Newsletter of the Native Bee Society of British Columbia August 2024
Volume 5 | Issue 2
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Editors-in-chief: C. Thuring & M. Marriott
Contributors: Christine Thuring, Lynda Stevens, Lori Weidenhammer, Sky Jarvis Cover image: Osmia montana on Gaillardia
photo: Lori Weidenhammer
Buzz Straight to Article:
NBSBC Annual General Meeting
Monday, October 28, 2024, 7pm, Zoom
Attend our AGM to learn what we have been up to and what's to come!
The Native Bee Society of BC is holding its 6th AGM on Monday, October 28, via Zoom. The details are still being developed, but it will undoubtedly be a memorable evening that includes a brilliant bee talk, engaging conversations, and important NBSBC business, including board elections. Register today!
In order to vote at the AGM, you must be a member of the NBSBC. Memberships can be purchased or renewed here. Any memberships purchased now will provide benefits from now until the end of December, 2025. If you are not sure what your current membership status is, please email us at BCnativebees@gmail.com!
BC Bee School and BC Bee Atlas Featured in Hakai Magazine
We're pleased to share this feature article, Here a Bee, There a Bee, Everywhere a Wild Bee, by Hakai Magazine author Anne Casselman, who joined us at the BC Bee School last year to write about native pollinator diversity in Cascadia. The article weaves a colourful story of native bee researchers in BC, many of whom are affiliated with the NBSBC.
As part of her work on the article, Ann joined us on the 2023 BC Bee Course in the south Okanagan. She was as much a participant as any, both in the lab and in the field, and her article brings the experience of "Bee School" to life. The article was equally successful in bringing to life the work of bee expert and course developer Lincoln Best, as well as conversations with course instructor Bonnie Zand, and former NBSBC president Lori Weidenhammer. The article is top notch in its presentation of current understanding of BC's native bees, introduces some of Canada's most unique bees, and communicates the importance of the NBSBC's Bee Atlas initiative.
Read the article here, and please consider sharing it with your networks and donating to support our BC Bee Atlas!
Notes from the Field: California Bumble Bee on Paintbrush in a Nanaimo Garden
by Lynda Stevens
Editor’s Note:
We love contributions like this! Please get in touch if you have something to share. By the way, Lynda is frequently sharing wildlife videos on YouTube, and it is well worth subscribing to her channel.
I have observed nine species of bumble bees in the Nanaimo area on Vancouver Island. Five species are very common garden visitors and four are less commonly seen in urban gardens. One of these less common visitors is the California bumble bee, Bombus californicus, although I usually see it a couple of times a year when visiting wildflower meadows. According to the Xerces Society, it’s preferred flowers are thistles, larkspurs, clover, penstemon and paintbrush. For several days in late May, a Bombus californicus female visited my native plant garden to feed on paintbrush flowers (Castilleja hispida). This perked my interest to do a little more research on this species.
B. californicus is found in central America and the western half of North America including southern Canada. It used to be relatively abundant in the western US, especially California, Oregon and Washington, but numbers have been declining and in 2015 it was classified as Vulnerable by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).
B. californicus is a large bumble bee that can exhibit multiple different colour patterns of black and yellow. The typical female colour pattern is black with a single strong yellow band on the anterior portion of the thorax and another band of yellow near the tip of the abdomen. At first glance this could be mistaken for B. vosnesenskii, the yellow-faced bumble bee, except that B. californicus lacks the yellow face. There are also females who show two bands of yellow on the thorax separated by a black band between the wing bases.
This is the colour variation that I have seen in this area and in my garden. Males can also exhibit more colour variation.
The species status for B. californicus is controversial. Multiple genetic studies have added to the confusion with results contradicting each other. Some authorities consider it to be a sub-species or colour variant of B. fervidus, the golden northern bumble bee, which is widespread across central and eastern US and adjacent southern Canada. B. fervidus tends to be a more all all-yellow bumble bee while B. californicus shows more black. However, in areas where their ranges overlap it can be difficult to tell them apart except by genetic analysis. In the overlap areas, studies have indicated that there is no evidence that B. californicus and B. fervidus have the capacity to breed in the wild suggesting that they are different species.
