Roundup: July 16, 2019
1. UPCOMING EVENTS
MONDAYS - DATABASE MANAGEMENT DAY - Please refrain from working on Google Sheets on Mondays to allow Cody and Umayyah to sort data to produce labels.
July 20 - Browder Ridge (Frissell Ridge/Iron Mountain) 4th-of-July Butterfly Count - Count butterflies for a change. Meet at 8:00 am in the Campbell Community Center/Skinner Butte Park parking lot (park at Skinner Butte Park end of the parking area, 155 High St., Eugene) to split into groups and to carpool to the sites. Preregister with David & Lois Hagen (NABA-ES) by email NABA.ES.trips@gmail.com.
July 26 - Volunteer Opportunity - Washington County Fair - 9am-3pm. Contact Andony Melathopoulos (Andony.Melathopoulos@oregonstate.edu) to sign up.
July 27 - Saturdays at the Scopes (Corvallis). Bid Oregon Bee Atlas Taxonomist Lincoln Best farewell (he returns next January). 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 - map and info linked here.
July 28 - Volunteer Opportunity - Beaverton Library Bee Fest - noon-3pm. Contact Andony Melathopoulos (Andony.Melathopoulos@oregonstate.edu) to sign up.
2. 2019 COLLECTION EVENTS
Great work everyone, we just flew past the 15,000 specimen point, which is almost double what we brought in 2018. Wow! Here is a map of sample activity as of the last download from iNaturalist (and entry of paper sheet copies sent in up to last week). We are so glad to see so much activity in the NE of the state, but places we could use more samples include Malheur, the mid-Columbia Counties, Douglas County and the south Coast. It would be great to get the county map looking consistently darker by the end of the year. We will post this map on the website main page and try and update it every week.
3. NEW STUFF ON THE WEBSITE
2019 Bee School Manual (includes subgeneric Bombus key)
4. YOUR QUESTIONS?
Q: I am having trouble getting started. I have not collected any bees this year and I am isolated/lost/unsure what to do/suffering in silence? Have I missed the boat?
A: Definitely not. The first thing to do is reach out to your team leader and see if you can arrange to go collecting with someone else. The Atlas can seem daunting until you go out and do it; there is some skill involved, but its often not as large a barrier as you think. Contact Jen to be connected to your team leader (Jen.Holt@oregonstate.edu). Also, if you haven’t visited it yet, visit our You-Tube channel. We demonstrate a lot of the key techniques.
Q: I don’t use iNaturalist, but I have my paper sheets. How do I get labels?
A: Take a picture of those sheets on your phone and email them to oregonbeeatlas@gmail.com.
Q: I know you don’t tend to send out small batches of labels every week, but when is the next shipment.
A: Cody will be doing a small batch label printing next Monday, so please work on any back-logs of record verification.
5. WHAT YOU MISSED ON FACEBOOK
Klamath Falls Team Leader, Nicole Sanchez, wrote a great article for the Herald and News about her team’s survey of an urban site. Its a really fun article - have a read and think about ways to promote the Atlas in your community.
Bee School 2019 is going on this week. The course was revamped from last year and offered some new challenges for our Atlas team leaders. We also had interest from other states this year, with participants from Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Kansas. Thanks to our amazing instructors, Lincoln Best, Joe Engler, Sarah Gardener, Rich Little, August Jackson, Andy Moldenke and Ellen Waterous.
The Western Bumble Bee use to be very common in the Willamette Valley, but it has experienced a range reduction. We are interested in knowing the pockets in the Cascades where the bees are doing well. Last year we only had four records. Lori Humphreys from Eugene found a great example on the way over to Sisters from Eugene.
Lori Humphreys wrote: “When counting butterflies I try not to pay attention to bees, but couldn't help grabbing a few of these bees as they 'napped' inside Sidalcea malviflora flowers when the sun went behind clouds. Diadasia I think.”
Adrienne Smith and her backyard adjacent to Crooked River National Grasslands.