Dan Bean and Nina Louden from the Palisade Insectary join me to talk about insects, weeds, what makes their jobs in biological control so fun and interesting, and why everyone in Palisade should care that the Insectary makes its home here.
Learn more about the Insectary on their website.
For more reading, check out an article Dan wrote for the Insectary’s 75th anniversary and a KUNC article about the Insectary’s 80th anniversary.
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Transcript:
Welcome to the Postcards From Palisade Podcast. I’m Lisa McNamara. Palisade is most famous for its peaches, but there’s so much more happening in our little town. Join me as I chat with our community members to hear about how they are making Palisade a great place to live and visit.
Today I’m speaking with Dan Bean and Nina Louden from the Palisade Insectary.
Dan Bean has been director of the Biological Pest Control Program for the Colorado Department of Agriculture since 2005. He manages the Palisade Insectary, headquarters of the Biological Pest Control program.
Biological control is a method of pest management that uses the natural enemies of weeds or pests. The Palisade Insectary – located just north of our little downtown – imports, raises, researches, and distributes biological controls for the state of Colorado. More than 90 insects and fungi have been studied and released for use since the Insectary was started in 1945.
Nina Louden is the project manager for the tamarisk, bindweed, and white top biological control programs.
Dan, Nina, and I chat about what the insectary does, what a day in their lives looks like, how their programs work, successful examples of biological control, and some less-serious stuff like what bugs gross them out and what kind of bug they’d be.
Before we get started: If you’re curious about the plants and insects that Dan and Nina mention during our conversation, pull up the Insectary’s website and follow along as we go! You can find photos and lots more information at: ag.colorado.gov/conservation/palisade-insectary
Join us to learn all about beneficial insects, on today’s Postcard from Palisade.
Dan Bean: I’m Dan Bean. I’m director of the Palisade Insectary. I’ve been here since 2005.
Lisa: Tell me a little bit about the Insectary. So what is it? Why is it here?
Dan Bean: It’s a biocontrol facility. The Palisade Insectary is. We raise, collect, distribute, biological controls, which are natural enemies of pests. And the pests can be insects or weeds. And the goal is to suppress them through the use of natural enemies that would normally be found in an ecosystem. Part of what we do is diminish the use of pesticides. Another part is provide farmers, ranchers, the ag community and everyone else with relatively cheap methods of control. In the ideal situation, these agents are self-propagating in the field, and so you don’t have to buy them every year. And it provides a way for farmers and ranchers, especially those that are living on the economic edge, to help solve their problems in an economic fashion.
Lisa: I recently had the opportunity to stop in and visit during the 80th anniversary, which is a huge milestone. And so one of the common questions that I heard people ask while I was touring, going on a tour with y’all was, how do you make the bugs? You know, where do the bugs come from? How do you grow them? How do you make them? And I had that same misperception originally too. I thought, oh, you grow the bugs. But I learned that’s not really how it works. So can you talk about, just where do the bugs come from?
Dan Bean: Our agents come from all over the world. And we do make them in a sense that once we get them, we have to learn how to use them. We have to raise them to a point where we have enough to get out into the environment, and then we have to figure out where they live in the environment, how we can go out and collect them for redistribution. So, we do make them in that sense. But there is a misconception that we grow everything that we release at the insectary, and that’s not practical. We release probably hundreds of thousands of insects and mites every. Well, probably more, way more than that. That’s an underestimate, millions. And it would be impractical to grow them all here. So we find out ways to collect them in the field. They originally, the ones from overseas, were discovered across the landscape of Eurasia mostly, and they were discovered by overseas scientists and they were discovered as natural enemies for the pests that we work against.
And that’s a good time to bring up that most of our pests are introduced species. They’re invasive, so they come from somewhere else. And this sets us up well to describe where we get our biocontrol agents, which is the land where the invasive species are native. So what we might think of as a terrible bush, let’s say a tamarisk, is actually a native, a lot like we would consider a willow. They consider tamarisk a native in Central Asia. So it really is a matter of where you’re from and what ecosystem you fit into, that really describes whether you’re a pest or a native species. So we get our agents from places where our pests are actually natives and where they have their own built in ecological controls. Which are what we use as biocontrols. So we’re just trying to re-establish the same relationship that a pest organism like a tamarisk tree has in its native environment between itself and all of the things that eat it. So we’re trying to establish a component of the ecosystem, here. And it’s not really, it’s not, it’s not magic. There’s no genetic engineering that goes on. We’re not doing something that’s out of the ordinary. We’re just taking a balance of nature that you find in the native lands of our invasive species and bringing it here.
Lisa: That sounds really simple, but what actually goes into your daily, what is your daily day in the life like?
Dan Bean: Our day in the life can be divided between a lot of different tasks, including taking care of and figuring out how to raise our biocontrol agents. And I said they come from other places, they don’t come with an instruction manual. So we have to learn how to raise them here. That’s the first step. And almost every agent that we have here took some time to learn how to rear them and make them happy in their new environment, happy enough to reproduce so that we could get them out and about in Colorado. So our one element of the day in the life is we grow the plants that our insects feed on. We raise the insects. We figure out what temperatures and light conditions and how to feed them the plants properly. We do it inside of the Palisade Insectary. We have a couple of greenhouses and we have chambers with controlled lights and temperatures that we do it in.
