Ross Eatman has been a nature photographer for twenty years. He is co-founder of Sharp-Eatman Nature Photography, a society dedicated to documenting conservation issues. 

 

In September 2018, this dynamic duo turned their attention to Texas pollinators. They have commenced a new project documenting native bees at the National Butterfly Center (hyperlink: https://www.nationalbutterflycenter.org/), located near the Mexican border in Mission, Texas.  Their experience at the center lead them to declare it "a mecca for rare fauna--unusual butterflies, birds, and now, it would seem, wild bees."

 

On January 15, 2019, Sharp & Eatman launched the website Wild Bees of the National Butterfly Center (hyperlink: http://wildbeestexas.com), displaying breathtaking photographs of fifty bee species found at the NBC during the fall of 2018, including a red-legged leafcutter bee that had never before been recorded in the United States.  No published photographs or articles on the bee existed in English or Spanish literature. Now tentatively named the Toluca leafcutter, the bee’s identity was ascertained only when an entomological expert compared it to collections stored at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 

 

“Our goal,” Sharp and Eatman explain, “is to lure people into the staggeringly beautiful and fascinating world of bees.”

 

The Sharp-Eatman Giudes website (hyperlink: http://www.sharpeatmanguides.com), which includes the Wild Bees of New York and Wild Bees of Texas (hyperlink: http://wildbeestexas.com), is like no other website or resource on pollinators currently available to the public.because of its exceptional photography, identification information and behavioral descriptions of bees. The website will continue to add new species as the project expands and continues.