A detailed genetic and morphological analysis conducted in 2018 by Jonathan B. Koch et al., “Phylogeny and population genetic analyses reveals cryptic speciation in the Bombus fervidus species complex,” determined that they should be considered as separate species. Cryptic speciation is the process in which organisms share a nearly identical phenotype but belong to different species. Currently, these two bumble bees are listed as separate species on the iNaturalist site. B. californicus is shown as the western species and B. fervidus as the central and eastern species.
Despite the genetic confusion for these bumble bees, making an observation of one is always exciting and, especially so, when it is in my garden. Here is some slow motion video that I took during one of the visits to my paintbrush flowers.
Bio
Lynda Stevens is an amateur nature and wildlife photographer living in Nanaimo, BC. Bees and native flowers have become some of her favourite subjects. Check out her YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@lyndastevens3479
See Lynda’s previous article in The Buzz: Sleeping Bumblebees, Dec. 2023
Bee-O-Blitz Bees and Botany: Camping with Bees in BC Provincial Parks
by Lori Weidenhammer
Camping is a great way to get to know the bees in BC! There are so many wonderful provincial campsites and recreation sites to explore and discover wildflowers and the bees that pollinate them. June is usually a great month to get outside and take photos of bees in late spring/early summer flowers . . . when the weather co-operates! Darren Kirby and I camped, botanized, and searched for bees for the month of June and saw some wonderful sights, including baby loons, moose, bears, and lots of beautiful BC native bees.
Darren and I are grateful we received a BC Parks Spark Fund grant through the Native Bee Society of BC to lead bee-o-blitz walks in three BC Parks and create iNaturalist projects encouraging the public to upload bee observations and gathering people’s observations in all three parks this summer. I also created a series of Bee BINGO cards for folks to use to help them learn which plants to look for bees on and to learn more about the bumble bees they might see in these parks. You can download and print them from the NBSBC website under the resources section. We focused attention on the western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis), which is considered a species at risk by some, and which scientists are studying in order to find out what we can do to help with conservation. In June we embarked on a journey from Keremeos to Kokanee Creek Provincial Park to do the first in the series of bee walks. We camped in rec sites and BC Parks along the way and made observations of bees and plants at campsites, meadows, forest edges and even ditches. (Some of the best plants and bees are in ditches in the BC backroads!)
Before we left Keremeos, I gave workshops to three classes at the local elementary school using the Bee BINGO cards to engage the students. I introduced them to bee anatomy and they drew wonderful portraits of bees. They have a fenced-in school garden, which was just beginning to be established and although it was too early for blooms and bees, I was able to use the plants like zucchini (which require bees to transfer pollen from male to female flowers) to talk about the role bees play in pollination. There were some weeds blooming—so we talked about the yellow rocket and dandelions in the school yard. It was windy and cool, so we didn’t get to see many bees, but I did manage to catch a yellow jacket in my net, and put it in a jar for them to take a closer look. The teachers and students were very excited about the bee BINGO cards and I handed out copies for them to take home to their families. Special thanks to Ali from the Similkameen Artist Residency for setting up these workshops!
Early in our trip we camped at Isobel Lake, near Kamloops. We were walking in the hills of the Lac du Bois Grasslands protected area and I saw Bombus fervidus nectaring on Thompson’s paintbrush. There were other species of bumble bees in the same area, but they were foraging on different plants—mostly native legumes. I’d been admiring Lynda’s Stevens’ photo of a California bee (Bombus californicus) foraging on the harsh paintbrush in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island (see Lynda's article about her field observations in this issue of The Buzz!). This is interesting because the two bees are so closely related, they have been considered as part of a species complex. Paintbrush are mysterious flowers known as hemiparasitic perennials that rely on the plants growing around them for nutrients rather than from photosynthesis. The colors are actually on the bracts of the flowers rather than petals. At the Similkameen Artist Residency, where we have been staying in April and May, the hills have a beautiful population of Thompson’s paintbrush which has striking yellow bracts. This species typically grows in the rocky soils in sagebrush.
We saw loads of harsh paintbrush (C. hispida), too —in ditches, forest edges and on hillsides and meadows. We also discovered another species I was unaware of — giant or common paintbrush (C. miniata) has similar colour variations as harsh paintbrush but is larger. It can grow up to three feet tall! The most dramatic paintbrush sighting was on a trip up to Chute Lake near Naramata where there are carpets of large paintbrush in shades of scarlet and coral in the powerline cuts.
