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.
January 25 - Saturdays at the Scopes (Corvallis). A final opportunity to work on your bees. Free parking. Drop-in - OSU, Corvallis, Cordley Building room 3058, 10am-3pm (although we have left doors open for longer - no promises). - map and info linked here.
March 7 - BeeVENT Conference. Oregon’s annual pollinator conference. Featuring Olivia Messinger Carril, author of Bees in Your Backyard. Albany, OR
March 8 - Bee Atlas Conference. Our annual meeting. Also featuring Olivia Messinger Carril. Corvallis, OR (more info below).
2. SARAH’s BACK!
Sarah Kincaid has returned to Oregon Bee Atlas, but now she works in the Pollinator Health Program at OSU. Sarah was pivotal in helping to establish the Atlas back in 2018. She has been hired on through grants that will have her working on assessing pollinator restoration in the Willamette Valley and Mid-Columbia region, so she will be working on the Atlas part time. Right now she is working hard on organizing the inventory of your collections, organizing field courses for the summer and helping Andony with the new online training. Also returning in 2020 is Lincoln Best (Lead Taxonomist), Joe Engler, Sarah Gardener, Rich Little and August Jackson (Atlas Instructors).
2. BEE ATLAS CONFERENCE [March 8, Corvallis]
This year’s Atlas Conference features Olivia Messinger Carril, co-author of The Bees in Your Backyard.
Join us for our annual conference and hear talks about native bees from experienced Atlas members and invited speakers. Registration is FREE for everyone. A light lunch, coffee, and some snacks will be provided. Deadline to register is March 1, 2020. This conference is open to all! The conference will be the day after Linn County’s BeeVENT (just down the road in Albany), so for those of you outside the valley, it might make a good weekend. The Hilton Garden Inn is relatively close to the venue (walking distance).
EVENT FLYER (INCLUDES PROGRAM AND MAP)
REGISTER HERE
3. REVIEWING YOUR RECORDS
We are just in the process of sorting through your records for 2018 and 2019 to: (a) who has collected on at least three occasions in 2019 (established from the online database), (b) who has done at least one outreach event in 2019 (established from you submitting volunteer hours) and (c) how many bees you have collected in 2018-2019 (people over 100 bees will be getting a badge and over 1000 bees will be getting a ‘swinger’).
We think we are missing volunteer hours from a lot of you. If that is the case, please enter the correct number of events and hours on the following spreadsheet by the end of January (i.e., to give us enough time to order t-shirts, badges and swingers). If you have collected bees, but your name does not appear on this list - or if it shows no bees collected - please contact Andony (Andony.Melathopoulos@oregonstate.edu).
VOLUNTEER COLLECTION AND OUTREACH SPREADSHEET
4. GETTING YOUR COLLECTIONS TO OSU
Incoming collections to OSU. All collections that arrive are frozen to kill any storage pests. Students then inventory and label your boxes and enter determinations if they haven’t been done already.
OSU is fast filling up with your collections. Thank you! We are so impressed by all your work.
If you are still holding onto your collection, please try and get it to us by the end of the month. If you are unable to do this, contact Sarah Kincaid (Sarah.Kincaid@oregonstate.edu) to make arrangements for getting them to OSU. In many cases we can arrange shipment from any OSU Extension offices (just let Sarah know so she can give the office a heads up).
5. NEW WEBSITE
We will be launching a new Atlas website in 2020. This website is now live, but will not be fully functional until the Conference in March. One big feature that is coming is a new member portal that will enable you to view and edit your own records (i.e., without having everyone else’s records showing up), enter volunteer hours and access things like taxonomic keys. Check it out.
6. 2020 Bee Atlas Training
We are going to be rolling out a whole new training program in 2020. The new training will cost $185 for people who are not currently members (i.e., people who have not completed 3 collection events in 2019 and 1 outreach event), although we will be offering subsidies to people who show need. The good news is that the training is free for current members of the Atlas. We will, however, be implementing a small activity to help cover material costs (pins, killing jars, boxes, etc). Details to follow.