We raise the weeds that they feed on. So that’s part of it. Almost all of our biocontrol agents require something to feed on. And for example, we’re raising agents for yellow star thistle, which is a common and destructive weed across a lot of the West. We don’t have it here in great numbers and we don’t want it here in great numbers. But we have to raise those plants in order to feed the beetles that we want to get out as biocontrols. And a point to make about yellow star, while I’m on that topic, it’s a major weed in Utah these days. So our efforts are to collaborate and cooperate with Utah and with weed control managers there and make sure that they have the biocontrols that will suppress yellow star thistle in Utah so that it doesn’t end up coming here.
Lisa: Right, right. It doesn’t stop at the border.
Dan Bean: That’s part of what we do, is collaborate with other states. So raising the insects definitely part of our daily routine. Another part is what we’re doing right now, which is education. We have to let the general public and weed managers and everyone else who’s involved in pest control know about us and know what we do, because we do ask for support from the state, from the federal government, and from end users in various ways. And so we have to let them know: this is what we do. This is our, this is our operation. This is what we produce. This is what our goals are. This is how we can help the people of Colorado or the West. So education is critical. We do things such as this podcast, and we also do tours of the insectary, which I know you went on. You went on a tour when you came and visited for our 80th birthday. We do anywhere from 40 to 60 of those tours a year. So we’re often busy, especially in the off-season. That would be the wintertime, bringing people through and showing them what we do.
Another thing that has become really important in biological control, especially the last 25 years, is monitoring biocontrol after it’s been released into the environment. So that’s also part of what we do. We don’t do it right now because most of our biocontrols are dormant. They’re hiding out for the spring. But when spring comes, we ramp up our monitoring programs and go out in the field. And we have areas where we’ve released biocontrol. And in those areas, we measure the plants that they’re, if it’s a weed biocontrol, we measure the plants, their density, their size. We see if the biocontrol agents are there and doing their job. And we do that year in and year out so that we can eventually report back to weed managers how the biocontrol agent is doing, if it’s working or not. And even though we haven’t seen this, we do look for instances where maybe the biocontrol is feeding on something else. Maybe the tamarisk beetles are feeding on willows. So we check for that, too. And those are the three things we do is: get the biocontrol agents here, raise them at the insectary, monitor them, and do education about what we do here.
Lisa: So tell me about the different biocontrol projects you’re working on right now. Where are your main areas of focus?
Dan Bean: Our projects, I would say you could divide them into the new projects where we’re really still working under the roof or out in the garden of the insectary, and developing the agents, raising enough of them for release. And then the projects that, where they’re out in the field and they’re doing their thing, but we still have to go out and monitor. And then some of our long-term projects where we check in on them now and then, but the agents are already out in the field, they’re doing whatever they’re going to do and we make sure that they’re doing okay.
Some of the new projects include the yellow star thistle project that I talked about earlier. It’s a small black weevil that feeds on yellow star thistle. Yellow star thistle forms a rosette which is like sort of a starburst pattern of leaves in the spring down close to the ground. And then the weevils lay eggs on the leaves and then the eggs hatch and then the larvae, they follow along the stem, inside of the stem and into the main part of the plant where they take out the root and the root crown and damage the plant. So we’re working on that project. We’re raising yellow start thistle, we’re putting weevils on the stems, watching them crawl in, hoping to get enough of them coming back as adults to grow the population.
Another new project that we have is for a plant called white top, otherwise known as hoary cress. I think that it’s a plant that’s becoming much more of a nuisance in Mesa County. And it’s in the mustard family. In the springtime it blooms and you can see really nice white flowers all along the roadsides and in open spaces. Some, like me, are unlucky enough to actually have it in our yards. But we have an agent for it. And the person that is currently working on that project and getting those agents multiplied for use in the field is Nina Louden, who’s here with us today. And while I’m on the topic of Nina and others, we have people at the insectary who work on specific projects. So any project you can name like tamarisk, field bindweed mites, and white top mites would be, all of those would be under Nina’s direction. And all of our projects are under the direction of a project manager. So we divide it up. We do these projects through teamwork, but we make sure that we have a responsible individual for each one.
Lisa: So Nina, did you get to pick what projects you focus on? Do you have any special interest in these projects or how did you become the person?
Nina Louden: In the beginning of a project’s formation we definitely developed discuss with the director here, Dr. Dan Bean, and give him some idea that we have interest in that particular project, such as the tamarisk leaf beetles. For me, I did have interest in working with those as that was one of my job that I acquired while still earning my bachelor’s degree. I was able to work with Dr. Dan Bean and another important mentor, Dr. Tom Dudley. And they kind of impressed upon me the world of biocontrol. I wasn’t familiar with it as an undergraduate but I learned about biocontrol and saw it on the ground while working in Lovelock, Nevada. And so from that particular job, I was privy to working in biological control and I was able to come here as a seasonal for many, many years before earning a full job as a biological control technician.
