I will be out of the office starting  10/07/2009 and will not return until
10/19/2009.

I will respond to your message when I return.

I will be out of the office starting  10/09/2009 and will not return until
10/27/2009.

I will respond to your message when I return. Please contact
brent_steury@... for urgent issues.

I will be out of the office starting 10/09/2009 and will not return until 10/20/2009.

All:

I just came across an Andrena miserabilis that I collected 2 springs ago in Lee County, SC.  It turns out, however, that the head is clearly male (yellow clypeus, 13 antennal segments, no fovea) and the thorax and abdomen are female (complete propodeal corbicula, scopal hairs and abdominal segments).

I don't study or keep such specimens, but I know that others do.  So I am happy to send it to whoever studies such things and would like it in their collection.

 

All:

 

I just came across an Andrena miserabilis that I collected 2 springs ago in Lee County, SC.  It turns out, however, that the head is clearly male (yellow clypeus, 13 antennal segments, no fovea) and the thorax and abdomen are female (complete propodeal corbicula, scopal hairs and abdominal segments).

 

I don't study or keep such specimens, but I know that others do.  So I am happy to send it to whoever studies such things and would like it in their collection.

That sort of thing sounds like what happens when an Andrena has a stylopid in it, though I suppose you'd have spotted one if it were there.

However, this does remind me that Jakub Straka at Charles University in Prague has a standing request for any and all bee specimens bearing strepsipterans - he's doing a combined morphological/molecular revision of the bee-associated Stylopidae, and his work is entirely limited by the availability of material. He's collecting in Cote D'Ivoire at the moment, but can be contacted at straka.jakub.1@... in case people have specimens he could use.

Peace,

--

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
             http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

Dear All,

[I sent this earlier from the wrong e-mail account and I think it
therefore did not appear on the list. If it did, forgive the duplicate
e-mail request!]

There is a graduate student in my department who is planning a study
in which she would like to augment the native bee populations in a
particular (urban) area (plots). She asked for my advice on how this
could be done and I didn't really have an answer. The only thing I
could think of was maybe using trap nests, i.e., put them out in
natural areas, then move them before emergence time? I would
appreciate any thoughts on this. Luckily, she is in the early stages
of developing her project, so there is plenty of time to tweak her
plans.

Thanks!
Kim
********************************************************
Dr. Kimberly N. Russell

University Lecturer
Department of Biology
New Jersey Institute of Technology

and

Research Scientist
Division of Invertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History

phone: 1-973-642-7976
E-mail: krussell@...
Web: http://web.njit.edu/~krussell & http://research.amnh.org/invertzoo/spida
********************************************************

I will be out of the office starting 10/20/2009 and will not return until 10/27/2009.

I will respond to your message when I return.

João Maria Franco de Camargo (20 June 1941 - 7 September 2009)



The entire bee community has lost a deep resource of knowledge with the recent
passing of João Camargo. Following a stroke and subsequent complications,
Camargo passed away in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, at the age of only 68. Camargo's
research on stingless bees, which he studied for nearly 50 years, provides an
invaluable legacy to all students of social insect behavior and evolution.
Camargo also enthusiastically pursued evidence for large-scale past events in
tropical South America by examining the historical biogeography of stingless
bees. His contribution to science through the study of stingless bees was thus
broad and will continue to have an impact for years to come. I was to begin a
postdoc with him in September.

My contact with Camargo began in 2001, when I started shipping Peruvian bees to
specialists around the world for identification. Of the many specialists I heard
back from, Camargo stood out in particular. Not only had each of my hundreds of
stingless bees on their return been carefully labeled and given a name (even if
only a Camargo manuscript name), but the fact that *all* of the bees were
identified and meticulously placed at equidistance in straight lines impressed
me. Clearly this was someone who had a deep knowledge and love of these bees. As
a special service, Camargo also provided an identification sheet with all of the
label data from my bees written down along with their identifications. In his
later identifications for me, these lists became more interesting and included
notes on how to distinguish certain species and distributional notations. No
other specialist was that detailed in their study of my material, and no other
specialist was able to put a name on so many bees. On my first personal meeting
with Camargo in 2005, I praised the rigor with which he performed his taxonomic
revisions and identifications, but Camargo merely replied that those were the
necessary steps for him to achieve his ultimate goal of elucidating the
biogeographical history of the Amazonian region of South America.

             Entering science in the early sixties, Camargo had the opportunity
to work with the leading social insect scientists in Brazil at the time, namely
Warwick E. Kerr and Shôichi F. Sakagami, who were also responsible for taking
Camargo to the Amazon where stingless bees appear more abundant than any other
kind of bee, and certainly provided the first base for his impressive
collecting. Anyone who is familiar with Camargo's work and his laboratory, will
know that his stingless bee collection is extraordinarily important and better
curated than any, or most, other such collections. During his many years of
traveling, mainly throughout Brazil, Camargo amassed some 180,000 pinned
stingless bee specimens, but more importantly than the specimens alone, is the
associated collection of nest pieces from several thousand nests, photographs of
these, and original drawings from the field. In addition he organized thousands
of jars containing brood cells, workers, queens, and males from all of the nests
he collected. This unique and exceptionally well curated collection of stingless
bees, the best and largest for the group in the world, was the pride of Camargo
and the foundation for all of his research.

