Pollinator Citizen Science
Vancouver Bee Project Bee Stroll with pinned native bees
Citizen science is an important way for folks to contribute to the advancement of knowledge, but what is it exactly? Put simply, it is the collection and analysis of data relating to the natural world by members of the general public, typically as part of a collaborative project with professional scientists. In the case of bees, citizen science can help researchers understand and answer questions about bee life history. Even though bees live all around us, scientists actually know very little about bee lives and new discoveries are made every year.
Many of these new discoveries are made by average people out collecting specimens and other data like what flowers specific bees are collecting resources from. While science has identified over 600 species of bee in Oregon and Washington, new species are collected every year. With climate change comes changes to bee distribution and range as well as range of native pollinator plants that native bees need to survive. In February we will focus on citizen science opportunities that you can participate in and ways that you can help native bees while helping scientists answer critical questions about bees.
Native bee on California Poppy
Why should I care?
Human beings likely know more about the surface of the moon and the ocean floor than what we know about the bees that live around us. With over 20,000 bee species worldwide and over 4,000 species in North America it’s not a surprise that there is more data needed to understand these insects. 90% of bees are solitary and 70% of bees build their nests in the ground. Some bees are only a few millimeters in size or may only live as an adult for a day or two so making a concerted effort to collect bees for taxonomy and analysis is key to identification and life cycle understanding.
Bees pollinate many of the food crops we rely on, and native bees especially are very effective pollinators. For example, a native blue orchard bee (mason bee) pollinates up to 95% of the flowers it comes into contact with while an introduced species like the European honey bee only pollinates about 5% of the flowers it touches. Because we know so little about native bees, it’s likely human beings are harming these critical resources in ways we don’t even understand, and it takes time and data to learn ways to help them thrive.
Pinned native bee collection
What can I do to help?
There are a number of citizen science opportunities for folks right here in Clark County and some things you can do from your own backyard. One of the most interesting citizen science opportunities is the Washington Bee Atlas, a statewide effort lead by the Department of Agriculture to create an atlas of bee species, range, and flowers that each bee species is associated with. The Washington Bee Atlas trains and partners with volunteers to identify and map existing native bee species in every county in the state. Volunteers commit to training and are provided supplies to collect native bees and process the specimens.
A similar effort has been going on for a number of years in Oregon and has helped identify and map bee distribution across the state. You can also go through the Oregon Master Melittologist program to learn advanced taxonomic identification, microscope training and field collection techniques that can be used directly with the Washington Bee Atlas.
Many of these citizen science initiatives utilize iNaturalist to collect photographs of plant species bees are found on. If you haven’t used iNaturalist yet, you should check it out and we have more information on it below. Vancouver Bee Project’s 2024 Bee Strolls and partner BioBlitz events will feature the use of iNaturalist so if you’re not comfortable using the application-based data collection resource, just come to one of our future events and we can help you learn how to use the app.
What if I don’t want to kill bees?
While collecting and killing bees is part of the Bee Atlas, it’s important to know that the Bee Atlas does not include bumble bees as many bumble bees can be identified visually. Bee collection is a very important part of how scientists and taxonomists track and identify bee species and killing bees that will become taxonomic specimines is part of program. There are some other important observation-based forms of bee citizen science you can do in your backyard that does not involve killing bees.
Xerces Society sponsors the Bumble Bee Watch where you can upload pictures of bumble bees to their website and feed into a nearly national database of bee sightings. A very accessible and kid-friendly project is the Great Sunflower Project where you plant a specific variety of sunflower (Lemon Queen) and make observations of bees that visit that species of sunflower.