“So, this is your work.” —L. R. Best

This issue of the Roundup is going to be heavy on conference reporting, which means heavy on celebrating the accomplishments of every member of the Atlas. Every hour sharing info at an outreach table, every trailhead talk, every single bee turned in — it all adds up to the amazing accomplishments of the Oregon Bee Atlas. This year’s conference showed that more clearly than ever. Enjoy perusing the pictures, and don’t forget to check on Canvas in a few weeks for the recording so you can relive every minute.

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If you have any feedback or submission for Field Notes or if you want to post notes for your regional team contact Ellen Silva (e.silva@comcast.net).

In this issue

Field Notes

2023 OBA Annual conference: achievements and inspiration

(reported by Ellen Silva)

We are making something really big and really cool and really useful. That is the overall summary I have for you of the 2023 conference. If you missed it, go watch the recordings on Canvas right away; heck, if you were there, go review the key ones just to try to absorb a bit more of the information that was shared.

The highlight of the day for me was Linc’s synthesis of what we have accomplished thus far. From new bees found in nets to deeper understanding of the intricacies of Lasioglossum species in our state via DNA bar coding to a massive and increasingly useful database of bee:flower relationships, Linc showed us how each bee we turn in and each iNat observation we report is valuable. His repeated refrain, “This is your work”, is going to be my rallying cry this summer.

Others showed the impact we are making in the classroom (or at the farmer’s market or science museum or wherever we are doing outreach). Sarah and Jen shared that we logged almost 145 outreach events and over 50 service events. The ever-popular Tools of the Trade session highlighted some of these events and shared ideas and tools to help fellow OBA members take their collecting and info-sharing to new levels.

Sandy DeBano, OSU associate professor and extension agent, provided a talk that shared insights into human land use impact on invertebrate ecosystems with a focus on native pollinators. Her research provided a concrete example of how work like what we are doing is critical to informing future land use decisions. Listening to her talk about her research areas in the northeastern parts of the state sure has me hoping to get out that way this summer to do some collecting.

In amongst the science, we celebrated the achievements of all of us thanks to the newly revamped Awards Program. Rachel Phariss and Bonnie Shoffner have created a framework where all the little things you do to make the Atlas successful can be recognized. This fits right into the big message of the day - it’s ALL of the little bits of data that add up to our group accomplishments; it’s ALL our work.

If reading this summary doesn’t leave you feeling proud of our work and inspired to do more, well, I guess you had to be there. Wait, no you didn’t! You can go watch the presentations on Canvas. Do it right now and be ready to be inspired to have another great year with the OBA.

Photos in the galleries below provided by Bonnie Shoffner and Ellen Silva. There wasn’t enough time in the day for captions for all of them, but we hope you enjoy them, regardless! If you’d like to be able to click the links in Mark Gorman’s presentation on reticles, click HERE first to get to a downloadable copy of his slides.

OBA conference attendees who arrived a day early got treated to a tour of the new Oregon State Arthropod Collection facility.

Sharing information, building science, and laughing at the 2023 conference.

OBA Journey program is ready to launch!

One of the big announcements at the conference was that the Journey Level program is ready to launch. Journey is a good name for the program as participants will take a self-guided journey through in-depth solitary bee scholarship, taxonomy, and service to the OBA. Learn more and register by clicking HERE. Note that if you are registering for the Journey Level program, you do not have to pay the annual OBA fee to keep your participation status active. There is a fee associated with the Journey Level and that is more than enough to cover you!

OBA announcements

KEEP YOUR MEMBERSHIP STATUS ACTIVE

• Submit annual $30 participation fee (due beginning March 1st each year): https://beav.es/igd

• Complete annual volunteer service waivers (you are prompted to sign these electronically when you log into the Member Portal - you may have already done this)

• Earn a minimum of 20 Service Points annually and log the details in the Member Portal (the Service Points reference document can be found in Canvas)

YOUR PARTICIPATION FEE INCLUDES:

• Continued access to online training modules 

• Supply refills (boxes, pins, killing jars and fluid, labels) - https://forms.gle/qfsRM6wbm7mF77tU9 

• Discounted registration fee for Bee School, a five day native bee taxonomy course

• Admission to the Master Melittologist Conference held in March at the OSU campus in Corvallis

SUPPLY REQUESTS: Volunteers can obtain additional supply refills throughout the year on an as-needed basis (click HERE for form). 

