Mud and Humidity

The idea was simple: catch some bees and see which of the flowers in their landscape they preferred. We were all set to go, we had designed our enclosure…and then Pete (our instructor) came to give his two cents. The next thing we knew we were in the midst of so much silliness we couldn’t get free. It started like this:
1. Plan A1: Catch Bees. We needed to be sure that bee preferences aren’t being biased by the foraging bees have already done that day, so we needed to get them from the nest as they head out in the morning. So, how to find a nest? Pete suggested catching foraging bees and tying a flag to them so we could follow them back home. Here's the plan: attach some flagging to a piece of dental floss and tie the floss around a bee. What could be easier?
2. Plan A2: Modify flagging. We actually did tie little dental-floss strings to bees. It really took some doing. The problem was that the bees couldn’t fly with the extra weight. So we cut off the flagging and just left the floss—still too much. We cut some of the floss—still too heavy. By the time we shortened the floss enough so the bees could fly, we weren’t able to see it and track them.
3. Plan B: We tried just following bees around the paramo, trying to see what direction they were flying in. The five of us spread out, shouting directions “there goes one, follow it!” and crashing through the heather. We found no nests.
4. Plan C1: Just catch some bees and throw them into our snazzy enclosure (see photo). We put in the first bee. It wasted no time in flying to the upper most corner of the enclosure and refusing to budge.
5. Plan C2: Add all the rest of the bees. Results show all bees huddled in upper corner of enclosure looking surly.
6. Plan C3: Re-orient flowers to upper corner to see if bees will notice them
7. Plan C4: Release bees and look for new project.