On a roadside meadow stop near Midway in Boundary Country we saw a pink and cream flower that reminded me of paint brush, but it turned out to be gold tongue, aka thin-leaved owl ‘s clover (Orthocarpis tenufolius). I was thrilled to see a blue-black iridescent mason bee foraging in the flowers and got some photos. This chunky Osmia species looks very similar to one I saw foraging in Thompson’s paintbrush in the Lac du Bois Grasslands. Turns out paintbrush and gold tongue are in the same family (Orobanchaceae). Discoverlife.org lists Bombus centralis and Bombus appositus as bumble bees associated with this plant. Bombus occidentalis and B. vancouverensis may also be pollinators, according to the Montana Field Guides.
Leapin’ Lupinus Batman, there were loads of lupins blooming in June! In the grasslands there are silky lupins (Lupinus sericeus) and large-leaved lupins (L. polyphyllus) in the Monashees and Kootenays. The most common bees we saw on lupins were worker bumble bees, mostly nearctic bumble bees (B. vancouverensis ssp nearticus) and fuzzy-horned bumble bees (B. mixtus). They were also being pollinated by mason bees and a species of a very fast-moving Habropoda digger bee. Now I had read lupins only supply pollen, not nectar, but later in the trip we spotted a hummingbird moth on lupins in canyon flats—so there is definitely nectar there too. Also, the pollen from lupins I’ve seen tends to be brick red, and the digger bee had orange coloured pollen on her pollen pants, so it appeared to be nectaring in lupins as opposed to collecting pollen.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency for folks to plant Russel lupins, which are cultivars that cross with our native lupins, making them inedible for the caterpillars of some butterflies that rely on them. At the Burton Historical Cemetery it is obvious the lupins there have hybridized. The plants are taller than usual, and they are in different colours. (Many of them are pink.) I was pleasantly surprised to see yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) thriving below the lupins. Some bumble bees seemed to be favoring the yellow rattle over the lupins. Yellow rattle is in the same family as paintbrush and, as a hemiparasite, it can also help to suppress grasses and enhance biodiversity in flower meadows.
We finally reached our destination: Kokanee Creek Provincial Park. Joanne, the park naturalist walked me through the demonstration garden planted in front of the Nature centre and we talked plants and bees. We were lucky to have Lincoln Best visiting from Oregon along with his father, all the way from Ontario. He and Linc are avid fishermen and they’d been having a wonderful time together on their travels. Board member and native plant specialist Valerie Huff joined us in the Nature Centre for a good chat about bees, weeds and wildflowers. While we were talking, a storm was brewing and it hit full on while were inside the building. Linc generously brought in some bee specimens to show the staff and he and I chatted about BC native bees with the young park stewards that lead the nature walks at the centre. We gave them a stack of Bee BINGO cards to hand out to campers and to use on their walks. Linc left us with some freshly caught pickerel. He cleaned and seasoned it and as soon as the storm settled we lightly pan-fried it. I think it was the most delicious fish I’ve ever eaten and it reminded me of my dad’s pickerel he’d bring home from his trips to northern Saskatchewan.
Darren and I watched the forecast, to prepare for the weather we’d have doing the bee walk. It didn’t look good. There wouldn’t be a storm, like the previous day, but it would be wet. Well, it did rain, but I was so pleased that a dozen folks attended. I mentioned to one of the BC Bee Tracker iNat participants that we’d be doing the event at Kokanee Creek Provincial Park and I was delighted to see him in person! I handed out the bee cards in the Nature Centre’s cozy theatre and talked about BC native bees using the wonderful laminated cards the Native Bee Society of BC created for giving talks like this. Then we zipped up our rain jackets and looked at all the plants where there could be bees, but we didn’t even find one sheltering in a blossom. Of course, immediately after the walk the sun came out and so did the bees. Le sigh. Darren and I went up to the old homestead in the park where there was an exotic shrub in the legume family that had spread over the property and happened to be in bloom. We saw Nevada bumble (Bombus nevadensis) queens and yellow-fronted bumble bees (B. flavifrons) nectaring in the blossoms. At Kokanee Creek Park, three plants we had seen bees foraging on included common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus), thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) and Nootka rose (Rosa nutkana). I did catch a glimpse of a western bumble bee high up in a Nootka rose bush, but didn’t get a good photo. Darn!
