Our museum digitization project is in full-swing and attracting attention! A huge thanks to Rachel Cohen from KUNC for helping spread the word about our community science museum transcription project, the Big Bee Bonanza! Read her story at KUNC. Photo credit Rachel Cohen KUNC. 

In case you missed it, a recent bill just gave Colorado Parks and Wildlife the authority to study and manage for invertebrates and rare plants! You can read a bit about it and how our statewide study helped bring about this important step in this article by Jayme DeLoss at CSU Extension. To celebrate, here's a huge combo pic of butterflies and bees imaged in the CU Museum of Natural History's Entomology Section!

While leading pollinator tours for the Big Day of Bugs event at the Denver Botanic Gardens, journalist McKenna Harford engaged with me and some attendees in conversation around pollinators. Read her awesome piece at Colorado Community Media. McKenna, thanks for helping spread the word about pollinators, their importance, and the need for coordinate conservation and management action! And for these photos, all credited to McKenna Harford.

At first glance this may look like a bumble bee; but, it's actually a large, bumble bee mimicking robber fly (Asilidae), most likely in the genus Laphria. These are excellent predators, and sometimes of the very bumble bees they mimic! You can spot these right away if you know that like other flies, they only have one pair of wings, unlike bees which have two pairs. Plus the short antennae, huge eyes, and lack of mandibles. Plus, I wonder how many pictures of my thumbs are out there on iNaturalist...

Mason bees, most likely Osmia lignaria, collecting mud for their nests!

As part of a NPS award, I hired a team to inventory plant-pollinator interactions in Colorado and Dinosaur National Monuments! Here's a few highlights from our first trip out. Colorado was a little late for the early bees, but it snowed in Dinosaur!

I refer to Morrison's bumble bee, Bombus morrisoni, as the teddy bear bumble bee. Just look how thick and plush! This one was foraging on a thistle in Colorado National Monument. 

Spring is in the air, flowers are blooming, and the bees are buzzing. While trying to snap a photo of a female mining bee (Andrena sp.) forging in a pasqueflower, a male flew in and began harassing her: pulling her antennae with his mandibles, aggressively trying to copulate, and being an all around jerk. Eventually the female kicked him off and flew off to another flower to continue foraging. No means no, even for bees, ya jerk!

After finding a new introduced species, it's heartening to see some natives, like this Osmia ribifloris, in the urban center. There are many species of Osmia, including the cultivated blue orchard bee, O. lignaria; but I'm pretty sure this is O. ribifloris, given it's very dark hairs, early spring emergence, and overall extremely metallic blue appearance. Gorgeous!

While visiting a local community garden in Boulder I just happened to check the windowsills for signs of bees. Low and behold, this fuzzy nugget had gotten trapped and succumbed to the spring heat. After a quick glance I immediately noticed its 'horns' and though uh oh... Took it back to the lab and sure enough, Osmia cornifrons! This is one of the first records of this introduced species to the state! I know lots of others are on their way, but still, it's sad to see that they're here and reproducing most likely. 

It has been so rewarding to help lead and be a part of this huge undertaking. While focused on the State of Colorado's agencies and programs, anyone interested in the conservation of native pollinating insects can hopefully find a lot of valuable and useful information here! Plus I snuck in some plates of beautiful Colorado butterflies and bees that were imaged in the CU Museum of Natural History!

It's always a blast and an honor to help organize and run the annual Colorado Pollinator Summit!
A link if you're interested in learning more: 

Joined the CU Museum of Natural History table at the Boulder Bee Festival to highlight the diversity of Colorado's Native Bees. Had a great time quizzing folks on pollinator diversity, ecology and natural history, and being quizzed myself by a growing body of folks educated about and engaged in pollinator conservation efforts.

Did you know we have artic species in Colorado? This arctic fritillary, Boloria ​chariclea, is one of a number of pollinators (not to mention plants) that are distributed around high latitudes and follow the high elevations of the Rockies to much more southern latitudes than you'd expect. 

I'm sure you've heard it... but these caterpillars are eating machines! Every few days we open the cages to add host plants, survey the caterpillars, sample some for viral screening and to collect some for chemical sequestration analysis. A ton of work!

It takes a lot of greenery to feed thousands of hungry caterpillars. 

A cold spring morning is no problem for Baltimore checkerspot caterpillars! While frosted in the early morning, they were fast to thaw and back to eating by mid-day!

We continue to develop and refine our 3D modeling of bees! Here's a quick video of one of our models of a Hoplitis!

After a tremendous amount of hard work the mesocosm is built, installed, planted, and seeded with caterpillars! The red cages are populations of caterpillars that have been infected with a native virus. 

We're starting a huge new experiment at Harvard Forest to track the chemical, immunological, and demographic consequences of a novel host-shift in Baltimore checkerspots! A huge thank you to Alan Warden and Victoria Peechat for all your hard work making this all possible!​