So I did have interest in that particular project initially coming here. But beyond that, projects of course have changed through the years, but ultimately I had some knowledge of the bindweed mite collections while working with the previous project manager and enjoyed it, really enjoyed collecting them. It’s kind of somewhat of a little treasure hunt out on the ground which a lot of our projects tend to be that way. We are doing a lot of searching and you know communicating with other agencies too about weed infestations that we can access and collect these agents. So I had some training in that particular project before undertaking it as my project and to this day that’s a big one for us. Many people including one of our newer colleagues Ron Phillips and also Kyla Wells are really large help in that it really does take the insectary village to collect the thousands of mite releases that we’re currently needing to serve our long request list.
Lisa: Right. Yeah. Especially for bindweed because that’s a pretty big problem.
Nina Louden: Yeah, it’s basically ubiquitous with homeowning. Like if you, wherever you live you likely have it.
Lisa: Yep. And it’s really hard to get rid of. Really hard. It doesn’t really respond to anything. Including pulling it out.
Nina Louden: No. So this is, the bindweed mites are a really nice long-term control solution and granted they do take a large degree of patience to really see significant results. But if you’re willing to give them some time and kind of watch for them to progress then I think it’s a worthwhile strategy.
Lisa: I know that there’s a request a bug program is one of the services offered here. So who would be a good fit? Like what, what homeowner, what resident would be a good fit for requesting bugs? You know, maybe you don’t have one or two plants or like what’s the scale of the size of where that can be beneficial?
Nina Louden: Yes, we do like to give a good degree of information previous to someone requesting. So we definitely have a write up on the website per project, to explain what warrants release of a biocontrol and potential success. Because there are instances where they’re not going to really help. And so we do like to spread that information that, ultimately you need enough of that weed to warrant control rather than just eradication. If there’s a possibility you can eradicate that weed in your yard, we really recommend that first. But if you really can’t battle it to a level where it’s not prevalent, then I would recommend using biocontrols in that instance because that’s a nice tool to decrease the density and then you can attack it in other ways, too. So we are a tool in integrated pest management and we also recommend other strategies as well in a lot of cases. So, that’s something we like to mention too is like, okay, now that you have less bindweed, you can mow, per se, or with Russian knapweed and certain agents like okay, you could mow or maybe don’t water as much when you’re first establishing certain a biocontrol. So we definitely like to preface those requests with useful information for homeowners. And one other thing I would add is that we also ship really thorough instructions per agent so that people know more of what they’re getting into, how best to apply them, and what to expect.
Lisa: Sure. So it really is like a collaboration with a homeowner. You don’t just. You’re not just gonna send out a box of bugs and be like, good luck. Good luck.
Nina Louden: Yes, yes, completely. Because we wanna ensure the best means of them establishing and helping in the long run.
Lisa: Cool. What other projects are kind of the big ones that you all are working on right now? So you went over a couple new ones. Those are maybe more established programs, established agent.
Nina Louden: Well, the white top mites are very promising for us because we know there’s a huge deal of infestation of white top, or hoary crest, throughout our state. And so we really want to apply more of these mites across the state. And it’s taking some time, several years to get enough of a population here to spread them effectively. So we’re really pleased to report we were able to reach 18 locations last season to release, and that is opposed to just five releases in the year previous. So we’ve had exponential growth of the hoary crest mites, a specialist mite similar to the field bindweed mites. So in that respect, we’re hopeful that they’ll also have as much success. But it is still relatively early to know how much impact they’ll ultimately have. But we’re really hopeful to see more exponential growth and get to more sites and eventually have those sites become collectible as well. And then we can work more in coordination with those weed managers to distribute them in their counties and really spread wealth of mites.
Lisa: Yeah. So like any scientific endeavor, there’s a lot of patience involved and a lot of just persistence.
Dan Bean: Another project we have that’s at its fairly early stages is our Russian knapweed project. And we’ve released two agents that attack Russian knapweed. One of them hits the stem and causes it to swell up into a gall structure, and that one is a wasp. And the other one hits the growing shoot tips of Russian knapweed and causes them to stop growing and stop flowering, and that one is a fly. We started that project about 15 years ago. So I think that gives you a good notion of what we consider a recent project. In other words, it’s not very instantaneous. Like, 15 years later, we’re still learning more about those agents and getting them out to all corners of the state. But at this point, the project is well along. If you’re hiking around in Colorado National Monument, like I was was last summer, up in a drainage where I know no releases have ever been made, I saw some knapweed plants, Russian knapweed plants, that had the shoot tip galling flies.
So that’s what we hope for, so that they can get around on their own. We’ve given them their boost. And someday the mites Nina was talking about for white top, we hope to see them in places where we haven’t released them. They’re living organisms. They can move around in the environment. And eventually we set them off on their own, like sending your kids to college. It’s time. Time to go off and propagate and take care of yourselves. So the Russian knapweed project is at that point, they’re, they’re moving around the state on their own. We still release, we release 100,000 or more of the stem galling wasps every year still. But in most places, where we do our releases nearby at least, we find established wasps and established flies.