![A fuzzy-horned bumble bee (Bombus mixtus) swims in thimbleberry stamens in Kokanee Creek Park]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b98ddc_9feea35077554d7f936f026c7041b189~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_586,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/b98ddc_9feea35077554d7f936f026c7041b189~mv2.jpg)
The next day we headed to Beaver Creek Park. It was lovely to see the native plant garden planted by KinSeed Ecologies and a wonderful surprise to run into Bren as she instructed the park staff on how to care for the plants. I saw a sweet small mason bee in a common blanketflower blossom— it has to be one of my favorite bee plants. Next, we headed to the BC Bee school field days, and it was wonderful to see the bees in the common blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) on the hill near Burnell Lake. I was particularly fascinated by the large mason bee (Osmia montana) that was gathering pollen on its belly with a kind of twitching motion. I think it’s the largest Osmia I’ve ever seen! I nicknamed her “Beaker” because of the long mandibles.
In addition to the initial bioblitz in Kokanee Creek Park on June 16, we led two additional bee walks in BC parks this summer: one in E. C. Manning Park on July 28 and one in Blanket Creek Park on August 4. If you missed these in-person guided walks, never fear - you can still participate in the BC Bee Seekers Bioblitz! If you were in any of these three parks (or any BC Park or rec site), please upload your bee observations to iNaturalist. We want your data! Darren has written a handy guide to help you create bee observations for iNaturalist.
Be curious, be safe, and have fun!
Bio
Lori Weidenhammer is an English/Irish/German settler originally from a tiny hamlet called Cactus Lake on Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatchewan, the original lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Lori has been an independent artist for over 33 years and her most recent work is community-based performance art, often as Madame Beespeaker, to engage people of all ages to explore environmental issues through many different media. She is currently working on a revised edition of her book Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide to Saving the Bees.
Cross-Pollination: Bee City
by Sky Jarvis
In 2023, the Native Bee Society of BC (NBSBC) became affiliated with Pollinator Partnership Canada’s "Bee City" initiative. As such, NBSBC is now part of a 190-member community of like-minded organizations committed to protecting pollinators, including native bees. Together, we are committed to public engagement around the importance of pollinators.
This article shares some updates on Bee City Canada, in order to broaden awareness of the program. We also hope to engage you - our readers and members - to invite your communities, schools, and workplaces to become a part of this national movement, too!
Bee City Canada’s mission is to recognize and support municipalities, Indigenous Communities, campuses, schools, and other organizations that are taking action to protect and promote pollinators. Their vision is for Canada to be a world leader in pollinator conservation – a place where people and pollinators can thrive together. The NBSBC's mission is to lead collaborative, community- and science-based actions that support native bees and other wild pollinators through art, education, and research. We envision a future where BC’s native bees are thriving and protected.
We are thrilled to announce our collaboration with Bee City Canada. Specifically, we have launched the BC Bee City drive for 2024, and we need your help to make this a success! As you can see at the end of this article, it's easy to get your community or campus registered as a Bee City. Even better, though, is if any Bee City or Bee Campus application mentions the NBSBC, then Bee City Canada will direct ½ of the first year's program fees to the Native Bee Society! We will use these funds towards our ambitious BC Bee Atlas project.
Currently, there are only EIGHT Bee Cities (of which two are First Nations) and two Bee Campuses in British Columbia. This is surprising given that BC is the most biodiverse province in Canada, with several national hotspots for native bees! There are almost 600 scientifically described species of native bees in BC.
Current Bee Cities and Campuses include:
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Who can join?
Cities, Towns, Municipalities, and First Nations can apply to become a Bee City.
What does it cost?
An annual fee applies based on your population. First Nations can join for free Universities and Colleges can join the Bee Campus program for a small annual renewal fee.
What's the commitment?
Bee Cities are committed to protecting pollinators and all program participants must commit to:
Create - Creating, maintaining, and/or improving pollinator habitat.
E.g., “create pollinator-friendly demonstration gardens and greenspaces”
Educate - Educate the community, students, employees, and/or customers about the importance of pollinators.
