Roderick Peter Macfarlane 25 February 1945–14 June 2013

The line drawings of bumble bees on Rod’s death notice in The Press of Christchurch, and the illustration of a Bombus terrestris on his funerary card were testament to his strong interest in bumble bees during his entomological career. Rod spent his early years on a farm near Fairlie in inland South Canterbury, where he sometimes rode a horse to primary school. When he was nine, the family moved to a farm at Conway Flat on the coast of North Canterbury north of Cheviot, and it was his exposure to insects in this area that inspired him to pursue a Masters degree at Lincoln University (then Lincoln College), where he completed a thesis on the insects associated with lucerne. Rod also met his Japanese wife-to-be, Shoko, at Lincoln College and they married in 1971. After joining the Entomology Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in early 1969, Rod soon found himself studying the potential of the four species of bumble bees present in New Zealand as pollinators of a wide range of flowering plants. From 1971, he studied for a PhD in entomology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, where in 1974 he completed a thesis on the ecology of species of bumble bees in the southern part of the province.