Polar Bumble Bee Expedition Days 1 & 2: the Expedition Embarks

This series of entries will feature the Polar Bumble Bee Expedition, a trip headed by Drs. Hollis Woodard, Alan Brelsford, Jessica Purcell, Jeff Diez, and Michelle Duennes, along with myself (Kristal Watrous) and Bren Woodard. We are also accompanied by Sean Nealon, our super UCR PR guy. We are traveling north along the Dalton Highway, which parallels the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline in Alaska from Fairbanks to Deadhorse. Our goal is to collect bumble bees to understand how they’re being impacted in the Arctic by climate change. For this multifaceted project, we’re doing voucher collection (data points for which species are where), pathogen characterization (involving collecting bee guts and later IDing pathogens), plant sampling (which plants the bees are visiting and what resources they offer), and hopefully some data on energetics as well. Our trip will take 16 days total, and will cover 980+ miles.
 
Day 1 (June 28) - the team met up in Fairbanks, marveling at the late sunlight and warmth. We ate some delicious food, drank some beers, and talked logistics for picking up our expedition vehicles the next morning.


Day 2 (Field day 1) - Fairbanks to Arctic Circle, June 29
We picked up our beehicles, BeeHemoth and BeeSpedition (yes, we really are that nerdy). We stocked up on last minute supplies, including a stop at Starbucks and Thai food for lunch from a pink food trailer along the roadside. Then we were finally on the road out of Fairbanks. The landscape was beautiful and lush with vegetation, which was a welcome sight coming from the drying landscape of Southern California in early summer. We drove through mixed birch-spruce forests, then finally were on the Dalton Highway!
More driving and we crossed over the Yukon River, which is the third longest river in North America. Immediately across the river we stopped to refuel, and spotted our first Dalton Highway bumble bees on fireweed!!! Then we stopped at Finger Mountain where we got our first taste of arctic vegetation. We continued driving to the Arctic Circle, where we set up camp. The longest outbound day of driving is under our belts, and we’re in the Arctic Circle!
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