             Camargo made no compromises in the rigor of his research, and took
the time and effort necessary to complete large and comprehensive contributions,
including the artistic masterpiece on the nest architecture of Partamona with
Pedro in 2003. The study of Partamona began much earlier and showcases the care
Camargo took in compiling all the facts before publishing a study; the yellow
species of the genus were the subject of Camargo's Masters thesis (1978) 25
years earlier under the supervision of Padre Jesus S. Moure at the Universidade
Federal do Paraná. The 2003 study was remarkable in integrating field
observations with morphology, biogeography and behavior. Camargo himself often
highlighted that research as an example of the importance of studying insects in
the field in addition to museum studies. Partamona species are notoriously
difficult to separate based on their external morphology alone, but Camargo
demonstrated that the nest architecture for each species could be used as an
extended morphological dataset, often providing the reliable characters for
their separation, which were obscured in worn specimens or too microscopic for
most untrained eyes. Of several earlier attempts to formulate a hypothesis on
the historical biogeography of the Amazon Basin (e.g., in revisions of
Paratrigona and Geotrigona), the Partamona study included the best documented
example, delimiting species ranges to specific regions and proposing areas of
ancestral diversification.

Unfortunately much of Camargo's immense knowledge remained unpublished. Many
taxonomic revisions were ongoing at the time of his death, and it will be up to
future curators of the collection to continue research based on the valuable
material. Silvia Pedro, who collaborated with Camargo for more than two decades,
is currently the curator of the collection and completing their last joint
manuscripts. I personally will miss Camargo's ideas and discussions. He was an
exemplary scholar with a strong, albeit educated, opinion about most topics in
the biological sciences, and always welcomed any discussion in his office-
sipping strong Brazilian coffee- or over a typical Brazilian meal in one of his
favorite churrascarias.



Claus Rasmussen

There are a bunch of stir plates on Ebay.
http://www.highandmightybrewing.com/brew/beer+yeast.aspx

Other places to buy home brewing stirplates:
http://www.brewershardware.com/stirplate.htm

All of these stir plates are cheap because they are built for home beer
brewers, not for chemical resistance, etc. needed in a lab. I bought one
of the black ones you see being resold on Ebay for a song, only I bought
it brand new from the guy making them--it was $40. It works fine.

--Deana

|------------>
| From:      |
|------------>
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-----------------------------------------------------------|
   |Sam Droege <sdroege@...>
|
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-----------------------------------------------------------|
|------------>
| To:        |
|------------>
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-----------------------------------------------------------|
   |beemonitoring@yahoogroups.com
|
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-----------------------------------------------------------|
|------------>
| Date:      |
|------------>
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
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   |10/25/2009 07:17 PM
|
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
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|------------>
| Subject:   |
|------------>
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
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   |[beemonitoring] Make your own bee washer
|
  
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
-----------------------------------------------------------|












  All:

  In past emails we mentioned how we now use a magnetic stirrer to wash our bees.

  New, these run about $100.00

  However,  I just ran into a do-it-yourself stirrer set up that looks pretty
slick,
  this is something very similar to what I saw Harold Ikerd create.

  http://www.instructables.com/id/Magnetic-Stirrer/

  The comments at the end are useful for trouble shooting, possible variations,
and
  how to make the speed vary.

  Have fun.

  sam


  Sam Droege  sdroege@...
  w 301-497-5840 h 301-390-7759 fax 301-497-5624
  USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
  BARC-EAST, BLDG 308, RM 124 10300 Balt. Ave., Beltsville, MD  20705
  Http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov

  The Minimal

  I study the lives on a leaf: the little
  Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions,
  Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf fishes,
  Lice tethered to long limp subterranean weeds,
  Squirmers in bogs,
  And bacterial creepers
  Wriggling through wounds
  Like elvers in ponds,
  Their wan mouths kissing the warm sutures,
  Cleaning and caressing,
  Creeping and healing.

     - Theodore Roethke

Greetings,

While bumblebees seem to be a pretty well studied group of insects, we’ve run
into a few taxonomic grey areas in North America.  The NAPPC Bumblebee task
force met last week and suggested we figure things out by using DNA barcoding
as we have this resource available to us. Below are species and geographic
areas where specimens (<10 years old) are most urgently needed. We only need
one or two specimens from various locations. If you have access to these
specimens and can spare a few, please contact me (Sheila Colla) at
scolla@... or Cory Sheffield at corysheffield@... .  Thanks!

-B. ternarius
-B. pensylvanicus
-B. fervidus
-B. californicus
-B. nevadensis
-B. occidentalis and B. terricola
-B. ashtoni
-Any representative bumblebee specimens from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the
Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma
-Any representative bumblebee specimens from Alaska, Northwest territories,
Yukon, Nunavut, northern Canadian provinces, Ellesmere Island etc.

