Hello! Happy last blog of the year!
You might be excited to hear that we are almost finished with identifying things to genus, at which point, we will send out individual interim reports to the collectors.
Since they will be interim reports, the emails will be somewhat short and include a raw datafile of just that locations data. Collectors should expect an email sometime in January (assuming all goes well). I won’t be able to individualize the 145 interim reports, so I am going to detail in this blog how to interpret the data so people can find their own nuggets of fun.
Interpreting the data:
The key thing to remember is that the sample method detects presence, but not necessarily absence. We can only safely say that x species is found at that location, not that y species is not present. Thus, use the data with caution and to serve as a baseline for what you know is present. I guarantee that you have many more species present at each location, especially when it comes to bigger bees that more easily escape the bee bowls. The few big bees that we did catch were often old, ragged, and at the end of their life, which explains how they ended up getting stuck in the bowls. Meanwhile, most of the smaller (grain of rice sized) bees tended to be in much better shape.
The data will be shared via excel. Some people had a lot of bees in their samples, so in order to figure out what you had, it might be easier to make pivot tables in excel (or equivalent program) to more easily interpret the data.
Each column has a different type of information stored. Each row (beyond the first row that is the column header) is an individual bee. You will need to scroll to the right to see all the columns.
Each individual bee will have their own unique record number that should be in the format of OHBB-####. Who identified the specimen and ID notes are also recorded. The full identification that is available should be in the scientificName column.
To learn more about the individual bees that you collected, I recommend copying the full name from the scientificName column and using a search engine to learn more. You can also check to see if they are specialist bees by looking at Jarrod Fowler’s specialist bee website here: https://jarrodfowler.com/specialist_bees.html
If you have more than 100 specimens, you might find it useful to make pivot tables on a computer to more easily interpret the data. I will do a brief demo of making pivot tables here, but this information works for excel on a windows device. If you do not use excel or have a different device, there should be similar programs that allow you to do the same thing.
Making pivot tables in excel:
Scroll past this section if you have under 100 specimens or are happy with just looking at your data as individual rows. No need to stress over confusing computer wizardry if you don’t have to.
First make a new tab in your excel sheet by clicking on the + sign on the bottom left side.
Click the + sign to make a new sheet. Then navigate back to sheet 1.
Once you are back to the main data page, use your keyboard to click on ctrl+a at the same time to select all (or just highlight the entire dataset).
Once your data is highlighted, navigate to the insert tab at the top left of the screen, which should lead you to seeing a pivot table option on the top left.
Once you click on the pivot table tab, this should pop up. We already highlighted the data, so that should be good. Your range numbers will be different from this example, since this photo is pivoting the whole database. Under the choose where you want the pivot table, I typically choose existing worksheet and switch to the second tab to insert it there. Or you can make a new worksheet. That part doesn’t really matter as much. Click ok.
Once you click okay, you should be greeted with something like this. You can then drag and drop various characters into the rows and values column to quickly sort the data.
The combination you will most likely want is the scientific name in the rows section and then a count of the record number in the values section
Doing so should give you a table that looks similar to this one, showing all the genera and species that were reported from your site and also the number of individuals reported.
You can play around with the pivot tables to see tables of bees by month (month in rows section), bees by sample date (sample date in rows section), bees by sex (sex in rows section), who identified what (recordedBy in rows section), etc. You can even filter the different species so then you can see individual species flight peaks by month or however else you want to look at the data. There are plenty of ways to look at the data, so have fun! If you end up making a cool graph with your data and want to share it on the blog, email MaLisa and she will share it.
Here is an example graph you can make with just a few clicks. There is a pretty obvious peak in August for Calliopsis, with the earliest specimen observed in June at Cedar Bog. Also note that playing around with the data makes errors and issues more obvious. You can see our lovely sample date where we could not determine the month. Check the notes column to see if there is an explanation for any weirdness.
Anticipated questions:
I found an error. Can you fix it?
Yes! If you find an error (we mistyped the address, your name is spelled incorrectly, we said your bee was a giraffe, etc), please email MaLisa! We will work on fixing the error ASAP. We try to double check everything, but some things slip through. So if you think you found an error, let us know.
What does Ceratina dupla/mikmaqi mean? Why not identify it as Ceratina dupla or Ceratina mikmaqi?
In some cases, we are not able to easily identify things all the way to species, but are able to rule out other species. The most common example where that happens is with the male Ceratina specimens with narrow femurs. We can rule them out to either dupla or mikmaqi, but often they end up glued to the pin along the edge of the femur and we cannot see the detail necessary to say more. Sometimes legs with key characters are broken off, so some people will have Ceratina dupla/strenua females. When they are listed as Genus speciesx/speciesy, it just means that we are able to rule it down to those two species, but cannot say for sure based on the specimen.
When should I expect my final report?
It is going to be a while before we get to species. Getting to genus was speed identifying. We identified the easy species as we went. Now all that are left are the harder genera, which will take much more time. It is possible that I might take another year and a half to get through what is left, but the timeline is unclear at this point. I will keep you updated as we go.
