Leif Richardson examines a queen bee.

Grace Widyatmajda/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmajda/NPR

Leif Richardson examines a queen bee.

Grace Widyatmajda/NPR

I by no means realized how fuzzy a bumble bee is till I acquired to carry one between my fingertips. It looks like a furry black and yellow bear, buzzing with its tiny physique, wriggling with its legs.

The conservation biologist Leif Richardson, who handed me this bee a second in the past, has some recommendation for holding it. “You’re going to squeeze harder than you think you need to, but not so hard that you hurt him.”

And fortunately the bee cannot damage me both, as a result of this can be a male bee, and males haven’t got stingers. But they do have a scent, Richardson explains.

“Your fingers are going to smell like a male bee when you’re done. It’s a little like geraniums, a little bit cheesy, sort of like cheddar cheese in a way.”

We are out within the wilds of far western Malibu, within the residence vary of a local bee known as Crotch’s Bumble Bee, or Bombus crotchii. That bee is protected by state legislation, and it is one of many many species below survey for the California Bumble Bee Atlas.

We’re in good palms with Leif Richardson.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

We’re in good palms with Leif Richardson.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

The Atlas is a type of census for the state’s bumble bees, and Richardson helps lead the venture for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Over three years, lots of of volunteers will fan out throughout the state to do surveys like this one, with the purpose of piecing collectively an image of the place wild bees stay, and which species are in hassle.

“This is real data of the highest quality that’s been collected by these trained amateurs,” Richardson says, “and it is the best available data we have for making decisions about the conservation and management of these very important animals.”

That’s our NPR staff and Richardson after we occurred upon a snake.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

That’s our NPR staff and Richardson after we occurred upon a snake.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Our journey begins at a mountain trailhead in Leo Carrillo State Park. It’s a cloudy morning, and Richardson’s wearing a checkered flannel shirt, black-rimmed glasses, and a “Middlebury” cap. (He moved right here not too long ago from Vermont). We set off for a brief hike, armed with bee nets, vials and a cooler to sit back any bees we catch. It’s a innocent technique to quickly sedate the bees, to permit for extra cautious research and snapshots.

Coastal sage scrub frames the path, and poison oak is in every single place too, contemporary from all of the winter rain. Other risks are more durable to see. “I wanted to just say rattlesnakes are a possibility,” Richardson warns.

Just a minute later, as he is wading right into a meadow bursting with purple and yellow deerweed – prime bumble bee habitat – I hear him yell out one thing unprintable, adopted by “rattlesnake!” It’s an enormous, meaty snake, a number of inches thick, mendacity only a yard from his foot, its scales completely camouflaged in opposition to the comb. He stands there immobile for a second, earlier than backing away in direction of the path, whereas the snake slithers off.

We’re somewhat extra sober in regards to the potentialities now, as we put together to catch our first bees. They’re not exhausting to identify – I can hear them whizzing in every single place, in encompass sound, and shortly Richardson says it is time for me to catch one.

Krystle Hickman, a bee photographer and volunteer for the Bumble Bee Atlas Project, fastidiously locations a bee onto a flower.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Krystle Hickman, a bee photographer and volunteer for the Bumble Bee Atlas Project, fastidiously locations a bee onto a flower.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

He tells me to pinch the tip of my internet and maintain it upright – like a witch’s hat – whereas slowly reducing it over a flower the place our bumble bee prey is foraging. As quickly because the bee realizes what is going on on, it buzzes furiously inside my internet, after which slowly climbs up the material in direction of the tip – proper the place my finger is. Richardson tells me to seize the vast a part of the web with my different hand, slowly choking my hand up the web till the bee is trapped within the tip.

It all looks as if a very good technique to get stung. But Richardson assures me I’ll be high-quality – he says the bumble bees aren’t more likely to sting us, and he is acquired an EpiPen simply in case. He tells me that my obsession with the stinger will not be all that distinctive.

“A lot of people who want to participate in the California Bumble Bee Atlas, their first question is really, will I get stung?” He factors out that lots of people have a tendency to think about bees solely by way of the hazard they pose to people – moderately than seeing them as entire animals, with attention-grabbing lives and behaviors.

“They have this rich ecological life history. They have interesting mating biology,” he says. “Another one is social biology. The biology of the nest is absolutely fascinating and it gives us a model for understanding social behavior in other bees and also other insects and vertebrates like us. There’s a ton of interesting things about bees, if you look beyond the hypothetical dangers of being stung by one.”