SHIRTS NOW AVAILABLE: Volunteer T-shirts are available for an additional cost - visit: https://www.bonfire.com/master-melittologist/

Life and schedules get busy – if you have the need to step away from the program for a time, let staff know and we can change your status to “inactive”. Your records will remain intact, and you can resume your work at any time in the future.

save the date: Franklin’s bumblebee survey July 10-14 near Ashland, OR - more info to come!

The main date of the survey is July 11, but there will be collecting opportunities before and after. From the organizer (Jeff Everett, Fish and Wildlife Service):

The Mt. Ashland site is the last known location of Franklin’s bumble bee, where a single worker was seen 2006. We survey this site each year in early to mid-July, corresponding with the peak of colony activity, when the most workers should be out on the landscape and detectability is highest. No previous survey effort is necessary and there is no expectation of commitment for the whole week – however much you can participate, we are happy to have you. With nearly 100 people on the first day last year, it’s also a great networking opportunity and a chance to learn from some experts. I will send out an update email later this spring with more details.

help ensure the oba has a strong foundation

We all want to see the OBA build on its early success in understanding just what bees are found in our state. With the amassing of bee:flower relationship data and the growing collaborations with scientists in other states, we are moving boldly in that direction. But to continue expanding our impact , the organization needs to build from a solid fiscal foundation — which is just what a charitable foundation can make possible.

Thanks to Jerry and Judith Paul’s hard work and financial support, we now have the start of such a foundation. When fully endowed (at $2.5 million), the resulting income stream will provide stable funding for taxonomic staff and free up time spent now on looking for the next source of funds to do the important work of deepening our understanding of Oregon bees and working to conserve them.

There is no better way to thank the current staff for the hard work they’ve done to get us this far than by making a donation to the Jerry & Judith Paul Native Pollinator Endowment. Start by clicking HERE and in the “I want to give to…” field, start typing “Jerry & Judith Paul Native Pollinator Endowment” and it should pop right up. Be sure to select this exact destination for your funds to get it in the right place. And thank you in advance!

Mariposa preserve sampling opportunity Details

When: April 22, 2023 with April 23, 2023 as the rain date.

Where: Mariposa Preserve is located on the California border south of Ashland and is within the boundary of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

What: This volunteer opportunity includes sampling within the Cascade-Siskiyou Nat. Monument in collaboration with The Understory Initiative. 

RSVP using the form HERE. This is required even if you have previously emailed Linc!

kudos to those who deserve them

Has something gone better in your OBA journey because of the action of an unsung hero? Maybe you’ve gotten to go on more collecting trips because another volunteer took it upon themselves to organize events in your area or maybe a staff member helped you untangle a snarl of passwords or another member helped you organize materials for an Outreach event. You said thanks but felt it needed to be said louder. Now you can make that happen! Nominate your personal hero for going above and beyond and after approval by the Advisory Committee, a handwritten note will be sent thanking your special person. All it takes to get the process started is to fill out the nomination form found by clicking HERE.

email addresses for your program questions and the advisory committee

Effective immediately, you can use the email Mastermelittologist@oregonstate.edu to contact the OBA staff. It will get routed to the proper person to help you out. You can email the advisory panel with your thoughts, concerns, and creative ideas by using the email atlas_advisory@lists.oregonstate.edu which copies the entire panel plus staff with your comments.

Catch a Buzz

Catch a Buzz is the first TUESDAY of every month at 7pm. To join, go to https://oregonstate.zoom.us/j/97230252365?pwd=TURyTXNMZ1M5SHl2TFQvajBxemtRdz09 | Password: bees

Calendar

It’s wonderful! All of the major camping trips and bee school sessions are already posted on the calendar for 2023. Plan your summer now!

Team news

PDX Team

If you want to include your own team’s news in the Roundup, send it to Ellen Silva (e.silva@comcast.net).

cool stuff we have found

For this month, I suggest you just go review Linc’s conference presentation on Canvas.

So. Many. Cool. Bees.

miscellany (not to be missed)

Catch a Buzz Summary (By Martha Richards)

Annual Conference: The conference was on Sunday and went well. Presentations are now all available on Canvas.

Bee Treasure Hunt: According to Linc, there are a number of bee species that don't have enough specimens in our collection. In some cases, there may be only one specimen; in other cases there may be a few specimens but they're all males. Linc is hoping to carve out some time to assemble a list of such bees, along with information about when and where to look for them, so that we can go out and find some more to fill out the collection.

Upcoming events: As usual, you're encouraged to check the calendar on Canvas for upcoming events. All of this year's major events -- bee school, campouts, and field training events -- are now on the calendar. Smaller collection events and some fall microscope events will be added over time, so do remember to check the calendar periodically for new information. The main March event is the new student online orientation on March 21st. 

