Hi everyone!
We are up to 27,700 bees identified to at least genus, which puts us halfway through our first round of easy IDs! Of those, 15,500 are done to species level, which puts us at around 30% completely done. I appreciate everyone’s patience as we slowly work our way through this large pile of bees.
Cool bees:
The coolest bee of the last two weeks was one of the dull green sweat bees! Normally, bees in the genus Lasioglossum have greenish thoraxes and brownish abdomens. However, S. Nelson’s site had several specimens of an uncommon Lasioglossum that has a pumpkin orange abdomen instead!
Most Lasioglossum bees have dark brown abdomens, but this species is bright orange instead! They are still really small (size of a grain of rice), so it would be hard to spot these in the wild while they are still alive, but they are distinct.
Upcoming Events:
Are you looking for more bee content in your life? There is a digital bee conference that might be of interest.
BeeCon 2021 – Oct 15/16 Free bee talks over Zoom. See more information here: https://www.yorku.ca/bees/beecon-2021/
If you have trouble registering, try using a different browser.
All for now,
MaLisa
Thanks for continuing to keep us posted on everything bees.
🙏🏼🐝✨