How rare is this bee?
Assigning rarity is hard. For bigger bees, you can check the iNaturalist.org records, though some of the big species are still hard to identify. So just because you do not see many records on iNaturalist does not mean it is rare. It might just be really hard to identify.
If you got the following genera, then you can rest assured that you have an uncommon bee that few others collected: Anthophora, (only 25 total collected out of 53,000+), Chelostoma (only 12), Coelioxys (only 4), Eucera (only 90), Heriades (only 44), Melitoma (only 25 and it is a specialist of morning glory), Pseudopanurgus (only 37), Ptilothrix (only 20 and a specialist on Hibiscus), Stelis (only 10), etc. A few other rarer ones not listed will likely lead to a publication and to be announced later.
How do I get more species of bees present at my site?
First, it helps to figure out what species you have. The interim report should help with that. From there, you can start to look for what you are missing.
Floral resources: You can try to plant more floral resources for specialist bees. You are unlikely to get specialists at your site without the host plants, so cultivating the correct specialist hosts helps. For a list of specialist plants, look at Jarrod Fowler’s specialist bee website and our Guide to the Specialist Bees of Ohio.
Rotten wood: Do you have Augochlora pura in your list? These are conspicuous bright green bees that nest in old fallen logs that are practically mush. The type of logs that if you try to pick them up, they crumble in your hands and are already practically soil. If you have a wood lot, consider leaving a small log or two instead of using it all for firewood. If you just have a small backyard, consider saving a few of the larger branches from the next wind storm and pick a small obscure spot for the log to rot. It might take 4 years, but eventually the wood gets to the right state of decay that is perfect for Augochlora. Plus, other animals will also enjoy the decayed wood, from a host of salamanders, slugs, fungus beetles, and other important organisms.
Pithy stems: Do you have Ceratina in your list? These bees are stem nesters, and in particular like to nest in the stems of last years plants. The easiest way to get more Ceratina is to be a little bit more messy when gardening, leaving last years stems. It also helps to only trim down last years stems to no lower than 12 inches. That leaves plenty of pithy stem for them to nest.
Example of a pithy stem where the small carpenter bees in the genus Ceratina have excavated out the center of the dead stem. As far as I am aware, they only use old, dead stems and will not use fresh, living plants. That is why it is so important to leave about 12 inches of last years stem for them to nest.
Nesting resources: This part is much harder to fix. A majority of bees nest in the soil, so you are stuck with the soil type that you have. Allow bare patches of soil to persist instead of immediately reseeding with turf.
We do not currently advise people to use the store bought cavity nests that are now readily available, as they often lead to high parasite loads which might spillover into wild populations. The store bought cavity nests also tend to host more of the non-native bee species (Megachile rotundata, Osmia taurus and Osmia cornifrons) instead of our native species. I have tried using the cavity nests and also making my own, but have consistently gotten non-native bees and also high parasitism rates.
I got a lot of (non-native) bees at my cavity nests! The parasitic wasps took full advantage of the easy to find nests as well.
The parasites have long, drill-like ovipositors that they use to insert their eggs into the bee nest. It is pretty cool to watch, though unfortunate for your bees. My bee hotels ended up being parasite smorgasbords.
Wasp course:
Want to learn more about non-bee wasps? Well, there is a course covering all the other wasps that are not bees, starting in January! Also, did I mention that it is a fully remote course? There is a small fee ($60 for regular, $45 for students). See more about the course here: https://waspidcourse.wordpress.com/
All for now,
MaLisa
Sorry MaLisa, but this is really confusing to me.
Is there a specific part that is confusing? Or just the pivot table section? Because you can just ignore the pivot table part of the blog. That was mostly intended for people who love playing around with data and making graphs, charts, and such.
If a bunch of other people are also confused I might try doing a webinar or something similar to try to explain the files if that helps?
Regardless, I haven’t sent any reports out yet as we are still working on the last few odds and ends. We should have stuff ready by January.
You do a splendid job, and not just as an entomologist. You also are a superb communicator. Those two attributes don’t always happen in the same person.
Thanks! I am glad you are finding this a helpful and understandable resource. I strive to try to make things easy to understand, but there is always more that I could do.
And I know pivot tables are confusing, so I expect a few people to run into issues on that front. I’m still working on how to make that make more sense.
Great info, thanks, MaLisa! Also amazing shot of that Leucipsis ovipositing.
Really liked your section on improving resources for native bees! Thanks, MaLisa.
In the tables, when the date is listed— is that the date the bee was collected or the date it was identified?
should match up with the date set and date retrieved. The day month year columns are just duplications of the startDayOfYear column, but broken down into their respective sections.
The date identified would be in the column marked dateIdentified, which is to the right of the identifiedBy column.
I hope that helps!
This is so awesome, MaLisa! I really appreciate you giving step-by-step instructions and ideas for the pivot tables as it’s so cool to see the information sorted in these ways! I was able to do mine in google doc spreadsheets. I may need some time to figure out how to set up the charts though…thank-you!