Pinning pollinators

It's tough work, folks.  And hard on my old eyes.

To take a break, I've been learning how to make .gifs!

All of these pollinators came from a single day of collecting!  The big box on the top right contains the pollinators collected from the bee bowls in my "diverse bee" wildflower mix.  I'm still working on pinning the other three treatments.

All of the small boxes contain pollinators collected off of either lance-leaf coreopsis (top left quarter), black-eyed Susan (bottom right quarter), or plain coreopsis (bottom left quarter).

I'm not a big fan of pointing (I get glue everywhere and it obscures all the important details for identification!)...

 ...so I've been going through A LOT of 00 pins as I prep my tiny solitary bees for ID.

It can be tough to see all of the necessary details for identification without posing, so I work with every individual insect to make sure I can see wing veination, tongues, legs, and a bunch of tiny sutures in the exoskeleton before I let the insect dry out into its permanent position.

I also take personal pride in the fluffiness of my bumble bees.

Because there's nothing more shameful than a stringy-haired bumble bee.