And then we have some much older projects like leafy spurge, where we’ve been releasing or the insectary has been this before my time. They were releasing them in the 1980s. We still have areas where we don’t have enough of them out in the field to do the job that we know they can do. And so we tune in occasionally and do some major releases around the state. This happens with some of our biocontrols, that once releases are made, the biocontrol agents will move, mostly they’re mobile. They’ll get out of an area and move to find new weeds to feed on. And then you might have to come back and do more releases or maybe ecological conditions have changed. So we do come in and fill in occasionally. And leafy spurge is a good example of that.
We have agents for yellow toad flax and dalmatian toad flax, which are really, really beautiful flowers. And they’re attractive enough so that you would want them in your garden. And they were probably used horticulturally. Well, I know that they were. But a lot of times our horticultural plants jump the fence and then are well suited for the ecological conditions in Colorado and the west and get out of control. And the toad flaxes are a good example of that.
There’s another, another one that lives that’s found in the high country. It’s called oxeye daisy. And I think people, a lot of people, have experience with Shasta daisies as an ornamental. Oxeye daisies are a close relative and they happen to find it very hospitable to live in the intermediate and high countries of Colorado. So there are places where you can go in the mountains and say, oh yeah, that’s a really beautiful white flower, but it’s actually out-competing the natives. And it’s oxeye daisy. We’re at a point now where we’re ready to receive biocontrols for oxeye daisies, so we’re gearing up for that one. The agents are coming along and probably are close to approval. So that’s another brand new one that escaped horticulturally.
Lisa: But it all started with peaches, right?
Dan Bean: It did.
Lisa: Way back 80 years ago, it was the peach that kind of got everything going. So that. But that’s still, Is there, I guess that would be a good point to say. Is there ever a point where you are done with one of these projects? Where you can wrap it up and the pest isn’t a problem anymore, or is it just ongoing?
Dan Bean: We do have projects that we finish. Going back to the peach moth or oriental fruit moth. We still release biocontrol agents for that organism. And the agents are wasps that are capable of stinging the larval stages of oriental fruit moth. And then their offspring develop inside of that, inside of that caterpillar and destroy it. At about the time it’s ready to pupate, they eat it from the inside out. But it’s, we’re sitting, right now we’re in the conference room of the Palisade Insectary and I can look outside and see the peach groves. Whenever we do a tour here, and we do a lot of them, I always look outside and force people to turn their heads and look at the peaches of the Grand Valley and I say that’s how we got started, with the peach pest.
And I always like to thank the farmers for being supportive of biocontrol, supportive of what we do at the Insectary. And it’s that long-term support from peach farmers and other agricultural producers that has allowed us to flourish. But peach farmers in particular, they were the first ones. And the Colorado Department of Agriculture in its current form didn’t start until 1949 and we started in 1945. So we weren’t placed here by the Department of Agriculture. We were more of like an organic grassroots organization. The Department of Agriculture incorporated us.
For a long time we were with the plants division because biocontrol and plant health are tightly linked. And then in 2007 we moved over to Conservation Services, thinking that we could really blend well with noxious weed management, which is also in Conservation Services. Actually we didn’t transfer to Conservation Services. Conservation Services were, that division was formed with biological control as one of the initial members of Conservation Services. We were part of the first four groups that started in Services, including noxious weeds. The person that founded Conservation Services thought that it would be a great idea to put noxious weeds and biocontrol together, were a good fit. So our history was really started with peach growers and then it expanded out to other end users in Colorado and eventually we’re in conservation services with a lot of other programs and projects that are involved with helping ag producers do their job in a way that’s environmentally sound.
Lisa: How did you get into this field originally? Did you just always really, were you always passionate about this or was it something you stumbled onto?
Dan Bean: I started with an interest in insect biology. And I started when I was probably early elementary school, maybe six or seven. I became interested in all aspects of biology. But I won’t say that I was, I wasn’t studying the literature. I wasn’t that kind of biology. It was going outside and catching things and watching them. I would capture caterpillars of all sizes, all kinds, and have them in my room and let them develop and emerge as whatever butterfly or moth they were going to emerge as. I liked ants. I was amazed at what they do. So I would try to dig up an ant colony, get the queen, because you need the queen if you’re going to have a reproductive individual. Try to capture the queen. And then I had different jars and things in my room with colonies and had different caterpillars and watched them emerge.
And then, later on in my career, after I got a degree in biology, undergraduate degree, and then tried to figure out what I was going to do. And I thought going to graduate school in a biological field would be a great idea. It was really interesting to me. So I looked at a number of programs and found several that really focused on insects. Entomology programs. Applied for graduate school, went to University of Wisconsin in entomology and studied, really focused once again on insects after starting out as a child in that field.
For entomology, most of what people were interested in at that point was controlling insects as pests. So, I worked for a scientist at University of Wisconsin who worked on European corn borer. And corn borer was a major pest in Wisconsin and a lot of the upper Midwest. It would attack plants and destroy them or weaken them. And there was a major effort to understand how to control the European corn borer, both through sprays but also through breeding programs that made corn more resistant to its attack. And my advisor, whose name was Stanley Beck, was one of the pioneers in developing corn strains that were more resistant to attack. So he was interested in the relationship between plants and insects. When I got to his laboratory, I learned about plant-insect interactions. And that was always on the back burner in my mind. But we also wanted to control corn borers, learn more about them, control them, develop methods to keep them from propagating that didn’t involve standard insecticides.
