Bee Surveys: Ask a Bumble Bee! Project
Can you spare ½ hour of your time this spring/summer to walk around your yard, favorite park, meadow, hiking trail, etc. (basically anywhere there are flowering plants) and document what plants Bumble Bees are visiting? The USGS/FWS Native Bee Lab has developed a simple Plant/Bumble Bee Survey that permits anyone to survey what plants Bumble Bees use anywhere there are Bumble Bees (literally).
They call it “Ask a Bumble Bee.”
The USGS is recruiting individuals to participate in this citizen science undertaking, which has the potential to go viral and be the most comprehensive survey of flower use by Bumble Bees yet.
Their goal is to quantify which plants Bumble Bees use, rank them by that use, and also identify which plants they don’t use.
(you would think this is already known, but we mostly have anecdotal and scattered studies that largely don’t quantify the plants they don’t use.)
In case you are wondering…
Basic instructions…
How will the information you collect help Bumble Bees?
How can you get involved?
Email Jenan El-Hifnawi [email protected] and she will sign you up, and can answer detailed questions.
When do things start?
Once you see the first Bumble Bee, of course. Emerging queens are particularly vulnerable, so information about what plants they use is very important. The poor things have been sitting underground all winter and are vulnerable to starvation if there are no plants to feed on. No queens, no bumble bees.
Can you spare ½ hour of your time this spring/summer to walk around your yard, favorite park, meadow, hiking trail, etc. (basically anywhere there are flowering plants) and document what plants Bumble Bees are visiting? The USGS/FWS Native Bee Lab has developed a simple Plant/Bumble Bee Survey that permits anyone to survey what plants Bumble Bees use anywhere there are Bumble Bees (literally).
They call it “Ask a Bumble Bee.”
The USGS is recruiting individuals to participate in this citizen science undertaking, which has the potential to go viral and be the most comprehensive survey of flower use by Bumble Bees yet.
Their goal is to quantify which plants Bumble Bees use, rank them by that use, and also identify which plants they don’t use.
(you would think this is already known, but we mostly have anecdotal and scattered studies that largely don’t quantify the plants they don’t use.)
In case you are wondering…
- You don’t need to identify bumble bees to species
- You don’t need to be a botanist
- Everything is non-lethal
- You only need a cellphone (for taking pictures of plants), pencil, paper
- You can survey any location where Bumble Bees occur such as your garden, arboretums, parks, plantings, natural areas, refuges, urban, suburban, farm, wilderness, roadsides, and weedy patches. The richer the plant diversity, the more plants are competing for Bumble Bees and the clearer their preference will be.
- You can even survey a site repeatedly throughout the year!
Basic instructions…
- Half hour walk
- You can take whatever path you like
- Take notes of all the blooming plants to 10 feet on either side of your path (yes, including invasives and garden flowers that are not native)
- Count all the Bumble Bees along your route and note (or take photos of) what flowers they are on
- Take pictures of all the flowering plant species, even the flowers that they are NOT using (very important!)
- Take pictures of your field sheets and upload all the pictures using your phone (no apps to download!)
How will the information you collect help Bumble Bees?
- It will quantify what plants bumble bees use and don’t use
- Plant use information can be plugged into planting guides
- Researchers can look at differences among regions and plant combinations
- It can identify overlooked bumble bee plants, and compare native to non-native plant species
- Researchers can compare use across states, urban vs. non-urban, parks vs. meadows, etc.
- You can get copies of all the data and use it yourself however you like (for example, you might want to compare bumble bee use of an area that you have begun planting to one that you have not)
How can you get involved?
Email Jenan El-Hifnawi [email protected] and she will sign you up, and can answer detailed questions.
When do things start?
Once you see the first Bumble Bee, of course. Emerging queens are particularly vulnerable, so information about what plants they use is very important. The poor things have been sitting underground all winter and are vulnerable to starvation if there are no plants to feed on. No queens, no bumble bees.