Help scientists with pollinator projects (it's fun and easy!)

 

Easy ways to help scientists with pollinators:

Citizen Science Projects

If you have never heard of citizen science it is simply process where every day people, who are not career scientist, assist and are involved in science as researchers (Conrad & Hilchey, 2011). This is a fun and easy way to help with the bee crisis and maybe learn a little as well!

The selection of projects below are projects that focus on bees or pollinators. Please visit the project websites for more information.  

Project Bumble Bee

Recent research indicates that additional species of bumble bees may be in decline. Wild bumble bees face many threats including habitat alteration, pesticide use, management practices, and pathogens. Recent reports are troubling, but there is much you can do to help!

 

 Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees. This citizen science project allows for individuals to:

• Upload photos of bumble bees to start a virtual bumble bee collection
• Identify the bumble bees in your photos and have your identifications verified by experts
• Help researchers determine the status and conservation needs of bumble bees
• Help locate rare or endangered populations of bumble bees
• Learn about bumble bees, their ecology, and ongoing conservation efforts
• Connect with other citizen scientists.

Below is a map of the citizen records. Citizen science has greatly helped us to understand the distribution and nesting habits of these important yet imperiled pollinators and will help us to target our conservation efforts.
 Visit the Bumble Bee watch webpage to get started.
 
For  more on  bee conservation please read this guide:
http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/conserving_bb.pdf

Retrieved from:  http://www.bumblebeewatch.org/

Great Sunflower Project

What We Do
People all over the country are collecting data on pollinators in their yards, gardens, schools and parks. Together, we take counts of the number and types of pollinators visiting plants (especially sunflowers). We have been gathering information on pollinator service since 2008, and now have the largest single body of information about bee pollinator service in North America. Thanks to our thousands of observers, we can determine where pollinator service is strong or weak compared to averages.

Why It's Important
Over the past few years, scientific studies have suggested that both honey bee and native bee populations are in trouble. What we don't know is how this is affecting pollination of our gardens, crops and wild lands. In 2008, we started this project as a way to gather information about our urban, suburban and rural bee populations and to give you the tools to learn about what is happening with the pollinators in your yard.

How You Can Help
While we love to get data from our namesake species, Lemon Queen Sunflowers, you can participate by watching a plant and recording how many pollinators visit, or recording pollinators as you take your favorite hike!

Retrieved from: http://www.greatsunflower.org/

Great Pollinator Habitat Challenge: 

Starting in late March

Imagine what would happen if every home, school, playground, senior center and park around the world, took one day each year to evaluate and improve the pollinator habitat at their site.  Together, we could easily create hundreds of thousands of patches of pollinator friendly habitat.

It just takes three steps:

Evaluate
Take the Habitat assessment and make a plan to improve your pollinator habitat.

Act.
Take action on your plan and create better habitat.

Share.

Retrieved from: http://www.greatsunflower.org/habitat challenge

BEESPOTTER

BeeSpotter is a partnership between citizen-scientists and the professional science community designed to educate the public about pollinators by engaging them in a data collection effort of importance to the nation. It is a web-based portal at the University of Illinois for learning about honey bees and bumble bees and for contributing data to a nationwide effort to baseline information on population status of these insects.

How you can help:  

 The best way to get involved is to get out there with your camera and capture some good pictures of bees! We want to get a better idea of bee demographics in the state of Illinois, and we can't do it without your help. In order to get your bee pictures on our website, just create an account and then add your bee spotting.

Retrieved from: http://beespotter.mste.illinois.edu/

Build a Better Domicile Project

“Bumble Boosters: Building a Better Bumble Bee Domicile” is a citizen science project, engaging public of all ages to experiment with, disperse, collect data and collaborate with others about bumble bee domicile designs. Participants are encouraged to research bumble bees in order to design and test their own domicile designs.

It is assumed that a nest box that mimics an abandoned rodent den (a cavity with insulation) will attract bumble bee queens and provide them a place to nest. The more nesting sites available, the more chance for bumble bee queens to establish a colony – more pollinators. Many attempts have been made to design an effective artificial nesting domicile.

 Most designs and related research have found less than 10% acceptance rate of domiciles. The good news is that YouTube and other websites contain numerous reports of citizen scientists having good luck attracting bumble bees to homemade nest boxes. What are these citizen scientists doing to attract bumble bees? What in their nest box design is attracting bumble bees? How do we take aspects of their designs and build a better bumble bee nest box? These questions are something that the Bumble Boosters project seeks to answer.

