It’s been almost a week since I was extracted from my nice, cozy seed head: the only home I had ever known. Sometimes I still miss it- I had chewed through at least a third of the achenes there, and made nice holes in the base. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more comfortable than when I was firmly lodged within an achene. I also don’t know if I’ve ever been more uncomfortable than when I found myself squished in the grasp of a pair of tweezers. Suddenly, my home and everything I’ve known fell away, and I landed in a pit with lots of others like me. The floor was cluttered with achenes, but the structure was nothing like my old seed head. Moreover, the walls were clear. It looked as if escape would be quick- it is not, believe me, I tried. Something about plastic just doesn’t connect well with my prolegs. Speaking of prolegs, I, and all my kin, have four.  It’s a trait characteristic of us caterpillars. Those silly humans probably thought we could have been flies or beetles before looking at our prolegs.

Today is significant, because our numbers have grown to the point where our measly petri dish jail was no longer doing us justice. After a rough and tumble fall into a new container, we’re all feeling a little better. Here we’ve been given a seed head and soil, just in case we decide either of those places are where we’d like to pupate. Things are starting to look up.

(Q: Wait, where did 84 come from? A: We have found about 14 caterpillars, each of whom has 6 pairs of eyes.)

(Q: So, what species are the larvae? A: We still don’t know. It’s possible they are codling moths, but those tend to prefer fruits like apples- more juicy than achenes. It’s also possible they’re banded sunflower moths, which appear just as pink in later larval stages as these larvae do),

Fun fact: the Echinacea Project has collected over 1000 bee specimen and each is more beautiful than the next, especially when viewed from under a high-powered microscope. My task over the three weeks of my externship is to inventory and organize these lovely little pollinators and then create a database on the Echinacea webpage that project members can refer to in the field when they observe a pollinator visiting a purple coneflower.

So far, no easy task! Most of the bees have been previously identified, but some remain nameless and nomadic, species-less and in need of a home. Thus, a crash-course in bee identification was necessary. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at, if not identifying native bee species, then plowing headfirst into identifying native bee species and confidently writing down the complete wrong answer. Notable characteristics that are friends when identifying native bees include the colors of the mandibles (not the “jaw”, Belle) and the color of the little fuzzy hairs on the top of his or her head. More difficult characteristics whose identification I have yet to master include the specific color of the hair in between the T3 and T2 apical bands, above the rim but sometimes moving towards the center, and not characteristically white. Honestly, it’s Greek to me at this point and when this is all done I have a bone to pick with whoever wrote out these characteristics on DiscoverLife, but I hope to learn the language over these next three weeks. The fun part is that each bee is special in its own persnickety little way, which allows for little battles with these little beasts all day long as I try to reason with them. Currently, I am not winning.

In the next few weeks I hope to wrangle these bees into their place and get them neatly organized and classified. Hopefully I will post some close-up views of these hard-working ladies and gents from under the microscope soon, but it seems the lights  have had enough today and need a bit of a break before turning on again. But I bee-lieve in them.

Jurassic Bee (or a “bee killer”)