Brood Cell

 

When using iNaturalist to document native bee host plants it is important to note the location accurately. If one is collecting, it important that collection at that location is permitted.  GPS In Module 2.3 of the OSU  Master Melittologist Apprentice Program , Andony Melathopoulos, 13 minutes and 26 seconds into the video, mentions using the mobile app GPS Status to improve the geolocation accuracy of one's iNaturalist record.  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2&hl=en_CA https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gps-status-toolbox/id1198499960 A dedicated GPS utility app such as GPS Status  can give one control, diagnostics, and reliability which can matter most when one is trying to make sure one is collecting on where a permit/permission is not required such as Crown Land in BC. Navigation of these lands can often require offline coordinates and these lands, because of remoteness, steep terrain, and dense forests can result in patchy to ...

Using the BC Species & Ecosystems Explorer to generate a list of provincial Red List Plants enabled an export of this query as a table and generate a personal account (bobmcd) list on iNaturalist titled Red Listed BC Plants of Pollinator Interest . Plant listings from the original list such as mosses, ferns, rushes, sedges, and etc that would not be foraged by pollinators have been removed. Here is the iNat observation map page of Red Listed BC Plants of Pollinator Interest  generated using the above list to show where these plants have been observed by iNat users at RG level (community agreed assessment). You will notice that not all plants on the list have been observed yet or have reached RG status. On the species page one will notice that the subspecies are represented in number of observations but clicking through will only take one to the greater species observations. To find more detailed occurrence information and location one can push through each species Taxa I...

This does not work on mobile devices. These spinners can be used to pick a target bee family and/or genus to: learn in ones text books; explore and/or identify on iNaturalist; learn the distribution. Bee Family to learn and/or identify. Andrenidae to learn and/or identify Apidae to learn and/or identify Colletidae to learn and/or identify Halictidae to learn and/or identify Megachilidae to learn and/or identify Melittidae to learn and/or identify

Below  Megachile gemula on left compared to Megachile melanophaea on right Keyed using   Sheffield, C. S., et al. (2011). Key to Bees of the Genus Megachile in Canada and Alaska The below images of    Megachile gemula are from a collection that was posted on iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/319455166 . The ID was agreed to by  coryss who is  Cory S. Sheffield one of the authors of the above paper I have confirmed with a bee taxonomist in BC that there are populations of  Megachile gemula with red/orange scopa.  Of interest in the BC Bee Atlas initiative https://ecdysis.org/collections/list.php?db=196&includeothercatnum=1&taxa=Megachile+gemula&usethes=1&taxontype=2&association-type=none&taxontype-association=2&usethes-associations=1&comingFrom=newsearch Also of interest is that the reference image of the female Megachile gemula at the Packer Lab appears to have orange scopa: https://www...

Currently Discoverlife, in attempt to block robots, is asking for individual IP addresses to provide access to their site :( Just a little BC centric helper page for keying on Discover Life for PNW Bees. and at the end of the page is a link to the Web Archive pages of the now defunct Bombus Male ID pages that were at  nhm.ac.uk.  I find the site sometimes a little of a bear to wrestle when I'm trying to find keys - sometimes the more specific ones are hidden under layers. For the Keys chosen that say female, just change the URL to male as in https://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Andrena_female  change to https://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Andrena_male - pretty straight forward.  Some of these keys are incomplete so know there are limitations. Be grateful if it keys out and not surprised if it doesn't but I usually take a few runs at it anyways as my morphological acumen is not always spot on. When I am selecting place (see note for Megachile below), i...

BC Master Melittology Bingo aid here (unofficial): These aids will involve, for the most part, you being signed into the web platform of iNaturalist on a computer rather than a mobile device. You may want to have your iNat username and password close at hand.   My interpretation of the card is that it mentions the 2025 Bee Season, so for me, that begins in March and ends before next March when the new collection usually starts. I believe it is up for interpretation? Bees If you are wanting to ID 100 bees on iNat (Project: "NBSBC Bee Tracker) (Bonus points: 500+):   https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&verifiable=true&project_id=nbsbc-bee-tracker&taxon_id=630955&place_id=any If you want to find out how many bees you have identified since March 1st, 2025 (you can adjust the dates in the URL - year-month-date) change the ident_user_id=johnascher to your user name (for myself, I would put  ident_user_id=b...

BobMcD Profile   @bobmcd on iNaturalist  - you can message me through comments or DM me through the iNat message system Upload page Symphyotrichum observation show good recording technique Bombus vancouverensis ssp.  nearcticus observation Duplicated Tanacetum vulgare observation   Fields Table from Associated plants for BC native Bees's Project Journal Explore Andrena astragali, Oregon Explore Toxicoscordion venenosum, Oregon Jarrod Fowler's Pollen Specialist Bees of the Western United States How to use iNaturalist’s Search URLs - wiki part 1 of 2 Your Dashboard to look up Apis mellifera from the About in the search bar to get to the taxon page for the Taxon ID # Explore Anthophila in BC, WA, OR, and ID with Apis mellifera removed Identify Halictus ligatus, Bombus vancouverensis vancouverensis, and Xylocopa tabaniformis in BC, WA, OR, and ID Identify Bees without Apis mel. in YU,BC, WA, OR, ID, CA, MO, UT, NV, CO,WY both needs ID and Research Grade with 100 per p...

Duplication of occurrences in Biodiversity Databases can occur when data of the same occurrence is submitted via two or more channels of input. An example of this is can be when an observation is both posted on iNaturalist and also it is submitted within a Bee Atlas initiative. Below is a screenshot from an iNaturalist observation of a bee on the Web Browser Platform.  Data was submitted with images of the pinned bee which will be submitted later to a Bee Atlas initiative. This observation has reached Research Grade ( A ). Research Grade is a level of iNaturalist community agreement that occurs, usually with species level identification. In this observation, 2 users have agreed ( B ) with the initial suggested ID (~determination). The community consensus is when 2/3 or more of the identifiers equivalent or agree on the suggested ID ( C ) - two out of two, two to three out of three, four to six out of six, and so on. Early on in the development of iNaturalist, Research Grade wa...

The question here is how to check to see the elevation of the iNaturalist observation that you or someone else has posted, be it a Bee or their pollen source. This observation of a Bombus roadside in Rogers Pass has been identified to date as Bombus flavidus flavidus. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/131296072 Being community consensus based identification, things can change. @beespeaker identified the plant that it was associated with as White Clover Trifolium repens and filled in a field to note as such. Selecting the the Details drop down ( ˅ ) indicated by the red arrow above will reveal more details about location information.   Selecting Macrostrat as indicated by the red arrow above will open a map page that gives geological information about where the location pin is. The red arrow above shows where the elevation information is found on this page. This observation occurred at roughly 1319 m ( 4327 ft ) (knowing that the location accuracy was 20m)   li...