So we looked at hormones that could impact development, insect hormones. Insects have a set of hormones that are chemically very different from what we have. Similar in some distant ways, but definitely not something that we’d find in the human body. So the notion at the time was if we could develop sprays, pesticides that utilized insect hormones instead of the more general neurotoxins that we were spraying at the time, and still do, that it could be beneficial for human health, environmental health, and still kill the insects. So that’s how I got started, keeping insect-plant interactions in mind.
And then I had various jobs that involved either teaching or killing insects in various ways. And relatively late in my career, a friend of mine, a colleague of mine named Tom Dudley, contacted me. I was in North Carolina, I was teaching insect biology at the University of North Carolina, and contacted me and said, I have a project where we could use an insect physiologist, somebody that understands insect biology and insect-plant interactions. And that project was the tamarisk project. And at the time I was trying to decide how much, what I was going to do with my career. And I always tell people that careers, you know in the modern day, people change careers quite often, but at some point back in the day people would get into a career path and never change. So I was convinced after talking to my friend and colleague Tom, that there was a place for a trained insect physiologist to work in biocontrol. Biocontrol of weeds specifically.
So I left North Carolina. I moved to a USDA facility in California and started working at field sites, including a field site in Lovelock, Nevada, which is where I met Nina. And Tom Dudley was hiring people. That’s where, that’s how Nina got into the project. Hiring people to work over the summer out in the field on tamarisk biocontrol. And that was my first project too. So I always say with Nina, like our first project was the same in the same spot, which was biocontrol of tamarisk, using tamarisk beetles.
Lisa: Very cool.
Dan Bean: And eventually, this job opened up up in 2005. I saw it, applied for it and it expanded my range of projects greatly. Like, it wasn’t just tamarisk anymore. It was a whole array of projects, some on weeds, but also, we were still working on controlling the peach moth. We had other projects going on. And when you asked about, whether projects come and go or do we keep them all forever? We do have some forever projects, but we were also working on one to control the cereal leaf beetle. And I’m sure Nina remembers that one. It was a painful project because the biocontrols for cereal leaf beetle were tiny. There were parasites that hit the eggs of that beetle. So if you can imagine a wasp that was minute that could feed on the egg of a cereal leaf beetle, it was a difficult project logistically, just raising them here, getting them out in the field.
Lisa: Probably just knowing where they were.
Dan Bean: You had to have good eyesight. This is why it was great to have people that were younger. At that point I was already wearing bifocals, so it was difficult. And we shipped these tiny parasitic wasps called Anaphes Flavipes. we shipped them up to the Pacific Northwest where cereal leaf beetle was really getting out of control. And they established in the field. And within a few years, we dropped the project. They were already established up in Washington and Idaho and northern Oregon. So that’s a good example of a project that we held for, I think that project went about eight years. And then, once they were established, we stopped.
And we have several projects like that. Another one is against St. John’s Wort, which people might recognize as a medicinal plant. But it’s another one that was brought over, planted, and jumped the garden fence. And it actually got a different name in California and southern Oregon because of where it was becoming an invasive pest in the Klamath river basin. So it was called Klamath weed there. It got way out of control. They brought in a couple beetles that feed on it, coincidentally, at exactly the same time that the insectary was being founded in 1945-46. And they released beetles against St. John’s wort. And it became the first successful biological control of a weed.
But what is underappreciated is we had an outbreak of Klamath weed here in Colorado, at sites over on the Front Range and foothills. And in the 1950s, based on the great success they’d had in California, they released the Klamath weed beetles here. And it really brought the plant under control to the point that it never became the major invasive species that a lot of our weeds became. So that’s a good example of a project that was started and implemented by people at the Insectary and elsewhere back in the 50s and 60s and we don’t do it anymore.
Lisa: Yeah, that must just be hugely satisfying to see the results relatively quickly in the normal scale of things. I am curious Nina too, how you got into this. Were you also collecting bugs and jars had very wonderful parents.
Nina Louden: It’s really funny you say that because just earlier while Dan was speaking I was thinking of an incident in my mom’s garden as a child where she literally had a whole jar full of grasshoppers. She was acting as the biocontrol in that case. And I definitely recall releasing them back like oh, we must let these go and be free once more. Which probably hard on my mom. But I think from that point in time I just had a fondness kind of for most living things. So I guess as Dan mentioned, just kind of having interest and kind of curiosity of like, of interactions in nature and just wanting to be involved as an undergraduate in some way to like take part in hopefully some kind of conservation.
So my degree is in conservation biology and then I went back to school to earn a master’s degree in ecology with emphasis in entomology. So I do feel like those studies kind of helped to prepare me for applying those areas of knowledge to actually get on the ground and hopefully reduce pesticide application. That is one of our main goals. So in the cases where we can reduce herbicide and insecticide use, we are. And so I think to just keep working at that and know our place too. Maybe not in all settings it’s going to work out for people to use biocontrol of course, but in a lot of instances it’s really a long-term, really environmentally sound solution. And so in that respect I feel grateful that I get to work in this job and have that role in my life.
Lisa: So curious about both of your opinions on this one. But at this point, what do you feel like is the biggest threat to the ecosystem of the Grand Valley or what are you concerned about for the future, I guess?
