Our next member’s meeting will be via Zoom at 7:00pm on Nov 28. Invitations will be emailed to members closer to the date.
This is the talk that was cancelled in Sep due to hurricane Fiona. Bees pollinate many flowers that are important for people. There are far more bees that share NS with us than most people appreciate. We will explore what bees are in NS and how we can provide habitat and resources for bees to increase pollination.
Perplexing Bumble Bee – Bombus perplexus Photo Bob Kennedy
Alana Pindar, is an early career scientist and recently appointed Weston Family Visiting Professor in Ecosystem Health and Food Security at Cape Breton University. She has been studying changes in wild bee communities in Eastern Canada for over 15 years. In 2016, She led a provincial report on the Status and Trends for Pollinator Health in Ontario for the Ontario Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs was awarded the Webster Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Sciences for her work.
How many plants are still in flower after 01 November in Nova Scotia? This question, plus the why? and are there more plants flowering recently? have fascinated David McCorquodale. This project collects observations of plants in bloom (petals look alive, potential to be still producing nectar and pollen). To be included indicate under plant phenology that it is flowering. Many plants will be simultaneously flowering and fruiting, You can check both.
The Last Hope camp was a protest camp established on a logging road in Annapolis County on 2nd December, 2021. The goal was to protect a 24ha forest. By the time we finally packed up and went home on 22 June, 2022, enough occurrences of Species At Risk lichens had been documented to put 60% of the forest off limits for cutting and make the remainder hard to access and uneconomical to cut. Nina will focus in particular on the crucial role that naturalists, notably lichenologists, played in protecting the forest.
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of one of our members: Burkhard Plache. He was a pillar of the Halifax naturalist community and will be sorely missed by his wife Ingrid and all of us who knew him.