Why there is so much more to learn about bees, Sam Droege, Bee Inventory Monitoring Lab

Fascinating and important insights about bees, both in the US and globally with Sam Droege from the US Geological Survey Bee Inventory Monitoring Lab, see their website here.

The USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program designs and develops large and small scale surveys for native bees. As part of that program we also develop identification tools and keys for native bee species. One aspect of creating those tools is creating accurate and detailed pictures of native bees and the plants and insects they interact with.

Why there is so much more to learn about bees, Sam Droege, Bee Inventory Monitoring Lab

BIML- We are an online museum for bees/insects/life.
All Public Domain. Contact:sdroege@usgs.gov

Flickr page here

The link to the images for their amazing Instagram pictures here

More information about the image used

This is Euglossa imperialis it, like the rest of its clade of shiny orchid bees, has a long tongue, actually … this species has a particularly long tongue even compared to other orchid bees. Pretty simple. It sucks nectar with that long tongue from deep throated flowers that other bees often can’t reach (because they usually have dinky lapping tongues).

As a male it does not gather pollen, but it does have a trick that other bees don’t have in that tucked into its expanded hind tibia is a little sachet (note: this is not a technical term) that it stashes various smelly oils and other chemicals to woo orchid bee women.

In the American humid tropics they are big time common (as a group). Tim McMahon (whose gets his bank as a government engineer, but in his heart is a complete bee head) collected this in Costa Rica on his annual pilgrimage. Photo by Jade Louis #usgs #orchidbees #orchidbee #euglossa #tongue #longtongue

Discover Life – free on-line tools to identify species, teach and study nature’s wonders, report findings, build maps, process images, and contribute to and learn from a growing, interactive encyclopedia of life with 1,385,843 species pages and 778,580 maps.

Discover Life – Identification – Start the identification process by determining the bee genus you have by using this guide

Handy Bee Manual: How to Catch and Identify Bees and Manage a Collection – A Collective and Ongoing Effort by Those Who Love to Study Bees in North America

Social Media

4,000 Ultra Hi-Res Public Domain Images from our Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab – This Flickr site is designed to provide easy access to our photographs so that they may be freely used. There is no need to ask for our permission for any use of these photographs.

USGS Native Bee Lab – Follow us on Tumblr includes detailed information about bee species

Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory – Follow us on Instagram and enjoy our photography and stories about bees and the laboratory.

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles.

If you would like to be featured in our podcast series drop us a line & don’t forget to sign up for notifications for our latest episodes and follow us on Twitter, Linkedin, SoundCloud, iTunes or your own favourite podcast platform.

Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking