>When I was a teen, I was known as "the girl who picks up bees" because
>I was always toting around some bumblebee I'd picked up at the local
>spring.  (They would congregate on the mud to get water, and I found that
>if I put a little water on my finger, I could pick them up and keep them
>happily lapping up liquid while I toted them around and showed them off to
>friends.  A little sugar-water worked just as well on the honeybees.)
>Needless to say, I had a bit of a reputation as an eccentric...but aren't
>all bee folks?  ;-)
 
Another good trick is to learn how to sex bees and wasps on sight, and then
grab a male and hold it for folks to admire (or, more usually, retreat in
terror). It  gives you the opportunity to explain, in dramatic fashion,
that males can't sting (just don't try this with Cicada Killers - the males
posess a "pseudo-sting" which is quite painful, even if it isn't venomous).
 
        It's especially fun to do this with Orchid Bees in the tropics;
males (ONLY males) are attracted to volatile oils like menthol, eucalyptol,
methyl salicylate, and the like, so just about any mouthwash will do (or
menthol or wintergreen breath lozenges), and you can attract and grab these
large, brilliant metallic bees, which will occasionally be carrying an
orchid pollinium.
 
Doug Yanega      Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA     phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82