--
Sheila Colla <scolla@...>
Ph.D. Candidate (Biology)
Website: www.savethebumblebees.com
Address: Biology Department
          York University
          4700 Keele St.
          Toronto, ON
          M3J 1P3

I'm a grad student and part of my project was putting out trap nests
in urban and rural areas. It was a very small side part of the project.
For our areas, usage was not great, so I pretty much determined that
to get any meaningful data out of it, I would need more of a massive
deployment of small, inexpensive, easy to make nests, instead of what I used
which was 10 large nests with many different sized holes in 10 locations.
I ended up not following up on that part of the
project due to time constraints and priorities. So, in summary my recommendation would
be to try to design any trap nest survey in a way that a small amount of usage
will still achieve publishable data in the first year. So, lots and lots of
nests may be needed. If you get massive usage all the better. I would still
be nervous about achieving success in one year here, and would want to
add a backup plan that is closely related.
-Michael Wilson
University of Tennessee


-----Original Message-----
From: beemonitoring@yahoogroups.com on behalf of Kimberly N. Russell
Sent: Thu 10/22/2009 2:46 PM
To: beemonitoring@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [beemonitoring] Fwd: Advice for grad student

Dear All,

[I sent this earlier from the wrong e-mail account and I think it 
therefore did not appear on the list. If it did, forgive the duplicate 
e-mail request!]

There is a graduate student in my department who is planning a study 
in which she would like to augment the native bee populations in a 
particular (urban) area (plots). She asked for my advice on how this 
could be done and I didn't really have an answer. The only thing I 
could think of was maybe using trap nests, i.e., put them out in 
natural areas, then move them before emergence time? I would 
appreciate any thoughts on this. Luckily, she is in the early stages 
of developing her project, so there is plenty of time to tweak her 
plans.

Thanks!
Kim
********************************************************
Dr. Kimberly N. Russell

University Lecturer
Department of Biology
New Jersey Institute of Technology

and

Research Scientist
Division of Invertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History

phone: 1-973-642-7976
E-mail: krussell@...
Web: http://web.njit.edu/~krussell & http://research.amnh.org/invertzoo/spida
********************************************************

Greetings,

While bumblebees seem to be a pretty well studied group of insects, we’ve run
into a few taxonomic grey areas in North America.  The NAPPC Bumblebee task
force met last week and suggested we figure things out by using DNA barcoding
as we have this resource available to us. Below are species and geographic
areas where specimens (<10 years old) are most urgently needed. We only need
one or two specimens from various locations. If you have access to these
specimens and can spare a few, please contact me (Sheila Colla) at
scolla@... or Cory Sheffield at corysheffield@... .  Thanks!

-B. ternarius
-B. pensylvanicus
-B. fervidus
-B. californicus
-B. nevadensis
-B. occidentalis and B. terricola
-B. ashtoni
-Any representative bumblebee specimens from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the
Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma
-Any representative bumblebee specimens from Alaska, Northwest territories,
Yukon, Nunavut, northern Canadian provinces, Ellesmere Island etc.

--
Sheila Colla <scolla@...>
Ph.D. Candidate (Biology)
Website: www.savethebumblebees.com
Address: Biology Department
          York University
          4700 Keele St.
          Toronto, ON
          M3J 1P3




_______________________________________________
Pollinator mailing list
Pollinator@...
http://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
//lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator

I agree with   Michael

According to my West Indian experience colonization of trap nests were very fast and effective in wasps and bees that nest in cavities. Also the emerging information about natural history is overwhelming. Don’t forget Karl  Krombein!

Cheers

Julio A Genaro

>I just got off the phone with the maker of the Princeworks Carpenter
>Bee Trap
>(<http://www.bee-trap.com/index.htm>http://www.bee-trap.com/index.htm).
>.... He said that it took them a long time to figure out that you
>can greatly increase the time to first capture or catch in general
>by putting a dead bee in the trap.  This makes some sense in that a
>carpenter bee would be more likely to investigate something that
>smelled of carpenter bees, but one wonders if other trapping
>situations are affected by the odor of already trapped bees.
>
>That said, we have a paper that has just been accepted by Insect
>Conservation and Diversity that shows that there is only minor
>clumping of captures of bees in arrays or transects of bee bowls
>which, one would presume, would not be the case if there was an
>allure to a trap already containing dead bees.

Perhaps the difference is related to the bees' motivation.  Probably
carpenter bees attracted to a hole with their own scent are looking
for nests or mates (I've seen males fly by a nest hole, then suddenly
backtrack, perhaps as they pick up the scent?).   Foraging bees that
end up in bowls might not be looking for other members of their own
species, only for food.

Cheers,
Liz


---------------------------
Liz Day
3221 Merrick Ln. 3B
Indianapolis, Indiana 46222  USA
(40 N, 86 W;  USDA zone 5b)
317-924-0008
---------------------------