As a note … this post was supposed to be published on Saturday morning. For some reason, WordPress didn’t save my post, and I spent two days thinking I had actually updated this page. Oops!

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It’s been a while.

After a fantastic summer spent collecting and learning about bees, it was time for a break. I spent my sophomore year surviving (and sometimes even enjoying) organic chemistry, the summer in Costa Rica learning how to be a biologist, then I jumped back in at the start of junior year. Most of the last few months have been spent preparing for the spring and figuring out where to go. Well, it is spring, and I have a direction!

Essentially, it’s time to start resampling. My goal is to find out if there are any patterns in the species distribution at the Arboretum. Now that Boston has remembered that winter is over, the bees might even start coming out! This weekend will be nice and warm, so there’s step one. I probably won’t find much this weekend, but it’s always nice to have a start.

This time around, I will be doing 24-hour samples… setting out the bowl traps one day, then coming back the next day to pick them up at the same time. There are advantages and disadvantages, but the biggest advantage is that I don’t have to spend the entire day at the Arboretum to get data. This is especially nice because my spring and fall sampling will have to be balanced with my coursework and studying, so I won’t be limited to just weekends for sampling.

For now, I just have to get my spring field work in and make sure I have a place to live this summer. Some friends and I are exploring apartments around Harvard Square, and I’m waiting to find out if I received some grants for the summer, so here’s to high hopes!

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Obviously, these thoughts are a few days old, but I felt that my first post in a year and half should be introductory. More coming soon on the bees (and the dogs!) from my first field trip.

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