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I worked here for one year when I was between my freshman and sophomore year at
college. Pining insects in the department of entomology so that's how I first
came to the American Museum of Natural History, I was paid fifty cents an hour.
While I was at the University of Kansas I was working with a former staff member
here, who was a bee specialist as my adviser, He said I could work on bees or
beetles whatever I wanted to but I thought I'd learn more from him by
working on bees. Bees, of course, are extremely important to mankind they
pollinate so many different terestrial plants, that without bees we would not
have the ecosystems,
the terrestrial ecosystems,
that we now have.
Every time one finds a nest and can
find new information by looking into the nest, recovering the immature stages
that people don't usually look at.
This is always a pleasurable experience
this is basically what I do for a living. I had taught at Ohio State
University before I came to this institution, I thought one advantage of
working in a major museum
is you didn't have to meet classes
all the time, that you could take off, and when the bees were flying in the
Atacama Desert, you go to the Atacama Dessert, when they're flying
in the Namib Desert you go over to Africa to the Namib Desert.
And in between you can go to the southwestern research station, which is the research station
that we sponsor here. A lot of my research has been done at the
southwestern research station in Arizona. I can remember one time thinking that I
had been working on parasitic bees and solitary bees over a very long period of
time, I really should get to know something about
social bees ,and the social bee that occurs out in Arizona is a nice, large
bumblebee,
and we we stumble across a nest of this bee, and I thought well
what I'm going to do, is I'm going to take this nest apart and see if I understand
the structure of the nest. Female bees sting
so that that's the one you always have to watch out for
and I thought well the best thing to do is just to deplete the nest of the all
the females that are inside, and then it would be fine. I always put the net over my
head when I go after a specimen.
If there are a lot of specimens in there, I can see which ones I want to retain, which ones I want to
release alive.
I put the net over my head,
and I had not counted on the fact that with a social bee
they communicate
and there's a pheromone that's given off by these bees. One nailed me right between the eye, and it was
a very painful sting, and I threw down my net
and the other one started to chase me around the desert.
that wasn't embarrassing, what was embarrassing was I had a female student and
my sons there, and they were all laughing their heads off
haha.
I would hate to have a job where my only concern was
bringing home a paycheck. This is one where I am basically being paid to do my
hobby,
I think that's a wonderful experience.