Lots o' bees!

   A few weeks ago I attended one of the Whitten-Newman ExplorOlogy programs out in Black Mesa, Oklahoma as a scientist representative. The program was called PaleoExpedition, and the main goal was having the students work with fossils and geology at the Whitten-Newman property in the area. My job as a recent-invertebrate curator and trained entomologist was to help teach the high-school age students about how current animal life can infer about the past, so part of the time they were there I led them on insect-based surveys and experiments in the area.
    One of the first observations we ran into when we arrived at Black Mesa was the massive nest site of Digger bees that were adjacent to the on-site campground being used by many of the paleontologists. They had never seen such a concentration of these bees, and neither had I. The Digger bees dug holes into the sandy soil to lay their nests, some as close as 1 inch apart from each other, and there had to be thousands of nests within a baseball-field area.

Piles of Digger-bee nests. Image by Nick Czaplewski. 

Close up of the nests, including the tunnels built extending from the nests. Image from Nick Czaplewski

     What was also interesting about the nests was some of the bees seemed to use nearby bright rocks, pieces of glass, or sticks to "mark" them. We used the bees and nests as an example of developing a question, creating a hypothesis, and testing the hypothesis with the students. One pair of students did a little survey of the nests to see what was the preferred type of object that they would use to mark nests, and found they generally preferred native rocks after all. Another group of students surveyed whether nests with the tubes on the top of the nests helped prevent velvet ants from entering the nests (they are parasites of the bees), and found it did help deter them. Lastly another group of students surveyed how many types of velvet ants were in the area attacking the bee nests, and found at least three species (all of which I think are county, if not state records!).
     It was interesting trying to tie-in paleontology with bug-hunting, but I think the students enjoyed an opportunity to work with live animal observations, field work, and developing their own experiments. I'm hoping to follow up with some of the students on projects from some of the observations and specimens we gathered from the sites, too. Who knows, maybe I converted a few into future entomologists!
    I'll be posting pictures of the bees and velvet ants shortly, and it was a great opportunity to work with the ExplorOlogy program!