<
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/intrepid-team-bee-lovers-doing-everything-save-rare-native-species-extinction-180986181/>
"One summer day in 2018, Sam Droege lowered his net and scooped up a few small
bees buzzing around the blossoms of a chinquapin, a shrubby member of the
chestnut tree family. Droege, a wildlife biologist, can recognize loads of bees
with a quick look, but these were strangers to him. It wasn’t until he studied
them under a microscope that he realized what he’d found. “Holy crap,” he said
to himself. “That’s an
Andrena rehni”—a bee that hadn’t been sighted in
nearly 100 years.
Droege heads the United States Geological Survey Bee Lab in Beltsville,
Maryland, which supports native bee research, inventory and monitoring
projects. He never travels without a net, preferably the one he nicknamed
Philanthus after a type of wasp that hunts bees. Opinionated, funny and
idiosyncratic, he often wears his long white hair in Viking braids. For years,
he drove a car rigged out to look like a dragon. A bee hunter for almost three
decades, he is always on the lookout for new or rare species. He was pleased
when bees drilled nesting tunnels in the walls of his straw-bale house.
For most of us, the word “bee” conjures the beloved honeybee that was brought
to America by early European colonists. But native bees are very different
creatures. They don’t congregate in hives or make honey. Aside from bumblebees,
most native bees live solitary lives and nest underground or in tree trunks,
logs, plants, rocks or other structures. And while honeybees have become the
mascot for popular campaigns to “save the bees,” they’re the wrong poster
child, as bee enthusiasts—or “beeple,” as some call themselves—will tell you.
Honeybees are domesticated livestock, like cattle or chickens; though they’ve
suffered diseases that have killed off colonies, they are in no way endangered.
Native bees, on the other hand, have been on this continent for tens of
millions of years, co-evolving with the native flora that need help to spread
their pollen. That partnership birthed a dazzling diversity of creatures that
come in as many sizes, shapes and colors as the flowers they pollinate."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
