LOS ANGELES (AP) — In the arid, cracked desert ground in Southern California, a tiny bee pokes its head out of a hole no larger than the tip of a crayon.Krystle Hickman crouches over with her specialized camera fitted to capture the minute details of the bee’s antennae and fuzzy behind.“Oh my gosh, you are so cute,” Hickman murmurs before the female sweat bee flies away.Hickman is on a quest to document hundreds of species of native bees, which are under threat by climate change and habitat loss, some of it caused by the more recognizable and agriculturally valued honey bee — an invasive species. Of the roughly 4,000 types of bees native to North America, Hickman has photographed over 300. For about 20 of them, she’s the first to ever photograph them alive.AdvertisementAdvertisementThrough photography, she wants to raise awareness about the importance of native bees to the survival of the flora and fauna around them.“Saving the bees means saving their entire ecosystems,” Hickman said.Community scientists play important role in observing beesOn a Saturday in January, Hickman walked among the early wildflower bloom at Anza Borrego Desert State Park a few hundred miles east of Los Angeles, where clumps of purple verbena and patches of white primrose were blooming unusually early due to a wet winter.Where there are flowers, there are bees.Hickman has no formal science education and dropped out of a business program that she hated. But her passion for bees and keen observation skills made her a good community scientist, she said. In October, she published a book documenting California’s native bees, partly supported by National Geographic. She’s conducted research supported by the University of California, Irvine, and hopes to publish research notes this year on some of her discoveries.AdvertisementAdvertisement“We’re filling in a lot of gaps,” she sa …
