For the love of bees

Hello! I’m Elise Fog. I adore bees. I love sharing the buzz with folks who pass by, as you are right now!

Here you’ll find a glimpse into the often unseen world of Oregon’s bees and other insects. There are many bees on this website. I also focus on their close relatives, wasps. And if something else with six legs scurries or flits into my viewfinder, you may find it here too!

If you’ve met me in person, you may have heard me talk about the importance of bees. We have around 4,000 different types of bees in the U.S. (with all sorts of different bee lifestyles)… around 500 species just in Oregon! Buzz by my site Save Bees to learn more about why pollinators are in trouble and find out how you can help.

So, it’s been something of awhile since wildfire in southwestern Oregon destroyed my home of 16 years, along with much of the incredible flora and fauna that you’ll see pictured here. It was part rewilding project, part intentional bee meadow (though that took on its own life too). There were plenty of nesting spots for native bees, that’s for sure (both ground nesters and stem/wood nesters)! I still miss what was.

Undoubtedly, bees will return… I’ve read that wild bee abundance and diversity even goes up in years following wildfire (correlated positively with the intensity of fire). So I’d imagine the bees are returning, and even if it will never look as once it did (we lost so many individual plants, and much of the soil microbiome), it will become something else with every year (my acreage is currently recovering with minimal human input, though I’m not there to see it).