1. 2019 COUNTIES COUNTING OREGON BEE ATLAS MEMBERS MEETING
We held our first ever Oregon Bee Atlas members meeting on 16 February 2019. A big thank you to the Atlas Advisory Committee for developing proposals for the members.
Here are the proposals for 2019 advanced by the Atlas Advisory Committee.
Here is a video recording of the session (along with the afternoon session with Sam Droege).
Discussion on the proposals raised the following issues for members:
Lead Taxonomist Linc Best let members know there were significant efficiencies associated with taking incoming collections and sorting them into a large master collection. This would mean that people would not likely get the bees back that they collected. Members responded that this would be fine as long as they received specimens back (for reference and educational collections) that were of species that would be found in their region.
In response to Missy Martin’s communication proposal there were two points raised regarding team organization. The first is that there should be people in each County that could shadow team leadership roles, to enable them to pitch in when someone is busy and to train new leadership. Chris Marshall also articulated the need to have someone to communicate with in each County with respect to the museum. There was also discussion of how to create team cohesion in small locations (e.g., Myrtle Point) where we have very few members.
In response to Joe Engler and Michael O’Loughlin’s proposal for core sampling activities, there was some interest in locating sites that might be of high collection value. Joe emphasized that the locations for the three core activities should be convenient as they are functioning as a way to train new volunteers in their first year. Also there was a concern about pinning bees the day they were caught, and Joe emphasized this is possible but requires a properly charged killing jar.
In response to Jerry Paul’s proposal on record keeping, there was discussion over whether labels should be sent to one point person and distributed. Andony responded that perhaps there is a limit (e.g., 100 specimens) above which we would send labels directly to volunteers.
Chris Marshall requested that volunteers send him requests for the Interactive Bee Atlas, that will enable users to view records online as they are accessioned into the Atlas. He said that these requests should be articulated in the form “as a user of the Interactive Bee Atlas i need…” [email Chris Marshall: Christopher.Marshall@oregonstate.edu]
2. OUTSTANDING BEES?
Oregon Bee Atlas taxonomist is sad. Why? He has all the bumble bees pulled out of your collections and is waiting to work through them, but he doesn’t want to get started until he has all the bumble bees from 2018. Please contact Andony Melathopoulos - Andony.Melathopoulos@oregonstate.edu - if you still have bees to submit for 2018. At this point we are most interested in relatively large collections of over 100 bees. We realize that some people received labels late, so just email us and let us know the status of these bees. Any bees received later will still be worked on, but they may not be assessed until the 2019 bees are in (i.e., so no biggie).
3. BEE ATLAS WEBINAR
We held our first Bee Atlas Webinar last week on building effective County Teams.
Our next webinar will be on Tuesday March 5 at 4pm (not March 6 as promised). It will either be a webinar with Linc Best reviewing how to properly pin and curate your bees. To join the webinar live log on on Tuesday using the following two options:
On your computer, click the following link: https://zoom.us/j/132949135
On your phone, dial 720 707 2699 and enter the meeting ID: 132 949 135
After that, our next webinar will be March 20 at 4pm with Jerry Paul on using iNaturalist.