Diario del proyecto Washington Native Bee Society

Let's add more bee nests next year.

Thank You From Project GNBee
jordan_kue jordan_kue

Dear ground-nesting bee community,

As we close out our northern hemisphere summer, we want to acknowledge and thank you for your observations, photos, and taxonomic assignments. With your help, we’ve been able to grow this community and spread awareness about the diversity of bees and the importance of our native ground-nesting pollinators. Thus far, we have we’ve collected over 1200 observations from over 650 people, and this is just the beginning. While some species may have come and gone for the season, still others are beginning to emerge. So, continue to keep an eye out for nest new sites. We also encourage repeat observations from known active nest sites as they can help to reveal the nesting phenology and growth factors. Consider visiting a nesting site reported by a fellow citizen scientist —keep spreading the word and searching the world.

If you are interested in getting more involved, consider becoming a bee ambassador for a nesting site near you, helping to provide continual data and observations of the site. To get more information on being a bee ambassador and supporting the native bees near you, email us at groundnestingbees@gmail.com.

The more records we collect, the more we can learn the specific nesting requirements of different groups of bees. Indeed, from the soil texture data collected from local aggregation sites, we are beginning the next phase of project GNBee, installing bee beds at local farms. These specialized soil beds will provide safe, uninterrupted habitat for native bees to nest, helping promote native conservation along with local farm pollination. To stay up to date with our progress, follow us on Instagram (@projectgnbee) and keep an eye on our website, gnbee.org. You can also respond to this message to be added to our email list and receive periodic updates in your inbox.

Thank you again and we hope to see more of your observations as we work together to educate about protecting and promoting native bees across diverse ecologies and build a sustainable and resilient future for all.

Sincerely,

Project GNBee

https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/82264-two-days-until-bug-week

Two days until Bug week!
Bug Week at the Newport library is coming right up!
Central to the week's activities is the bioblitz hosted here on iNaturalist! The challenge is for us to see how many observations of bugs (and other creepy-crawlies/invertebrates) we can record between July 21st and July 29th!

Pend Oreille county has a rich diversity of wildlife including invertebrates. This bioblitz's purpose is to introduce residents of Pend Oreille county to the joys of wildlife observation and citizen science.
In conjunction with the bioblitz, the Newport Library is hosting some bug-themed activities.

All activities hosted at the Newport Library unless otherwise indicated.
July 17th - 22nd: Pick up a free "X-Kids" activity book, designed for ages 8-11.
Friday, July 21st at 4 pm: Learn how to use iNaturalist
Monday, July 24th at 11 am: "Brilliant Bugs," a presentation by James Reed from the Washington Butterfly Association
Monday, July 24th at 9 pm: Celebrate national moth week by going mothing behind the library! We'll have a moth trap set up, and James Reed will be there as well.

Wednesday, July 26th at 11 am: Bring your kids to Newport City Park and join in our Great Bug Hunt! We will provide cute hats, vests, and nets that the kids can take home. For each kind of bug you find, win a badge!

To participate in the bioblitz, simply follow these steps:
Download the free iNaturalist app to your device.
Set up an iNaturalist account (must be 13 years old).
Take photos of invertebrates.
Upload your photos to iNaturalist.
Learn more as your photos are identified by the iNaturalist community.

Please help spread the word!
If you have questions please contact Kelly Burdick: kburdick@pocld.org

July 28th at 7:30pm on Zoom

The miniature world of bees on flowers must be the inspiration for every magical fairy wonderland ever portrayed in art. It's hard not to reach for a camera to capture a brief moment of the beauty. As more people have taken to the calling of native bees in recent years, the craft of photographing them has taken stunning leaps. For this presentation, we'll explore macro photography with a focus on the unique challenges that come with bees, the benefits and drawbacks of various camera platforms and techniques, and some of the unusual intangibles that come with the territory. Whether you’re a seasoned shutter clicker or just getting into the game, there's likely to be something of interest for you.

To register, fill out the form at this link on our website:
https://www.wanativebeesociety.org/event-bee-photography-joe-dlugo

We have passed 20,000 bee observations. What an incredible achievement. Thank you for spotting bees and posting them. More thanks go to the people that visit and help with identifications!

Also thank you for having patience with our persnicketiness with Pyrobombus and making sure our bees are really PNW bees and not eastern bees that the Computer Vision suggested. The CV needs 100 observations of each new bee at "Research Grade" before it will learn about them, so please keep finding and posting those less common bees from multiple sightings. We are working together to build a strong and scientific project.

If you have not already figured this out, clicking on [SPECIES] while the project page is open will sort all our bees into their designated groups. The bees at the top of the list are our most commonly photographed. The bees down below are more rare. Some are identified to genus or subgenus so far, though some few are only to family (which was where we began in Oct of 2020!. Of 160 bees identified to "species" about 130 are actually to species and a few more are identified as bees that do not live in Washington, so thanks go to the people that followed the Computer Visions suggestions, but have agreed to change their IDs to a more correct identification.

There are at least 600 native bee species that were historically found in Washington. It will take people like you interested in native bees and willing to keep looking in all the different eco-regions for us to come close to finding all most of them.

Thank you all and keep up the great work!

