Category: bees
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It’s Okay to Pull Back (Or, Confessions of a Would-Be Entomologist)
Friday, I met my student, Gabrielle, on a frosty spring morning to set up traps for her capstone project. Gabrielle is following up on work begun last year assessing the impact of stem nester refugia on native bee communities in prairie remnants at Jerry Smith Park. Sampling in 2020 hit some roadblocks due to the…
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Virtual Inspiration
By February of this year, when Covid-19 was just making its presence known in the U.S., my summer calendar was booked. Early June, I planned to attend the Society for Ecological Restoration’s (SER) global conference in Quebec. By midsummer, I would be at Kenyon College in Ohio teaching their summer Young Science Writers program. My…
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Reconnecting
Normally this time of year I would be at my annual Women’s Writing Retreat, more affectionately known as Dollbabies Week. Like so many other spring activities and conferences, that plan was washed away by the tide of Covid-19. My literary colleagues and I have organized a remote edition instead. It won’t be the same, but…
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Bees in the Time of Covid-19
Life has been transformed in the past couple weeks for pretty much everyone in the United States, and around the world. At Avila University, faculty, staff and students have undertaken a monumental effort to move our entire spring curriculum online. Virtual classes started yesterday, almost all of us wading into unknown territory. On the bright…
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Dia de la Amistad
My bee page is now updated – check it out for details about our 2020 field season. I’m excited about my projects, coordinated as always with KC Wildlands, KC Parks, and the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). We’re going to conduct a standardized survey of a unique habitat in the Kansas City area, the rocky…
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First Goals and Aspirations for 2020
Avila University started its regular spring semester about two weeks ago. Seems I’ve hardly drawn a breath, and the month has already slipped by! After some worry that I might be teaching an overload again this spring, I managed to negotiate with the powers that be so that my teaching obligations remain within contract. This…
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Holiday Respite
Well, I warned you back in September, and I was right: My autumn overload was too much to allow weekly niceties such as visiting my online journal and communicating with all of you. I have missed this space. Truly. I’m hopeful I will have more time to spend with you in the spring, as I…
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Predators and Mutualists
August already, and I am moving into late summer collections at Jerry Smith Park. This season I don’t have students working with me in the field. Avila is a small college, and the timing of biology majors moving through our programs isn’t always conducive to having research assistants on my summer team. Even when you…
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On Confronting Our Mistakes
Last fall, I wrote in a bee update that about 40% of our 2018 summer bee collection belonged to one species of small, metallic green bee: Augochlora pura. Turns out I was wrong. With a little more experience and a fresh look at our collection, I’ve been able to determine that of the 70-some-odd bees I…
K. R. Gastreich, Author 