E.g., “protect pollinators by reducing or eliminating pesticides”
Celebrate - Celebrating pollinators during National Pollinator Week or at other times of the year.
E.g., “celebrate pollinators and show them gratitude for the ecosystem services they provide”
The NEW Bee City Handbook includes a comprehensive list of goals, objectives, and real-life actions.
How can my city join?
Application steps:
Download the Bee City Canada Draft Resolution Form
make any changes as necessary. This allows you to customize the Resolution(s) to your community.
present this to the city/ band council and have it signed by the Mayor, Chief, or appropriate official(s).
Download an application
complete the online application or download and complete the PDF and email it to applications@beecitycanada.org.
Submit Application
Include the completed application form and signed resolution along with logo, photos (if available), and 100-word write-up.
Please mention the Native Bee Society of BC!
Bio
Sky Jarvis is an executive board member of the NBSBC, and has been volunteering with the Society for almost three years. She is a Biologist and Forester for a Community Forest outside of Kamloops, BC. In her spare time, she is an avid naturalist and loves to share her profound appreciation of nature with others, especially her son Cedar.
Ongoing Event: City Nature Challenge 2024
City Nature Challenge: Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD)
Join others throughout the Metro Vancouver Regional district who are participating in the City Nature Challenge, part of a global event to observe and record the biodiversity of living things! Help us to explore and share the incredible biodiversity of our area by observing nature all around us - birds, bats, bees, molluscs, trees, ferns and more!
The City Nature Challenge for the Metro Vancouver Regional district area is a partnership of 21 municipalities, one electoral area and one treaty First Nation, scəẃaθən məsteyəxʷ (Tsawwassen First Nation). Join Nature Vancouver and all its partners in iNaturalist to help us record as many WILD plants and animals as possible throughout the Region's land, air and water.
While you're on iNaturalist, don't forget to share your bee sightings on the NBSBC Bee Tracker, too!
Upcoming Events
Heading into the autumn months we will be out in the community educating and advocating for the bees as usual. Check our Events page regularly for new happenings on the horizon. Here is what we have confirmed at the time of publication:
Native Bee Study Group, Wednesday, August 28, 7pm, on Zoom
Join the Native Bee Study Group for our August meeting! Our online study group meets on the fourth Wednesday each month (except December) at 7 pm via Zoom, hosted by Bonnie Zand. This group is open to all levels of bee knowledge. We look forward to seeing you there. RSVP here.
Okanagan Mini Bee School (Two-day Bee Biology and Identification Workshop), Sunday, September 1– Monday, September 2, 9am to 4pm, Kamloops, BC
Have you always wanted to know how to ID the amazing diversity of bees buzzing around your flowers? Where do they nest, what do they eat, and how can you support them? Join our Bee Biology and Identification workshop! This two-day session starts in the classroom where instructors Bonnie Zand and Elaine Sedgman will provide you with identification strategies for common native bees, as well as in depth information on their nesting, overwintering, and flower preferences. The following day we will go on a “Bee Quest”, exploring local natural areas and observing bees and their habitat in the field.
This workshop is suitable for beginner to intermediate students and will focus on recognizing common bumble bee species and common solitary bee genera. We will be examining bee specimens using low magnification digital microscopes, focusing on features that can be observed in the field and in photographs. In the field we will discuss the use of iNaturalist and the NBSBC’s BC Bee Atlas as tools for supporting native bees. We will also look for examples of important native bee habitat features and discuss practical habitat conservation measures that community members can take. Find more information and register online here.
Brilliant Native Bees of BC, Thursday, September 19, 7pm, Hybrid Zoom & Unitarian Hewett Hall, Vancouver, BC
NBSBC Board Member Julia Taylor will deliver this Nature Vancouver presentation highlighting some of the nearly 600 different native bee species that give BC the greatest diversity of native bees in all of Canada. The presentation will be a hybrid of in-person and Zoom video conferencing. The in-person event takes place after 7 pm at the Unitarian Hewett Hall, 949 W. 49th Avenue (49th and Oak), in Vancouver. On the Monday preceding the event, Nature Vancouver members will receive the Zoom link in the weekly e-News. The talk begins at 7:30 pm. Non-members are welcome and should email enews@NatureVancouver.ca a few days ahead to RSVP and receive the link. See the Nature Vancouver website for the latest event information.
