These past four days have been spent collecting data at a new field site in a marsh wildlife area and as Elizabeth mentioned in a previous post, the mosquitoes are OUT. There is a great population along a trail that gives me serious enchanted forest vibes, or horror movie vibes (depending on the weather).
One of the only flaws with this site is that there are about three bombus (bombi?) that are forging around our arrays but they don’t actually forge on our arrays. Because of that, I have fallen behind in terms of bombus visits for pollen deposition, pollen removal, and seed set. A reason could be because it has been pretty humid and sunny when we’ve gone out so they are no longer out. However, we have gotten a lot of megachile and halictid visits and it is a lot closer to Wooster, so it is a useful site to have.
Sidenote: Sara and I are the most nervous around bees out of the whole group so we refuse to get up close and personal with the hive at Fern Valley. I went once with Elizabeth just to check it out but I stayed a very comfortable distance away from the bombus hive. All I’m saying is two of us have been stung and two of us have been spending the most time with the hive…
-Ashley