When it’s this hot out (the Pacific Northwest has been *baking*), I stitch bees for a little break… meet Micro Buzz (stuffed with kapok seed pod fluff, sporting antennae worthy of a male long-horned bee!) 💛🐝✨

I don't think hardly anyone in the Pacific Northwest fully grasps what climate change/ecological collapse is doing to our region, & what the ramifications are for us in the near future. No one in power is taking the catastrophe seriously, even though they'll live to see the consequences. #wawx

This is devastating. We’ve lost most Lowland Heath in England. It supports unique flora & fauna & healthy bees. Our work @rbgkew.bsky.social w/ @cminnaar.bsky.social & @markjfbrown.bsky.social studies heather nectar for compounds that protect bumblebees from parasites www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🌿🐙 A male longhorn bee at night. Males of many solitary native bees clamp onto stems or tuck themselves inside flowers at night, often with other males who likewise have no nest to sleep in. Also, see the flat, orange-yellow thingies (science word) stuck to his feet? Those are pollinia from--

Dont be a badger when wasps come visiting theconversation.com/what-to-do-w...

New research from Pesticide Action Network reveals the extent of pesticide use by UK councils. These are poisons being sprayed in your street, your local park. Pls share. For links to the full report & to find out what you can do, follow the link below www.pan-uk.org/pesticide-fr...

Be Kind to Wasps! A plea for tolerance of these fascinating and useful creatures. youtu.be/bhAgza_E3ww

Do you see the bee?

"Our kindred species on Earth are not playthings, here for us to use and consume however we wish. They are the foundations of life, and the real world...We are going to be learning this now in the hardest way it can be learned." ~Stephen Buhner #thicktrunktuesday

“While varroa typically infects honeybees, not wild bees, the diseases that they spread can kill other pollinators – research has shown that the viral outbreaks among honeybees often spill over to wild colonies, with potential knock-on effects on biodiversity.”

If we need a bunch of chemicals and genetic modification to grow enough food(poison), that really should tell us something.

Despite being “200 times more toxic than glyphosate in terms of chronic exposure” [according to EPA’s own data] “Still, the EPA has resisted calls for a ban, and Roundup formulas with the ingredient hit the shelves last year.”

Happy #WorldFireflyDay A female Common Eastern Firefly watches males flashing in the sky. If she sees a suitable mate she discretely flashes back at him. You can help conserve fireflies by turning off lights, not using pesticides, keeping some long grass, and leaving some leaves in the fall.

Mycorrhizal fungi, saguaro cacti and national parks are all under threat. In March, I joined some researchers in Saguaro National Park to try and understand what is at stake. My latest: insideclimatenews.org/news/2206202...

The southeast corner of Arizona is home to the highest density of bee species recorded anywhere in the world! Close to 500 bee species (we have around 4K in N. America) are found in an area only ~10 square miles. Deserts are beautiful ecosystems teeming with life 🐝🌵 jhr.pensoft.net/article/60895/

"How green is this? We pay billions of pounds to cut down ancient forests in the US and Canada, ship the wood across the Atlantic in diesel tankers, then burn it in a Yorkshire-based power station." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A cute Trigona stingless bee is giving me a piercing "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID 🤨" look while her sisters are busy frantically collecting sodium. How do I know they are after sodium? I put it there. I had to relieve myself.

It's #PollinatorWeek! You can thank this one for chocolate. We don't think of flies as #pollinators, but they are second only to bees, pollinating flowers & over 100 crops, including cacao trees. As they stop for nectar, the hairs on their bodies pick up pollen and carry it on. #insects #flowers 🌿

Beetles can be good pollinators too! This wasp mimic joined us for dinner last night, alighting with a great flash of black and yellow. A spectacular dinner guest (with a taste for sweet potatoes, as it happened)! 🪲🐝 #PollinatorWeek

A bug that looks AI but is actually real. This assassin bug always struck me as an odd fellow (Acholla multispinosa in SW Oregon)

Bumble bee queens (like this one) emerge from hibernation in early spring. After gathering nectar to store in a waxen pot, she lays her first eggs on a mound of pollen & wax. She keeps these warm by incubating them with her own body, shivering her flight muscles to generate heat! 🐝💓 #PollinatorWeek

This bee & its close cousins are disappearing. 🐝🆘 #PollinatorWeek The story starts in California, but it has national consequences. 1/3 of our food depends on pollinators. Meet the bees that @defenders.org, ‪@cfstruefood.bsky.social‬, & Xerces are working to protect ⤵️

We have a Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) nest by the door onto the patio; the new queens and males are out-and-about today! #bees #bumblebees #garden #macro #photography #insects

Did our guide to pollinator gardens leave you with questions? Join us TOMORROW June 17th @ 10am PT / 1pm ET to ask our staff experts at our live Q&A! #PollinatorWeek Register for the free event➡️ us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Treasure!!! @benjyhere.bsky.social @brigitstrawbridge.bsky.social These wool carder bees were hatched as eggs in my bee hotel last year. Fingers crossed they choose to nest with me again! 🤞🏼