Green Streets Fall Appreciation Event, Sunday, September 22, VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, BC
The NBSBC will be in attendance at this event for volunteers in the City of Vancouver's Green Streets program to answer their questions about planting for pollinators. Green Streets is a city initiative with hundreds of volunteer gardeners across Vancouver caring for planted traffic circles and street corners.
Native Bee Society of BC Annual General Meeting, Monday, October 28, 7 pm
Save the date for our 2024 AGM, October 28th, 7-9 pm on Zoom! Join us to vote in our incoming board of directors, reflect on the past year as a society, hear a talk about BC's amazing bees, and learn about some exciting new directions for our society! Don't forget to RSVP in advance of the event!
If you would like to represent native bees/NBSBC at a community event near you, or know of a community event that would like to have a representative from the NBSBC attend, please send us an email to discuss how we can be involved.
Recent Events
Since our last newsletter, the NBSBC has been busily leading or taking part in a number of events. These include, but are not limited to:
Saturday, April 13, Bee Workshop at Pine Street Pollinator Park, Vancouver, BC.
The NBSBC's Christine Thuring led a 30-minute workshop at the Pine St. Pollinator Park about local native bees and ways to support pollinator habitat. This event also launched the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Parks Board’s exciting new Seeding Stewardship Program, which we were happy to be a part of!
Saturday, April 20, Earth Day Celebrations, Moodyville Park, North Vancouver, BC
Paula Cruise represented the NBSBC and hosted a table at the City of North Vancouver's free Earth Day event, sharing lots of info on native BC bees.
Saturday May 4, Launch of BC Bee Atlas and Sampling Training, Ron Perrault Park, North Vancouver, BC
In partnership with the City of North Vancouver and led by Master Melittologist (MM) instructor Bonnie Zand, seven MM students and three CNV staff met to receive initial training in bee sampling methods for an ongoing project to collect specimens along areas of Grand Boulevard. Continued sampling of the area will contribute to the bee-plant dataset generated by the newly launched BC Bee Atlas. Read more detailed information about the BC Bee Atlas and our partnership with the City of North Vancouver in our blog post here.
Sunday, May 5, The River Never Sleeps, Fanny Bay, BC
The NBSBC's Bonnie Zand was on-site at this free family and community festival at the Rosewall Creek Hatchery to celebrate Salmon, and, of course, to answer questions about native bees!
Saturday, May 11, The Great Salmon Send-Off, Burnaby, BC
Visitors to this annual family event at Stoney Creek Community School, organized by the Stoney Creek Environment Committee, release coho smolts into Stoney Creek and are entertained by local groups and artists. Leah Harrison and Jane Lakes hosted the NBSBC table, sharing lots of great bee resources such as pinning collections and our pollinator planting guides.
May 9-12, BC Nature Conference and AGM, Qualicum Beach, BC
Sky Jarvis represented the NBSBC at this year's BC Nature Conference in Qualicum Beach. Christine Thuring joined Sky in time for the gala dinner, straight after the BC Land Summit in Nanaimo (May 8-10).
May 11-18, Kamloops Pollinator Festival, Kamloops, BC
Started in 2022, Kamloops Farmers Market now hosts an annual Pollinator Festival, a community-based celebration of the important role pollinators play in the health and well-being of our ecosystem. The 2024 Pollinator Festival happened from May 11th to 18th. NBSBC members Sky Jarvis and Elaine Sedgeman hosted a table beside the Thompson Shuswap Master Gardeners. Together they spent time engaging with Kamloops locals about the importance and diversity of BC’s Native Bees. Elaine has a private collection of over 130 native bees local to the Kamloops area!
Sunday, May 19, Vancouver Island Mini Bee School (Two-day Bee Biology and Identification Workshop), Nanaimo, BC
We are thrilled by the success of our one-day bee biology and identification course delivered in Nanaimo in May. Coined Mini Bee School, and delivered with the support of BC Nature and the BC Naturalists' Foundation, this one day workshop was offered as an introductory level version of our very comprehensive BC Native Bee Course.
The 15 participants were taught by our very knowledgeable Bonnie Zand with Jade Lee as a teaching assistant for the day. The course was also the first public appearance of one of our new resources! Created and designed by Jade, with research help from Bonnie, these 12 full page resource sheets for identification of some of the most commonly seen bee genera in BC were a hit with our participants. Read an in-depth account and see more photos from the workshop in our blog post. See details of the next Mini Bee School being offered in Kamloops this September!
Saturday, June 15, CBC Radio Interview with the NBSBC's Bonnie Zand
Our very own Bonnie Zand was interviewed by North by Northwest's host, Margaret Gallagher, about BC's bee diversity and pollinator-friendly gardening as part of the show's Pollinator Series for the month of June. You can listen to the full interview here.
June 19-22, BC Native Bee Course, Penticton, BC
Lead Instructor Lincoln Best and Co-Instructor Bonnie Zand brought our intensive BC Native Bee Course back to the Penticton area in June 2024. There was something for bee students at every level of experience to discover and learn.
Fifteen participants took part in the three-day lab session at Okanagan College in Penticton looking closely at the unique characteristics of bee specimens under digital microscopes. Others joined the bee nerd fun for a sunny weekend of bee identification field trips in the Burnell Lake area, netting and collecting, netting and releasing, or capturing bees in photos as they foraged on native flora. A number of participants also stayed at the nearby group camping site organized by the NBSBC. Stay tuned to future newsletters for information about next year's BC Native Bee Course!
BC Bee Course 2024 field days participants. Photo: Christine Thuring.
July 19-20th: Kootenay Mini Bee School (Two-day Bee Biology and Identification Workshop), Nelson, BC
Mini-Bee School in action at the Kokanee Creek Nature Centre and in the field. Photos: Valerie Huff
This event was instructed by Bonnie Zand, coordinated by Valerie Huff, and put on in partnership with the Kootenay Native Plant Society. Partial financial support was provided by Teck Trail Operations (thank you!). 12 participants spent a day in the Kokanee Creek Nature Centre learning to ID common local bees. The following day we went on a bee quest to find some interesting and rare area bees, including the globe mallow specialist bee Diadasia diminuta, and the oil collecting bee Macropis nuda. See details and register for the next Mini Bee School being offered in Kamloops this September!
Images 1 & 2: Globe mallow bee (Diadasia diminuta), Image 3: Dark-footed Yellow Loosestrife Bee (Macropis nuda) Photos by Mini Bee School participant Jakob Dulisse on iNaturalist.
Sunday, June 16, Bee-O-Blitz Nature Walk, Kokanee Creek Provincial Park, BC
Sunday, July 28, Bee-O-Blitz Nature Walk, E. C. Manning Provincial Park, BC
Sunday, August 4, Bee-O-Blitz Nature Walk, Blanket Creek Provincial Park, BC
We’re fortunate to have over 500 native bee species in British Columbia, including 30 species of bumble bees. We need bee spotters to photograph BC bees in parks and share them on iNaturalist. These three in-person events, led by Lori Weidenhammer and Darren Kirby invited participants to play BEE BINGO to identify common species and plants, and guided them on spotting and photographing bees. You can still get involved! Download your Bee BINGO cards, check out this handy guide to help you create bee observations for iNaturalist and head out to a park to snap and upload your observations!
The NBSBC's Youngest Bee Champions!
In June, the NBSBC gratefully received a donation of $201 from Caspian and Raphael, two young Cub Scouts working towards their Seeonee Award, which is the top section award for Cub Scouts.
Caspian and Raphael photographed native flowers and created a website. Individuals made a donation to download these photos; 100% of donations were given to NBSBC to help community bees!
Thank you Caspian and Raphael! Your hard work and dedication to native bees are inspiring.
Plant-Based Foodie: Bee-Inspired Cuisine
Calling all foodies! Native bees rely on plants for their plant-based diets. This column is dedicated to vegan recipes, though you don’t have to be vegan to enjoy them! We invite all readers to associate native bees with good food.
Chocolate Avo Mousse
Recipe shared by Sky Jarvis
2 medium avocados
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp brown rice syrup (or agave syrup)
2 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp almond milk
1 tbsp almond butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp sea salt
Combine ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth, thick, and creamy. Serve with fresh fruit.
ENJOY!!
Do you have a vegan recipe to share? It can be anything (snack, main, drink, dessert) and it doesn't have to be fancy. Send it to us via email with the subject heading, “Newsletter: Plant-based Foodie.”
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