AUBURN — The next meeting of the Androscoggin Beekeepers Club will be held Wednesday, April 8, at Edward Little High School. Club business will be conducted from 6:30 to 7 p.m., followed by the presentations “Pollen and nectar nutrition for bees” and “Mapping how wild bees use Maine’s landscape” from 7 to 8 p.m.

April speakers will be Megan Leach and Brianne Du Clos. Leach and Du Clos are both graduate students in the ecology and environmental sciences program at UMaine Orono. Both scientists work as part of a large research team that studies both pollination of the wild Maine blueberry crop and native bee conservation.

Leach is particularly interested in plants and plant-insect interactions. She notes, “Plants and insects have so much influence on our daily lives, most of which we don’t regularly think about or even know about.” Her research and the topic of her talk focuses on pollen and nectar nutrition and the influence they have on bee foraging behavior.

Du Clos, a biology graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, received her Master of Science from UMaine in forest resources in 2012. Her present research focuses on landscape ecology, specifically how wild bees use the landscape around blueberry fields. Her presentation will describe a mapping tool for landscape analysis of pollinator habitat.

The presentations are open to the public.