For #PollinatorWeek, we’ve put together all the information you’ll need to make your own pollinator garden into one place. Learn how to pick the right plants, manage issues without pesticides, and provide the nesting habitat that bees & butterflies need to thrive! 🌻🐝🎓

This little bee is seeking your help! 🐝💛🌼 #PollinatorWeek * Plant a variety of seasonal flowers * Leave undisturbed nesting sites (in soil, under leaves, in stems and logs) * Support a poison-free environment * Help sustain a generally predictable climate

Some of the guests in our bee-hotel this weekend. We offer rooms 2mm to 10mm in diameter that attract mason and leafcutter bees; and other solitary bees/wasps (including parasitic/cuckoo species). Also get a range of interlopers that just need a room for the night. Hours of entertainment! #Staffs

But one of the main things I wanted to reflect upon in this year's thread is the challenging practical reality of managing complex/chronic medical conditions in general. It is all-consuming, at times, and uniformly exhausting. And yet that reality is nearly invisible to others.

More #mothlove … this time an owlet moth (I believe MacCulloch's Forester Moth) that I happened upon last night near dusk. Lovely fluffy orange ‘leg warmers’, and such adorable striped legs! Antennae are two-toned as well… all in all, a stunning moth to spot unexpectedly.

The reports are usually the same: bees, butterflies, or other insects littering the ground. Many dead, some twitching and falling over. Pesticide poisoning in insects IS preventable. Reporting these incidents can help prevent them from happening again! Learn what to do ⤵️ xerces.org/blog/i-see-d...

An interview article about my new paper with my co-author Dr Liam O'Reilly is out now in New Scientist! Give it a read for the bees 🐝🌸

A Lasioglossum zephyrus nest in the cracks of a wall.....they absolutely love these types of walls where there is a little gap for them to access soil

In this dune world, silver bees surface to extract sought-after life-giving pollen and nectar and store it safe in the sands for their progeny. To do so they must tunnel deep. Habropoda miserablis, the silver bee aka Pacific dune digger bee. #dune #nativebees #dunes Northern California USA

In case you need even more tips on avoiding bad insect hotels, here's a more complete rant. colinpurrington.com/2019/05/horr...

Possibly Osmia niveata mating pair. How very nice to see them in the garden. #solitarybees Waarschijnlijk de zwartbronzen metselbij (Osmia niveata) parend op de knolboterbloem. #wildebijen

The Blue Mason bees have arrived in the garden #bees

It's been a long time since I've been somewhere buggy... seeing this vestal tiger moth flitting by last night, fluttering through the grass before settling for the evening, felt like a gift from another, long-forgotten world... she was all aflutter, my heart likewise leaping! #mothlove

I saved this beauty from drowning today!

I tried really hard to get a decent iPhone shot of this iridescent green cuckoo wasp teleporting around the backyard, but it was so small (less than half an inch long) and so very fast — like a jewel bewitched to forever slip from the fingers of anyone who tries to grasp it

To Koomey, nature is graphs, policy tables, & satellite imagery. You can’t model a forest’s spirit, or the grief of losing it. This is why their “solutions” will never be enough. Because they’re not based in relationship—they’re based in abstraction. And in the real world, abstraction kills.

Male orchid bee (Euglossa sp.) collecting fragrant compounds from a moss patch in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This is one of my favorite subjects to photograph, and I keep going back to it even though I probably have hundreds of photos by now. I mean, look how awesome these bees are!

Still find it astounding that orchard mason bees foraging on various heat-stressed flowers (100°F for just 4 hours in early bloom) laid about *70% fewer eggs, and their progeny were far less likely to survive* (this's the paper, despite photo of critters!) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

People point to 'too much fuel' in relation to SoCal fires, but what's rarely mentioned is that the vegetation is now often dominated by highly flammable invasive weeds -- whose increasing abundance on the landscape is due to human disturbance. It's not so much the amount of fuels, but what type.

"Good news" -- Brazilian Amazon is 'only' losing 6,000+ sq km of forest annually, while also experiencing the worst regional drought and wildfire losses in recorded history. Plus higher losses in Peru, Colombia, etc. Also increasing evidence of ecosystem collapse, but hey, let's call it 'good news'.

“Worlds are always ending; empires are always falling; the climate has changed before; change is the only constant. These are the comforting stories we tell to get ourselves through the night. These are the words that allow us to continue to avoid looking at the enormity of what we have done and…”

Let’s not mince words; we are returning the planet to the climate volatility characteristic of the Pleistocene Epoch when agriculture was impossible, but we are doing it with fire rather than ice. Civilization is Proving to be a Very Fragile Thing collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/01/21/m...

If the disaster doesn’t get you, disaster capitalism will finish the job.

“However we got here, we have managed to create a culture in which we have alienated ourselves from the rest of life. We struggle to persuade ourselves that this alienation is the same thing as freedom. Increasingly, though, for those penned into cities with no view of the stars and…

Bumble bee chilling in a flower for the night… a natural shelter, opening in sun, closing against cold and rain. There’s some spark of truth hidden here. Another, wilder way to live. #MomentOfBuzz