I just rediscovered this article asking for more posts of observations for our parks. I will copy the main request, which is for more people to post their park bee photos to iNaturalist, but please go and look at the website for yourself. They have links to show photos of the bees they found there already, but let's see if we can find some others, shall we? **

https://www.nps.gov/articles/bees-of-the-north-coast-and-cascades.htm?utm_source=article&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=experience_more&utm_content=large

"Bees of the North Coast & Cascades
Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, Mount Rainier National Park, North Cascades National Park, Olympic National Park, San Juan Island National Historical Park

Bees are some of the most abundant and important pollinators in the world – especially in mountainous environments. Despite the importance of bees in our natural environments, many national parks do not know what species are in their parks. In 2016, to celebrate the Centennial of the National Park Service, North Coast and Cascades National Parks focused on pollinators. The inventories we initiated at that time are just a beginning; you can continue our quest to learn more about bees by uploading your photos to inaturalist.org."

**And don't stop there, add photos of any Washington Parks. iNaturalist allows us to go back in time and add observations for old photos, so if you have hiked in the parks before and can get reasonably close with location lat/longs you could add those too.

Please join the Washington Native Bee Society on Thursday January 27th at 7:30 pm (join early for 'meeting bonus', see below) to learn about the Washington State Pollinator Health Task Force.

Katie Buckley, the Washington Pollinator Health Task Force Coordinator, will be presenting on Native Pollinator Protection in Washington under the Washington State Legislature Bill 5552. The bill acknowledges the importance of pollinators and was responsible for creating a pollinator health program within the Washington State Department of Agriculture. A task force was created that has given recommendations to the Legislature, adding pollinators and pollinator habitat to the list of things state land managing agencies must consider in their land acquisition and management, as well as authorizes municipalities to create community gardens and urban agricultural zones. Website link: https://www.wanativebeesociety.org/meetings-katie-buckley

Meeting Bonus: starting in January 2022, we will be opening the WaNBS zoom meetings at 7pm with slideshows of bee photos and participating in informal discussions prior to our official start time of 7:30pm. It’ll be an opportunity to talk casually, “geek-out” about bees, share our favorite images, and help each other to identify some of the mystery bees that we may have come across in our field excursions.

[Below is copied from the Zoom email. It may be easier or work better to go to the website and register there: wanativebeesociety.org]

Time: Jan 27, 2022 07:30 PM (Or join early at 7PM!!)

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4125543030?pwd=TlFQWnBPSGxyem5FblY5aTFjeGNIZz09

Meeting ID: 412 554 3030
Passcode: Bees

One tap mobile
+12532158782,,4125543030#,,,,*316634# US (Tacoma)
+13462487799,,4125543030#,,,,*316634# US (Houston)

See you there!

Join Meeting
Visit the Washington Native Bee Society website

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Many species of bumble bee (Bombus) mimic each other and are difficult or impossible to tell apart from photos. For example, B. vosnesenskii and B. caliginosus males are distinguished by a subtle difference in antennal proportions. To tell apart females of these species, you either need a good view of the underside of their abdomen or a good view and expert knowledge of their face shape. This mimicry means that many Bombus observations can’t be ID’d past subgenus level with even quite good photos. However, there are over 30 species in just the subgenus Pyrobombus, and sometimes it is possible to narrow it down to just two or a few among these. iNaturalist doesn’t allow multi-species categories like this in the official taxonomy for IDing because they are not monophyletic. We value this information, however, so we decided to set up a new observation field to allow us to capture it for bees in the subgenus Pyrobombus.

To use this observation field, first go to an iNat observation. Scroll down, looking at the categories in the right sidebar, until you find “Observation fields.” There, you click in the “Choose a field” text box and type in “Pyrobombus” (but without the quotation marks). Then a new list pops up, at first showing its first entry, “IDable-to-species.” Click on that and you’ll see a list of common sets of species that can’t always be distinguished from photos. Once you’ve clicked on the group you want, click “Add” to save the entry. Here is an example of an observation where this field has been used.

We hope that if this field is used widely enough, its easily-exportable data will give valuable range information. We also hope it will reduce the temptation to go all the way to species when it isn’t quite justified by photos. Let us know if you like it! We can add other fields for other subgenera if people find it useful.

We owe thanks to BugGuide, from whose taxonomy we got the lists of difficult-to-distinguish species. We are also grateful to @keirmorse, who suggested this way of using observation fields in response to our question on the iNat forum.

Whether you are a longtime entomologist or a beginning naturalist, we are glad to meet you. This is a place to geek out on our beautiful Washington bees. Please have a look around and see what everybody is finding here.

This is a “collection project” rather than a “traditional project” which means that observations made in Washington State of native bees are automatically added by iNaturalist. If your bee has been added to a project, the project name will appear in a list in the “Projects” section in the right sidebar of your observation, in one of the boxes below the map.

We encourage you to add data to make your bee observation more useful:
To add the name of the flower the bee was visiting, click on “Observation Fields” on the lower right, type in “Associated species with names lookup,” and type in or select the flower name.

In the notes or comments, add a short description of any behavior you observed.

Example 1: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/65460423
Example 2: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/65444191

About 600 native bee species are known to occur in WA; you can check how many of these we’ve observed in the “Species” count under the banner.

You can also find us on Instagram: @wa_nativebees.

Or on our website: wanativebeesociety.org

Check out these interesting websites from other members sharing the wonder of our native bees:
Bee Safari: https://www.beesafari.net/
Honeybeesuite.com, with a prodigious list of articles about native bees here: https://www.honeybeesuite.com/other-bees/
https://washingtonbumblebees.org/