Nina Louden: I mean for me, I guess I would say probably just insecticide, herbicide reduction for me. But I think introduction of other pests is also of concern in our role in regards to new invading pests. But, beyond that, I’m going to let Dan speak here.
Dan Bean: Well we are, as invasive species control group, in terms of problems that we can actually help with. I look at it through the invasive species lens and see what’s coming down the road. I mean, if you could step back beyond that, of course, it’s all about water in the west and water conservation, appropriate use of water. So I think that, that will be one of our largest environmental concerns is, where we go with water. But we can’t do anything about that at the insectary. So that’s something, you know, that’s a, that’s a worry that I can have like, away from work.
Even though, tamarisk reduction of tamarisk biomass results in the reduction of water use. And that has been, it’s been shown, through studies and measurements, measurements made in the field, that that’s so, that beetle defoliation causes a diminished evapotranspiration by tamarisk. And all of our weeds do transpire and all of our weeds do remove water from the soil and put it into the atmosphere. So, you know, I’m trying not to say that we have nothing to do with water use, but.
Lisa: It’s all related.
Dan Bean: Yeah, it’s, it’s interrelated, in a healthy ecosystem. In terms of what we have on the horizon in the Grand Valley for invasive species. We’ve talked about some that concern us. You know, I think, I think the mustard white top is certainly one that’s going to cause everybody trouble in the near future and distant future. Japanese beetle is one that’s highly concerning. We’re currently in an eradication mode and city of Grand Junction, the County, CSU Extension, I mean, everyone is pointed toward eradicating in the valley. I don’t know if that’s feasible at this point. They’re pretty widespread. But we give it the best shot that we possibly can because obviously what we want is a situation where we don’t have to worry about them.
And I will bring up that when I first came here, and Nina also, the town of Palisade was participating in an eradication effort along with CSU Extension and the Colorado Department of Agriculture, because we had an outbreak of Japanese beetle here in Palisade. And I think it’s very worthy of a lot of recognition and applause for what happened in Palisade. A lot of the homeowners participated, in fact, most did, in an effort to rid the town of Palisade of Japanese beetles and certainly got all the support from the peach growers in the area. It was really a team effort in a big way. CSU extension definitely helped out big time, did trapping and monitoring. Colorado Department of Agriculture participated. We provided a building for the central nervous system of that project. So I got to watch Japanese beetle go down all the way to zero in Palisade.
So that, that gave me a slightly different mindset. I felt it’s going to be so difficult to eradicate those. The infestation now, that’s centered more down in the Grand Junction area, is larger, more widespread geographically. So it’ll be a more difficult lift to eradicate them. They would be hard on the farming community here. Japanese beetle, it’s one of those insects that eats almost everything. And we do battle with those in the world of agriculture. And it’s why a lot of people look at what we do. The releasing insects that eat plants, just freaks people out. And it should, because people are used to those agricultural pests that don’t seem to have any barriers on going from one item to the next. And Japanese beetle feeds on several hundred different plants.
As a note, all the agents that we bring in here are specialists. And it’s a different, a different lifestyle, as you might say, for an insect to be a specialist versus a generalist that eats everything. So we try to, we try to let people know that we’re not, we’re not releasing something like a Japanese beetle or one of our recent projects is on corn earworm, which has become a major problem in the Olathe area. Olathe has thousands of acres in sweet corn worth millions of dollars. And there’s an insect that has become resistant to pesticides. It’s called the corn earworm. And right now it causes enough damage that if an Olathe sweet corn grower ships their crop up to City Market, they’ll peel back a few ears. And if they get over 10%, I think it’s 5% to 10%, with an earworm, they reject the whole batch. So obviously a major economic impact if that agent gets out of control. And it eats a lot of different plants. So we’re looking for a biocontrol for that.
It’s a great example of how what I say now, like, Japanese beetle and corn ear worm are bad, and we have to keep an eye out for them. But as much, as much as we’re looking at the knowns, we also have to look at the unknowns. We don’t know what invasive species will be next or how it will impact agriculture or how it’ll impact open space and native natural ecosystems. Because we’re not only tuned in to the agricultural community, but also to our natural native ecosystems. And we want to keep them intact as much as possible. And in that regard something like tamarisk will definitely impact, negatively impact an ecosystem, but we don’t know what else is out there and what might come in next and be a problem. So there are some big question marks there also.
Lisa: Just a couple lighter questions now. So I know bugs are a really big part of your day and I like how you respectfully call them agents and it kind of gives them a little bit more of a coworker type role. Are there any insects though that just totally gross you out, that you just can’t stand? Because they are around! When you walk into the Insectary, you should know there are going to be insects here. But just personally, is there any bug that you just dislike?
Nina Louden: That’s a really good question for asking, like bug nerds, because, I think I’ve never had to really think about that. I’ve never had an. I can’t think of an insect that like just outright creeps me out. But I’m deathly afraid of snakes, so that’s a little different. But I really respect them and I think that we need to definitely educate our young people that there are a lot of beneficial insects. So even if they do give you the creeps, which I understand in some instances, but that there’s such an array out there of insects that are helping us so much. So even if you feel a little creeped out, like, they’re probably doing an important job. But in that respect, if I see a snake, I’m going to be jumpy and probably run away. But I still respect them.