Richardson examines a captured bee in a vial. Once he processes and surveys, the bees are let again to their houses.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Talking to Richardson, it feels simple to look past these hypotheticals. But the following step on this bee-catching course of appears removed from a hypothetical. Richardson tells me to insert a small plastic vial up into the web with my naked fingers, proper the place the bee is, and by some means persuade it to “fall” contained in the vial, earlier than popping a cap on. As my fingertips get nearer to the bee, it looks like I can hear it buzzing louder and louder.

Richardson performs this entire course of in seconds, by the best way, with the arrogance of somebody juggling blindfolded. For me, however, it is a grueling act of intense focus. But it pays off – and shortly, I’ve acquired my very first bee!

It’s that male I discussed earlier. His yellow hair is the colour of a hard-boiled egg yolk, and as we maintain him, Richardson factors out the intense bushy beard on his face – one of many telltale indicators of a male. But he wriggles out of our palms earlier than we are able to get him again within the vial – maybe in the hunt for queens.

Everywhere you look there’s the pop of colour.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Everywhere you look there’s the pop of colour.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

We too are in the hunt for queens, as Richardson jogs my memory, and nonetheless hoping to search out that species he talked about – Crotch’s bumble bee – so we head again down the path to a different meadow.

As we head up a hill of dry brush, we go by huge plumes of purple sage, and Richardson all of a sudden sweeps into motion, his internet flying by way of the air with an acrobatic swing and twirl. A second later we hear an infinite buzzing from the web – he is netted one thing huge.

It seems he is caught not one, however two Bombus crotchii – and one in all them’s a queen! Then the bee switch begins. “So this is a way people get stung. I have a bee in the vial and a bee in the net … so my fingertips are in there with the extra bee.” But he is a professional – he does this actually hundreds of instances a 12 months – so no stings right here.

He tucks the queen right into a vial with a sprig of sage flowers, and simply as we’re all admiring this regal bee, I begin to really feel a tingling sensation in my leg – virtually like my pores and skin is crawling. I look down, and understand in horror that there are lots of of thick black ants streaming up my leg, exterior my pants, however inside too. I will need to have stepped on a nest in the course of the pleasure.

Leo Carrillo State Park is residence to many sort of vegetation that assist ecosystems for bees to thrive.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Leo Carrillo State Park is residence to many sort of vegetation that assist ecosystems for bees to thrive.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

The ants have reached my again and backpack as properly, and it looks like they’re beginning to latch onto my pores and skin. Richardson, ever-mindful of the queen, stashes her in a cooler, as I furiously brush the ants off my pants and pores and skin. It takes about 10 minutes of vigorous brushing to get them off, and I nonetheless discover a couple of in my shoe in a while down the path.

Being stung could have been my high concern beginning out this morning, however clearly the mountains had different hazards in thoughts. And the hazards we encountered right this moment on this small sampling expedition are a vivid reminder of the sheer scale and ambition of this venture.

Richardson locations a bee vial right into a cooler in order that the bees might be safely sedated.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Richardson locations a bee vial right into a cooler in order that the bees might be safely sedated.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Surveys like this are occurring in more than 250 parts of California, with the assistance of twice that many volunteers. And this California venture is a part of a much larger continent-wide Bumble Bee Atlas, which stretches from Alaska to Maine to Georgia. About 1 / 4 of North America’s 50 bumble bee species are in danger, according to the Xerces Society, and Richardson says this enormous constellation of surveys is likely one of the greatest instruments scientists have for guiding the conservation of those charismatic animals.

“There’s intrinsic value to these native animals that occur here and have been here co-evolving with these plants for millennia,” he says. But past that – for individuals who may want another excuse to care about wild bees – he factors out their worth as pollinators of untamed vegetation and crops.

“These wild bees are tremendously important to maintenance of healthy ecosystems, which human beings depend on, and to the human food supply, which we obviously depend on. So we’ve got both utilitarian and kind of intrinsic reasons to conserve bees.”

The sea of yellow makes for an ideal bee setting.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

conceal caption

toggle caption

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

The sea of yellow makes for an ideal bee setting.

Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

The magnificent queen bee remains to be sitting on ice within the cooler, and as we stroll again to the automobile, it is time to {photograph} her, and let her go. Richardson gently dumps her into the palm of his hand, together with the employee bee he caught along with her. At first they simply lie there, groggy, and we slowly pet the hairs on the queen’s again.

She’s waking up quick although, and fairly quickly we hear an lively fluttering from her wings, earlier than she lifts off into the sky. “They’re really good at using landscape features to find their way,” Richardson says. She circles a couple of instances, earlier than zooming off in direction of the sage the place we caught her.

And thus, our queen journeyed residence unhurt – and fortunately, so did we.

Ailsa Chang and Jonaki Mehta contributed to this report.