Washington Bee Atlas: The WA bee atlas (not sure what their official name is; I'm just making things up here) is getting underway; representatives spent the day talking with Linc and Jen to learn about organizing and managing a statewide survey.

Roadside Management Training: One component of the Oregon Bee Project OBP) is training licensed pesticide applicators. Andony has developed a roadside management training program for departments of transportation that focuses on herbicide application, as that's the primary type of biocide that they use. In the training, he also reviews "super bee plants," or common roadside plants that are very good for bees and that are not invasive and do not pose a problem for road maintenance. He has given this training to a number of groups already and is creating an online program as well.

Bee-Friendly Wine: Another component of the OBP is working with agricultural producers to help them make their land and farming practices more pollinator-friendly. While Andony has received little interest from many growers (yes, this outreach is yet another part of his very busy job), he did find that people in the wine industry were interested. The interest came not so much from the pollinator aspect, but the public-relations aspect: being able to demonstrate that the vineyard is being managed responsibly is good advertising when the public arrives to do wine tasting. There already exists a sustainable-practices certification for wineries (LIVE, more info at livecertified.org), so the OBP is working with this certification program to educate vineyard managers about enhancing the pollinator habitat on their land. The technical smart folks at OSU developed a tool where a user can delineate a specific area (like a vineyard property) and gather all of the iNaturalist plant records within that area, regardless of who created the plant record. The tool will then use the massive OBA database (our bee records!) to correlate which bee species are likely to be feeding on which of those floral hosts. The resulting graph provides an easy-to-understand visual display of which plants are the really good bee hosts and which ones are just pretty splashes of color. The tool also provides some recommendations for plants the vineyard could add to attract more bee species. The long-term hope is that this can be an online tool for widespread use. All of our many bee records are helping to make this a very useful tool.

Bee-Friendly Wine Tours: If you've ever wondered what Andony does all day, here's yet another part of his job: organizing and staffing bee-friendly public outreach events at Willamette Valley wineries. You may have seen a call for volunteers already; expect to see others in the future. Different wineries will have different events that focus on native bees, mason bees, or honey bees.

What is Linc Doing While Andony's Hard at Work? Linc made it clear that the dataset that OBA members have been working to develop is now large enough to be a very useful tool for all kinds of land managers. Linc has been working on a variety of projects that use the OBA data to inform research on land management. One project is analyzing how large solar panel arrays will affect biodiversity. Other projects went in one ear and out the other, but Linc did emphasize how useful it is to have the data.

Will Catch a Buzz Become the Bee's Knees? The membership survey (you did fill it out, right?) revealed that CAB is not the wildly exciting event that its name might suggest it is. Andony is hoping to change that by bringing in more presentations and informative speakers, so if you have a topic that you'd like to present on, let him know. Email your ideas to master.melittologist@oregonstate.edu.

Rare Plant monitoring goes hand in hand with rare bee monitoring!

Those of you collecting in southwestern Oregon may wish to consider contributing to the efforts of the Rare Plant Monitoring Network. This year, they’ll be monitoring species across the Fremont-Winema, Rogue River-Siskiyou, Willamette, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests. Click here to learn more about their priority species for 2023. 

Interested in volunteering? Sign up for a virtual volunteer orientation: April 6 from 2-4pm or April 8 from 6-8pm. 

Save the Dates: Native Bee Monitoring RCN Data Management Workshop

Day 1: Tuesday, March 28th, 10 am - 2 pm Pacific // Day 2: Thursday, March 30th, 10 am - 2 pm Pacific
The USDA-funded National Native Bee Monitoring Research Coordination Network (RCN) is holding a series of virtual workshops during which they will gather ideas and perspectives from the professional bee monitoring community on strategies for national native bee monitoring practices. They will synthesize discussions and presentations from these workshops into a national native bee monitoring plan. If you are interested, OBA members are welcome to participate. Learn more and register HERE.

BeeBST (#Bee #Biogeography and #Systematics Talks) series

These talks are held on the last Wednesday of every month at 11am Eastern.  Register for any or all of these free Zoom webinars HERE . Upcoming webinars:

• Wednesday, March 29, 2023, Dr. Manuela Sann - Phylogenomics and the evolution of secondary phytophagy in apoid wasps and bees

• Wednesday, April 26, 2023, Dr. Margarita M. López-Uribe - The ecology and evolution of squash bees and how humans have influenced their recent history

• Wednesday, May 31, 2023, Dr. Antonia Aguiar - Unveiling the bees of Cerrado in the track of oil collecting bees of the tribe Tapinotaspidini

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