Lisa: I love that.
Dan Bean: I can’t think of any that creep me out. There are some that I really don’t like seeing around. One of them is a recent invader, the elm seed bug. And that has not as much creeped me out as grossed me out. Because we have, one of our neighbors has an elm tree and man, we get tens of thousands of them in the house.
Lisa: I also see, yeah, yeah, they’re not that gross. But you’re just like, where are you coming from?
Dan Bean: Where are you coming from. What can we do about you? And they would. Sometimes they crawl on the ceiling, they drop on your bed. I mean, nobody likes that. They’re, they’re disturbing. I’m also not a big fan of bedbugs. I’ve seen them. I’ve never been bitten by one so far, knock on wood. But, I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them in action. And nobody, nobody wants those. In fact, most of the bloodsucking insects I’m not, not too thrilled by. And it’s not really. I know they’re just doing what they do, but nobody wants to get West Nile or dengue or malaria. Nobody wants. And getting a little bit out of the insect realm and into ticks. That’s where I was going with this.
Lisa: You’re making me itchy!
Dan Bean: Well, I’m not, I can’t think of any insects that truly gross me out. Even mosquitoes. I don’t mind them, but I’m going to say ticks do. They’re not an insect, they’re an arthropod. They’re a relative, close enough. But I really don’t like them. And I don’t like them because they carry such an array of diseases, some that we haven’t even discovered yet, I’m sure. And every time they talk about, oh yeah, well, this new Rickettsial disease has been discovered in ticks that we didn’t know about before. And it’s called some fever or another.
And then I had a friend, a colleague who was a graduate student in North Carolina who ended up getting Rocky Mountain spotted fever in North Carolina. Even though it’s called Rocky Mountain spotted fever, it’s pretty dominant other places in the country. The medical profession didn’t realize what he had. And even though it’s treatable with antibiotics, he ended up coming close to death before they caught on and treated him. So ticks gross me out. I don’t like seeing, I don’t like being bitten by them. I avoid it. I do tick checks on a routine basis and definitely do not want to be bitten by one.
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. That’s a really good one. Nina’s agreeing. Something with basically no beneficial use whatsoever. Right. It’s just harmful. So on the flip side of that, if you were to be a bug, if you were to be an insect, what insect would you be?
Dan Bean: Well, I’ll start. I would be a dragonfly. And I choose that one. There are a few others that would be wonderful to try out. First of all, none of them have a long lifespan. So, you choose to be an insect, you have to realize every day is precious! But dragonflies, in both their larval and adult forms, their nymphal forms, are amazing predators. In the adult form, they have outstanding vision, they can see things that I think, I think if you could see through the eyes of a dragonfly, you’d see a different world. For one thing, they can see in almost all directions, they can move their head in almost all directions. And they can interact not only with their prey items, which they catch in midair, which means they have to have not only great eyesight, but extreme maneuverability in the air. But I’ve seen them in these congregations with each other where they’re in the same airspace. They know where all their neighbors are. And when an insect, a prey item, a mosquito would be one that they would feed on, comes into vision, one of them will peel off and snag it. So they know where they all are flying and basically in formation. They’re strong, strong fliers, highly maneuverable. Most flying insects have four wings and most of them have a lot of coordination with or their front pair of wings and back pair of wings are actually hooked to each other. Dragonflies have a lot of maneuverability in that respect and they can control all four wings. So they can stop on a dime, turn, run around. I think they’re really beautiful creatures anyway, so dragonfly is my choice.
Lisa: I love it.
Nina Louden: I have to say I’m really fond of the golden tortoise beetles. And if you, I have a photo brought up.
Lisa: Oh, they’re gorgeous.
Nina Louden: So if you haven’t seen these before, it’s definitely worth searching.
Lisa: Like a piece of jewelry.
Nina Louden: Yes. They’re astoundingly golden, iridescent golden. And they have a strange, like clear shell stamped over. And so, they’re really astonishing to me. And sometimes we collect them when we collect our musk thistle weevils. So I’m privileged to get to see them in real life. And so on that note, I think I would choose that beetle. That particular beetle. Yeah, I love it.
Lisa: Just because it’s so beautiful and unique?
Nina Louden: Yeah, they’re so unique and I’m fond of beetles for sure.
Lisa: This just seems like a really fun place to work. So it seems like you all have a really good time kind of in your daily job. So I really appreciate that about you all too. So how can the people of Palisade, how can the residents here, like, how can they support the insectary and, you know, learn more about it if they want to?
Dan Bean: We do have tours of the insectary.
Lisa: So say if somebody had family visiting from out of town, could they just call up and schedule a tour? Is it that informal?
Dan Bean: It depends on the time of year. We do really restrict tours starting, let’s say about mid-April. Definitely May, June, July, and August are big, big months for us in terms of, we spend a lot of time in the field. We’re packaging up stuff. This place is very different looking than it looks right now, with people scurrying around, going out in the field, packaging up bindweed mites, shipping. So I would avoid that time. But in the winter, you can stop by and have a look. I would call ahead of time, call the Palisade Insectary, our person at the front desk, Sam Morgan, is very, very good about talking to people, arranging tours, making sure that we can accommodate the public as much as possible.
