Wesleyan students taking part in bee, wasp study

As dragonflies danced in the air overhead, Dakota Wesleyan University students and their ecology class instructor debated Monday where to place wasp and bee traps in a wetland along the James River.

Brian Patrick, assistant biology professor at DWU, is working with Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga., and the U.S. Geological Survey Paxulent Wildlife Research Center in Beltsville, Md., in a pilot project to determine the best way to monitor the species’ diversity in North America.

The class is using 20-ounce and twoliter plastic bottles filled with Heineken and Blue Moon beer with small apple slices, orange juice and sugar water in its traps. Six of the seven class members worked in four different wildlife settings — wetland, upland grassland, orchard and woodland — two miles east of Mitchell to set up the traps.

“It’s based on a protocol that was used in Europe where they standardized the way to catch these with clear plastic bottles and the attractant happened to be Heineken beer, because they’re attracted to the wheat smell and the yeast,” Patrick said.

The study is a newer approach for federal agencies to work with universities for free, with no grant money behind it, said Sam Droege, biologist with the USGS research center in Maryland. The agency has no money to offer for grants because of budget cuts the last 10 to 15 years, so it uses volunteers and the Internet to effect change, he said.

“We are providing them with the opportunity to help, the government is saving money and we’re collecting information on groups we cannot collect in any other way,” Droege said.

Patrick is on a discussion list associated with the study, and he contacted Droege. DWU’s data will be compared with Georgia Southern’s.

Students came up with ideas on the materials used to attract the wasps and bees based on scientific literature, Patrick said. Blue Moon is a wheaty beer and apples were added as a sweet boost. Orange juice also tends to lure wasps this time of year.

“Heineken is what the Germans had figured out (that it) worked very well in a lot of their locations,” Patrick said. “We decided, ‘What if American bees like American beer more?’ ”

The sugar water — a natural attractant — is made up of two pounds of brown sugar boiled into one gallon of water, Patrick said.

Class members brought metal stakes and shelf brackets to hang the bottles and boxes of plastic bottles in the wetland. They used tape measures to line up where they would put eight stakes in four rows.

Because the class hadn’t had a chance to sketch a grid of where to place each liquid, that task was done in the field. The order for the first row was revised a few times until it met with scientific satisfaction.

The class spent three hours Sunday measuring and pouring liquids into the bottles, said James Hansen, a junior wildlife management major from Rapid City.

Students collected 128 bottles — 64 of each size. Thirtytwo bottles will have each liquid.

“You really didn’t think beer would be a big attractant, but it had really good success over in England and Germany,” he said. “It was surprising, but that’s science for you. You figure out you find new stuff you never thought you knew before.”

Ashley Kley, a junior biology education major from La Porte, Texas, said it’s interesting to learn how to set up an experiment and learn by trial and error.

“If it’s going to help with the people at the school we’re doing this for … help with their data and we could be part of that, that would be cool with me,” she said.

Students and Patrick will visit the traps roughly once a week to check on their progress. After three weeks, they will remove the traps and bring the bottles back to Hughes Hall, where they will strain the bottles and send their findings to the USGS in Maryland.

“In addition to putting these out, we have to document the habitat they are in,” Patrick said. “(Students) can learn different sampling methods for how to document and characterize habitats. Students identify habitats … to see which of those would be the most diverse and which of these might work the best.”

Once the agency determines the species, then students will write reports, Patrick said.

Droege estimated the USGS will issue its report on the study by Thanksgiving or Christmas, depending on how long it takes to receive data from volunteers and the two universities.

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