Idaho Falls

The Piscitellas are retired, but in this moment they look as young as their grandchildren. Roger has the net. Leslie has the eyes. Together they're creeping slowly through bushes trying to catch bees. The bumble kind. Not the honey kind. "It can be hard to find the bees and it can be hard to catch them," says Leslie Piscitella, Idaho Master Naturalist. "Doing the identifying of what we think it is isn't easy either, but it's fun being outside and trying to catch them." The Piscitellas are citizen scientists and they're volunteering their best bumblebee catching efforts for research. They're part of the Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas project started in 2018. It's a three-state, three-year project coordinated through the Xerces Society, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon State University and Idaho Department of Fish and Game. The project relies primarily on volunteers in Idaho, Oregon and Washington for data col- lection in the field. "There are so many people who enjoy getting out and learning something new," says Ross Winton, Idaho Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist and Atlas project lead. "There's only one of me and I can't get to all these sites. We're relying on people to volunteer their time and engage with us." Engaging means collecting. Collecting begins with catching, then advances to freezing. The Piscitellas move captured bumblebees from net to cooler. The bees are put on ice to chill. The cold slows their busy movement making study more manageable. Once calm, the bee is transferred to a vial with a clear viewing top for identification and photos. "We try to get three different pictures while the bee is under the plexiglass," Leslie Piscitella says. "Then we let it go and go catch another one, but it's possible we won't find any. That's acceptable to the scientists also." Bumblebees hit global radar about a decade ago due to population decline. At the time, scientist knew bees were miss- ing, but there wasn't an accurate count of just how many were missing. The Atlas will help. Creating inventory is the first phase by cataloging which bees are pollinating where and what time of year. The flowers they're on during capture are also documented because the second phase of the project will be increasing native plants bumblebees are commonly captured on. "Pollinators are using noxious weeds because there's not a lot of natives left," Winton says. "We're hoping to bring back more native plants and see if that has an impact on population." Volunteers are assigned population study grids in all three states contribut- ing to the Atlas. The Piscitellas have a grid near Rexburg. It's public forest with private agriculture nearby. The presence of both land types attracts bumble and honey varieties, but the couple only captures bumbles. "Honey bees are not native to the U.S.," Winton says. "Conserving honey bees is not necessarily benefitting bees as a whole. That's like saving birds and buying chickens to do it." Bumblebees are less likely to sting than honey so surveying them is pleasant rather than painful. That's another reason why the Piscitellas enjoy their citizen scientist status. "I've never really thought about the dif- ference between a bumblebee and a honey bee," Leslie Piscitella says. "Just by watch- ing bees, we're learning a lot." IDAHOFALLSMAGAZINE.COM 37 Busy Bees Citizen netters helping science BY KRIS MILLGATE Mindboggling Bumblebee Bulletpoints • Bumblebees have striped hair. Honeybees have striped bodies. • Bumblebees are native. Honeybees are not. • Bumblebees target flowers and berries. Honeybees target crops. • Bumblebees can disconnect their wing muscles from their backs. • Bumblebees vary their body vibration by flower species for maximum pollen shake. IF

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