There may be as many ways to cope with these challenging and uncertain times as there are people. After I started collecting bees last spring, I read a line in Lulu Miller’s new book Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life that may partly explain my new passion: “Psychologists have studied … the sweet salve that collecting can offer in times of anguish.” This quote seemed perfectly suited to our current times and my new pastime.
Our family owns forest land in the coast range west of Portland. Over the years, we’ve monitored a variety of things in our forests, from birds to amphibians and creek bugs to water temperatures. We’ve often talked about what else to add. Last summer I was introduced to the Oregon Bee Atlas (OBA), and began collecting bees in our forests.
Native bee populations are declining throughout the world, including in Oregon. In order to understand how and why this is happening, the Oregon Bee Atlas is developing an inventory of the state’s native bees and their associated plant-hosts (where the bees collect pollen and nectar). The organization also is conducting ongoing surveys of bee populations to assess their health. Through OBA, native bees, collected by citizen volunteers throughout the spring and summer flowering season, are identified and become part of a publicly accessible database.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the OBA training materials moved online and time spent in our forests, where social distancing is the norm, became even more appealing. I have been collecting bees on a weekly basis throughout this spring and summer. You can get an idea of my bee collecting with this video, which shows a yellow-faced bumblebee gathering pollen on goldenrod, a bright yellow flower.
I was collecting bees off of this goldenrod when I spied what looked like a sleeping bumble bee. I captured it gently in my net and was surprised to find a bright yellow spider clinging to the bee’s back.Appropriately, it was called the goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia). The spider had its long legs wrapped around the bee with its fangs dug into the crease between the bee’s head and thorax. In the photo below, although the spider is no longer attached and therefore does not show the “venom” position where the spider injects a neurotoxin into the bee, you get a great view of the spider on the bee’s back. The time I’ve spent observing and collecting has provided a very welcome balm during these uncertain times.
— Pam Hayes
