[Pollinator] July Bee Collecting and Study Targets for Eastern U.S.

[Droege, Sam]

Thanks again to Jarrod Fowler
https://jarrodfowler.com/specialist_bees.html
for compiling all this information.

All:  Please report out to the listserv any interesting observations regarding specialist species...this includes Westerners and others around the world.....(Why aren't such targeted lists developed for the Prairies, Rockies, Southwest, Northwest?).  Your observations stimulate others to look, if you remain silent, then your influence in the conservation is diminished.

For example this spring we have found some "rare" (or just overlooked, or both) species such as Florilegus condignus (Pickerelweed), Andrena rehni (Chestnut), Colletes productus (Lyonia), Andrena rudbeckiae (Black-eyed Susans).  Would never have run into these bees if we had not collected on these plants.

OK, I am a bit late again, but let's talk about what bees and plants should be surveyed to better clarify bee rarity in North America in July.  Recall, that there is an apparent decline in sightings of many species from 100 years ago compared to now.  However, 100 years ago, there were no (or few) traps and people largely went out with nets and hunted bees, some were paid but for many it was their high end Victorian Natural History study and collections where they specifically sought out rare and new species of things...in this case bees.  We do little of that now, and there isn't much of a culture of collecting for collecting's sake (I am somewhat trivializing their motivations in the past, but this certainly was a big element as people tried to increase the number of species in their and institute's collections).  Good for them, for without that we would be a heck of a lot poorer in our understanding the broad biodiversity of bees.

And...in order to understand the conservation status of all bees in a world of diminished habitat, we have to seek out certain plants and look at them.

This has been effective and there are all sorts of stories of rare bees found once a study was made of their plants.

So, friends, you can spare a bit of time I am sure and check out some of these things....also this will get you to learn you wild plants better.

Here goes

Targets:

Hey, think about this first ...why not plant some of these species?...why not make them a priority plant!

The Sunflower and related Composite season is upon us.  Particularly in the South.

Areas of deep sand will both have many of these composites (Chrysopsis, Heterotheca) and perhaps the bees that need both composites and sand (e.g. Andrena fulvipennis, Perdita bequaerti, P. consobrina, P boltoniae....ok, MANY of the Peridita (and the very very rare nest parasite of Perdita Neolarra cockerelli)

Perennial Sunflowers are a prime species group to collect on for things like Pseudopanurgus jugatorium, Andrena aliceae, A. helianthus, A. helianthiodes, A. accepta, Perdita sp., and Pseudopanurgus (and related taxa), Melissodes species, Dianthidium curvatum, Colletes americanus, Dieunomia heteropoda, D. nevadensis, several rare Megachile, the southeastern residual prairie lands are prime targets.

Wild Peas and Beans (Galactia, Strophostles, and maybe others like groundnut and Clitoria) - Very, very overlooked group, the plants and flowers are often obscured by vegetation and no one seems to plant them (hint...you could), super rare bees such as Trachusa dorsalis, Megachile brimleyi, M. integra, check moist field edges, edges of swamps, ditches wetlands, stream and river banks.

Similarly look for Passiflora lutea vines for Pseudopanurgus passiflorae

Verbena - look for Calliopsis nebraskensis

Continuing from last month check out patches of Pontedaria, Cirsium (and related thistles), and Oenothera

Northern folks should be targeting the Lyonia bloom right now as well as native Heuchera (note a couple of super rare Colletes aesthevalis have been found in home gardens with native Heuchera, so let's get that word out (most Heuchera are some odd hybrid).

sam



['Often rebuked, yet always back returning']

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
    To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
    For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
    Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
    Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
    And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
    The clouded forms of long-past history.

I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
    It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
    Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
    More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
    Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

          - EMILY BRONTË


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