Wash & Dry

We've been going through all of the bees everyone sent us to get them ready for identification. Here are some of the steps.

Wash

The bees are in a jar with soapy water on a stir plate. There is a magnetic stir bar in the bottom that continuously stirs the bees to wash them.

Look at those bees go!

After washing and rinsing, the bees are blow-dried in this apparatus engineered by Cliff to fluff up their little bee hairs for easier identification.

These insects are all from one collection at one site. The ones on the left are flies (this sample had a huge number of bee-mimic flies) and the ones on the right are bees.

sorting.

Hi everyone! Thanks again for all of your help this summer. We've begun the sorting process, and it's taking a long time to sort the bees from flies, then pin and label the bees. We'll try to post some pictures of the process as we go. Here's the first installment!

Final Collection -- Sun, Oct 18 or Mon, Oct 19

The weather's holding strong for tomorrow (Sunday) and Monday, with both days expected to be warm and sunny. Please perform Collection #4 -- our last! -- whichever of these days works best for you.

Again, thanks for your continued participation through our inaugural collection season. We will be sure to let everyone know our findings when the identification and analyses are complete. If all goes well, we should have preliminary results by year's end.

Happy collecting!

Collection #4 coming soon!

I know it feels like winter, but - believe it or not - we're planning collection #4! It looks like there's going to be a window of sunny warmth this Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday so we hope you'll be willing to collect bees one last time. We'll send out an email as Sunday approaches, so please keep your eyes on your inboxes for updates!

Also, thank you all for your participation in our pre-CAPS survey. Don't forget that we're going to be asking you to complete a post-CAPS survey after collection #4. We'll out send instructions and a link in a few days. We hope you'll be willing to participate once again.

In the meantime, send in those bees!

Community Garden Pictures

A huge thank you to Helena P. for sending these great pictures from several of our community garden collection sites. As you probably know, we have about 50 households collecting bees for CAPS this summer. What you may not know is that we're also lucky enough to be collecting bees at ten community gardens throughout Chicago including South Shore Cultural Center, Ginkgo Organic Gardens, and North Park Village.

Enjoy Helena's beautiful pictures!

Send in those bees!

Thanks to all of you who participated in collection three! If you haven't done so already, please be sure to send in your bees (and flies and gnats) and data cards as soon as you can.

We're hoping to have all of our bees pinned and semi-sorted by Thanksigiving or so in order to send them off to our bee identification specialist. That means that we should have some good photos and good data soon!

Before we wrap things up for the summer, though - and I know it doesn't feel much like summer this week! - we're planning to have a collection four in October if the weather cooperates. We're also going to ask you to complete a post-CAPS survey in the coming weeks. So keep your eyes on your inboxes for more information. In the meantime, send in those bees!

Collection Three TOMORROW (Friday 9/18) and Saturday 9/19

Hello CAPS volunteers!

It looks like the weather for tomorrow (Friday, September 18th) and Saturday (September 19th) are looking good for bees so please commence collection 3! You can perform the collection on whichever day is more convenient for you - but just collect on one day (not both).

Sunday (September 20th) is also a possibility, but it looks like there's a chance of rain, so please try for either Friday or Saturday.

Once again, you should place the bowls out prior to 8am and pick them up after 8pm (though it's okay to set them out the night before and pick them up the morning after, if need be). Once those bees are collected, please get them in to us so we can continue the process of sorting and identifying the bees.

Please also remember to fully complete the data card for collection three and return that with your specimens.

Thanks again to everyone for participating. Happy collecting!

- The [caps] Crew