Here a Bee, There a Bee, Everywhere a Wild Bee

Anne Casselman takes us to the wilderness of British Columbia to follow melittologists (bee biologists) as they discover and catalogue new species of bees. The process can involve harvesting specimens to view under a microscope if they’re not immediately identifiable from experience or by consulting Common Bees of Western North America, which lists hilarious but not entirely helpful categories including “bees that are extremely large” or “bees that are very hairy.”

Despite knowing what species his mystery bee is not, Rampton cannot determine what it is. So when his mentor, Lincoln Best, a bee biologist—aka melittologist—and expert taxonomist with the Master Melittologist Program at Oregon State University (OSU) visits Calgary that fall, Rampton brings out his mystery specimen. Seeing it under the microscope, Best gets excited. It’s Hoplitis emarginata, he explains, a small stonecrop specialist that is related to the mason bee, known only from a handful of sightings and specimens from northern California and southern Oregon. Discovering one in the Kootenays, about 850 kilometers away, represents a giant northward range extension. “I know more about this bee [species] than anyone, and I’m shocked that it’s up here,” says Best. In fact, he suggests Rampton’s find could be a new species altogether, given that it was found foraging on a different type of sedum than the few found in Oregon and California.