I recently had the opportunity to present my research on native bee host interactions at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Advanzando conference with funding from the NSF!! The poster is linked below, but if you love bees (or at least the ecosystem services they provide), here’s the summary ⬇️

I like talking about our awesome planet, doing engineering, and making music. And of course, DRAGONS!!!🐉🐉🐉
Nature is my tripod :)
they/them

Great work!
Congrats on your poster presentation 👏 

One tip: put less text on your poster; use bulletpoints. You can anyway explain more if someone is interested. 

Also, is killing the bees necessary? 🤔

Perhaps! It just can’t be too cold ofc. Fascinatingly enough, the reason we froze the bees is because some are so tough that the ethylacetate we use to kill them just… doesn’t work!! So we have to freeze them to ensure they aren’t writhing around in their containers🥺

I don't know much about bees, but don't they move slower when it's cold? 👀

Would it be possible to put them into a cold, transparent box while investigating?

Gotcha, thanks! According to my professor, it is necessary to kill the bees😭 it’s standard practice to do so. Identification can be a very delicate and precise process, and the bees have to be not moving for an extended period of time, especially when they were caught weeks before the expert can examine them