1. UPCOMING EVENTS

Fridays - Fridays at the Scopes (Grants Pass). A chance to work through your bees with fellow southern Bee Atlas folks. Contact Judi Maxwell (jmaxwell9335@gmail.com) if you plan to attend. Josephine County Extension Center, 10am-2pm.

November 23 - Saturdays at the Scopes (Corvallis). Bring the bees you caught this summer and look at them under the microscope (and even start the optional process of keying them out). Drop-in - OSU, Corvallis, Cordley Building room 3058, 10am-3pm. - map and info linked here.

December 5 - Eastern Oregon Bee Mini-Conference. Review the year in the Atlas in Eastern Oregon, coupled with some talks by researchers and volunteers. Hermiston, OR (10:30am-5pm) @ Hermiston Farm Fair, Hermiston, OR. Program available here: https://www.facebook.com/events/994759870868419/

March 8, 2020 - Oregon Bee Atlas Conference. Corvallis, OR (10:30am-5pm).

2. YOUR BEE BLOCKS ARE DUE - HOW TO GET THEM TO US

If you received some blocks this year, you should get them down and get them out of the rain. Next step is to get them to us. If you have not recorded the GPS coordinates of your blocks, please do so before moving them and email them (along with the block number) to oregonbeeatlas@gmail.com. Be gentle moving the blocks and store them with the holes facing up (so as not to knock any late nesting bee larva off their pollen balls). Blocks can be stored undercover outside until they can be transported to OSU. Outside is critical as we need the box to stay cool (i.e., so the bees can diapause). Ideally, we would like to get these blocks by mid-November so we can put them into cold storage. One way to get them to OSU is to bring them to your local Extension office - let us know if you use this option so we can make arrangements in advance with the office to get them and ship them up to us (if you just show up, they will be confused). Do not mail the blocks to us.

3. OREGON BEE ATLAS CONFERENCE: MARCH 8

The SECOND annual Oregon Bee Atlas Conference is now set for Sunday March 8th. We are tagging our meeting on this year with the annual Linn County BEEvent (which takes place the day before in Albany). We are pleased to announce our Keynote this year as Olivia Messenger Carril, who is the author of Bees in Your Backyard. The conference will also feature an update from Linc on your collections and awards. We will also be handing out t-shirts and badges for those who met their volunteer, collection and bee collection criteria. Finally, we are looking for short presentations from our volunteers on how their year went in 2019. We’d love some short 15 min presentations about a trip you took, something you learned about, an invention you created, an outreach event you had. Please send your talk proposals to me by December 15th.

5. CLEARING UP - HOW YOU BECOME A MEMBER AND WHEN DO YOU GET A BADGE

You become a member of the Atlas after doing a minimum of three collection events and do one outreach event. We are going to be tallying up people’s activity this month and contacting you in December or early January to ask you for the size of t-shirt you want. The t-shirts make you part of the Atlas. Once you catch 100 bees you will also get a badge. Badges and t-shirts will be handed out at the Conference.

7. COLLECTION PERMITS

We are working to secure collection permits for public land and land trusts. You will need these permits to collect. We have already secured a permit for all State Forests and have an agreement for BLM land. Please let us know if there is a US Forest Service District or US Fish and Wildlife Refuge (or other agency) you want to collect on and we will do our best to secure permits. Please try and get these to us by early December to allow us enough time to secure the permit.