own community.
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HoneyDNA, a genomics test.
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Spring honey in Provincetown is from privet.
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What's privet? Hedges.
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What's the message?
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Don't trim your hedges to save the bees.
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(Laughter)
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I know we're getting crunchy and it's controversial,
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so before you throw your tomatoes,
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we'll move to the summer honey, which is water lily honey.
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If you have honey from Provincetown right here in the summer,
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you're eating water lily juice;
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in the fall, sumac honey.
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We're learning about our food for the first time ever.
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And now we're able to report, if you need to do any city planning:
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What are good things to plant?
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What do we know the bees are going to that's good for your garden?
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For the first time ever for any community, we now know this answer.
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What's more interesting for us is deeper in the data.
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So, if you're from the Caribbean and you want to explore your heritage,
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Bahamian honey is from the laurel family,
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cinnamon and avocado flavors.
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But what's more interesting is 85 different plant species
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in one teaspoon of honey.
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That's the measure we want, the big data.
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Indian honey: that is oak.
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Every sample we've tested from India is oak,
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and that's 172 different flavors in one taste of Indian honey.
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Provincetown honey goes from 116 plants in the spring
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to over 200 plants in the summer.
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These are the numbers that we need to test the habitat hypothesis.
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In another citizen science approach,
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you find out about your food and we get some interesting data.
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We're finding out now that in rural areas,
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there are 150 plants on average in a sample of honey.
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That's a measure for rural.
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Suburban areas, what might you think?
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Do they have less or more plants in suburban areas with lawns
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that look nice for people but they're terrible for pollinators?
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Suburbs have very low plant diversity,
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so if you have a beautiful lawn,
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good for you, but you can do more.
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You can have a patch of your lawn that's a wildflower meadow
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to diversify your habitat,
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to improve pollinator health.
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Anybody can do this.
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Urban areas have the most habitat, best habitat,
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as you can see here: over 200 different plants.
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We have, for the first time ever, support for the habitat hypothesis.
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We also now know how we can work with cities.
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The City of Boston has eight times better habitat
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than its nearby suburbs.
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And so when we work with governments, we can scale this.
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You might think on my tombstone, it'll say,
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"Here lies Noah. Plant a flower." Right?
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I mean -- it's exhausting after all of this.
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But when we scale together,
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when we go to governments and city planners --
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like in Boston, the honey is mostly linden trees,
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and we say, "If a dead tree needs to be replaced, consider linden."
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When we take this information to governments, we can do amazing things.
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This is a rooftop from Fred's company.
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We can plant those things on top of rooftops worldwide
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to start restoring habitat and securing food systems.
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We've worked with the World Bank
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and the presidential delegation from the country of Haiti.
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We've worked with wonderful graduate students at Yale University and Ethiopia.
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In these countries, we can add value to their honey
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by identifying what it is,
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but informing the people of what to plant
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to restore their habitat and secure their food systems.
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But what I think is even more important is when we think about natural disasters.
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For the first time,
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we now know how we can have a baseline measure of any habitat
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before it might be destroyed.
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Think about your hometown.
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What risks does the environment pose to it?
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This is how we're going to save Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
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We now have a baseline measure of honey,
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honey DNA from before and after the storm.
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We started in Humacao.
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This is right where Hurricane Maria made landfall.
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And we know what plants to replace and in what quantity and where
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by triangulating honey DNA samples.
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You might even think about right here,
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the beautiful land that connected us, that primed us,
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all the citizen science to begin with,
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the erosion, the winter storms
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that are getting more violent every year.
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What are we going to do about this,
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our precious land?
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Well, looking at honey DNA,
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we can see what plants are good for pollinators that have deep roots,
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that can secure the land,
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and together, everybody can participate.
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And the solution fits in a teaspoon.
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If your hometown might get swept away or destroyed by a natural disaster,
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we now have a blueprint suspended in time
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for how to restore that on Earth,
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or perhaps even in a greenhouse on Mars.
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I know it sounds crazy, but think about this:
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a new Provincetown,
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a new hometown,
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a place that might be familiar that's also good for pollinators
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for a stable food system,
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when we're thinking about the future.
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Now, together, we know what's saving bees --
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by planting diverse habitat.
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Now, together, we know how bees are going to save us --
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by being barometers for environmental health,
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by being blueprints, sources of information,
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little data factories suspended in time.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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