In terms of support, we are supported by the state of Colorado and also by the end users. Most of what we ship out has a shipping fee. So some of our support comes from end users paying the shipping fee. And then we also get grants funded through the USDA and other agencies. In other words, people in Palisade are already supporting us by being Colorado citizens, because that’s really our roots are in Colorado, and those roots are concentrated right in Palisade.
There has been talk about, it’s been brought up a few times since I’ve been here, well, why don’t we have all of our Colorado Department of Ag facilities in Broomfield, which is where our main office is? And it’s always been a strong No. Like, we want to be out here. This is our. This is where we started, and this is where we want to stay. And I think it’s helpful for the Colorado Department of Ag to have, to have one of its main, like, I guess part of the central nervous system out here. So Palisade supports us by being our home. That’s kind of a funny way to put it, but it is. This is where we are. Also, it’s worth noting that we lease this land that the insectary is on, from the town of Palisade, for the whopping amount of $1 per year. So Palisade has been a really good landlord to us.
Lisa: I think the town values having this here as well.
Dan Bean: So it’s. We benefit from being here. And we feel like we get a lot out of the Town of Palisade. What we wish and hope is that people that live in Palisade who are interested in town life and what’s going on in the area realize that we’re here. A lot of times, not a lot of times, almost all the time, people that I encounter people that are even from town and I tell them what we do and where we are, they say, oh, I didn’t know that. So we try to get the word out to, starting in Palisade, and then in the Grand Valley in general, that we’re here. And that’s built right into our strategic plan, our mission and such. Is that to let people know that we exist.
Lisa: Yeah. And that’s an ongoing thing. Right. So, is there anything that I missed that you definitely want to include or share with any listeners? Anything I didn’t ask?
Dan Bean: I will say that there are a couple of biocontrol agents coming down the line. And I know I mentioned oxeye Daisy, but there’s always an interest in like, do you have a biocontrol agent for Kochia? That’s one of the ones that people always ask about. And the answer is, sadly we don’t. And there are none in development that I know of. They ask, do you have a biocontrol agent for Cheatgrass? And happily, there’s a project going to develop biocontrol agents for Cheatgrass, so you can check that one off as hopeful. A couple of others are Russian Olive, which is a major invader of riparian areas. And we do have a biocontrol agent coming down the line for that. It’s not approved yet for release. This might be a good time to say that in terms of biocontrol safety, there are safety tests go on for about 10 years. So an agent like the mite that attacks Russian olive is still in the safety zone of tests and it’s passed all the, jumped all the hurdles quite well.
Lisa: And this is to make sure you’re not inviting something like a Japanese beetle that’s just going to eat everything in addition to what you want it to eat.
Dan Bean: Right. We’re very safety focused. And yes, as you said, Japanese beetle is a generalist. It eats everything. We want specialists that don’t have any taste for anything else. And the mite for Russian olive is one of those. And then there’s another agent for a plant that’s not as well known right here. It’s called hounds’ tongue, but it’s coming down, that’s coming down the line. It’s more right up. I’m looking out the window back up to the Book Cliffs. There’s a lot of hounds’ tongue up there. It’s spread because it sticks to the coats of livestock, pets, wildlife. The seeds are like Velcro. They stick to almost everything and anything. And it can really take over an area. It’s called hounds’ tongue, I think, because the leaves look like a tongue. I don’t think so really, but I guess somebody with a better imagination thought that. But it’s taking over a lot of the rangelands that are actually pretty nearby. So we do have agents coming down the line. And they’re all. It’s all about safety when to it comes to evaluating. So they’re all in that process of being tested. But we do have. We do have agents that are promising for some of our other weeds.
Lisa: So lots to come in the future.
Dan Bean: Yes, it’s an ongoing, it’s a process.
Lisa: Yeah. Well, I appreciate both of your time so much. Really. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me and it’s so interesting to learn about. And I’m excited to share it with the people of Palisade too, to hear more. So thank you so much.
Dan Bean: Well, thanks. Thank you for coming. As I said during the parts of the talk, various spots, education is important. So your coming here and recording this is, it’s actually helping us do our job. It’s not taking time out from our job. It’s actually,
Lisa: Oh, good distinction.
Dan Bean: It’s another, you know, it’s another segment of our job. So we really depend on, we depend heavily on the media to get the word out on who we are and what we do. I mean, you know, getting, getting something online exposes us to a much larger audience than we could ever get, like touring the insectary. And we do tour a lot of people, but we rely on the media to get information out. So, thank you for coming and interviewing us.
Lisa: Well, I’m thrilled to help.
Lisa: The next time you are looking for something to do on a cold day, consider a visit to the Palisade Insectary. Tours are available between September and March. They can accommodate a maximum of 20 people but also do tours for individual families or smaller groups. Call to arrange a tour at 970-464-7916, ext. 0. You can find the Insectary online at ag.colorado.gov/conservation/palisade-insectary. The building is located at 750 37 8/10 Road, just north of downtown Palisade.
The podcast’s theme music is Riverbend by Geoff Roper.
Thanks for listening. With love, from Palisade.