Retrieved from: http://bumbleboosters.unl.edu

 

Do you know of other pollinator friendly citizen science projects? 
 Do you participate in citizen science projects?
What else can you do to help our bees?
Feel free to comment below!

Conrad, C. C., & Hilchey, K. G. (2011). A review of citizen science and community-based environmental monitoring: issues and opportunities. Environmental monitoring and assessment, 176 (1), 273–291.

Disclaimer:  The project information in this post was retrieved by the websites listed below each project. The description, idea and content of each project is the property of the individual project managers and not of this blog. The purpose of the project lists is to encourage participation  to help pollinators. This blog is not associated with any project list and is not paid to remote the projects. 

Help the Bees (and other pollinators)

The bee crisis is something that is affecting everyone and everywhere but the is hope! You can do many things to help pollinators, including the bees, have plenty to eat by providing a rich array of chemical-free nutrition, provide shelter for pollinators and help researchers track pollinators.

For bees, variety is the spice of life!

If you want to part of the solution rather than part of the problem you can start right here....

Gardening for Wildlife

A garden can be a few flowers on an apartment balcony or acres of land. The size is not what matters it's the thought and effort you put into it.

You can garden for wildlife especially pollinators by providing four simple but essential things:  food, shelter, water and protection.

You can even certify your garden with the National Wildlife Federation certification.

Bee Gardens

There's an app for that!
BeeSmart app 

Bee Smart™ Pollinator Gardener’s  app is an easy use data base of 1,00 native plants that are bee and pollinator friendly.

Features : •  1,000 native pollinator friendly plants for the United States.
• Customizable plant lists
• Region specific plant lists
• Many options including, perennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, and vines .
• A search option for plant names.
•  Plant images.

Retrieved: from http://pollinator.org/beesmartapp.htm

Do you want to do more?
  Become a citizen scientist, it fun, free and easy!

Citizen science helps scientist out by collecting simple data that they used for larger projects including helping out honey bees.

 Check out some bee and pollinator projects on the next post.

Honey Bees and Conservation

To Bee or Not to Bee that is the question...

Please select your choice and  hit submit.

Quiz results - Click here

When you think of bees it may make you scared, worried or even mad.  Often times bees are associated with being stung, landing on your food or spoiling a  nice picnic rather than an insect we depend on for survival. Bees actually have a very rich history and have been used and manipulated by humans for thousands of years. “Honeybees are considered to be protectors of humanity and guardians of the planet”.                                       

Vanishing of the Bees (Official Trailer)

 Bees in History

Bees date back millions of years and they have a very interesting history. One bee species was found incased in amber and is believed to be from 100 million years ago.  Their history goes hand and hand with pollination and working with humans.

Honey produced by bees that visited Azalea plants are toxic to humans. In olden times, this honey was used as a weapon to poison enemies. Toxic honey was used to make a drink called mead; one story states that in Russia, during an invasion, the military left out toxic mead for the Turkish army to drink and it made the army parish and lead to Russia winning the battle. Since then, bees have been used as bombs, booby traps and commonly as pollinators for the agriculture industry.  It is clear from the beginning that we rely on honeybees as an essential insect for our survival.    

                                                             Working Bees Today

Are you affected by honeybee’s hard work? Honeybee pollination accounts for about one-third of the American diet. 84% of the approximate 300 commercial crops are pollinated by insects. The agriculture industry relies 90-100% on honeybee pollination for almonds, avocados, apples, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, kiwi fruit, macadamia nuts, asparagus, broccoli, cucumbers, carrots, cauliflower, celery, onions, pumpkins, squash, legume seeds, sunflowers and several other crops to a lesser degree.  

 About 2 million bee colonies are rented each year for the purpose of crop pollination. These commercial honeybee colonies come from traveling commercial bee-keepers in the United States and are managed specifically for pollinating crops. Honeybees are chosen as the best pollinator for this important task because they are available during the entire growing season, they can pollinate a variety of crops and they can easily be used in large numbers and moved wherever they are needed. 

                                                                   A Bee Mystery

Bee populations have been plagued by disease, parasites, pathogens and other pests and can cause a decline in population.  Bee-keepers see an average of 15% loss of honeybee colonies especially over the winter months each year . The most common issues honeybees face are vampire mites, tracheal mites, and the pathogen paenibacillus larvae.

Looking back at scientific literature there are documented cases of bee's "disappearing"  noted in the 1880’s, 1920’s, and 1960’s.  In 1903 there was a report of a “disappearing disease” that plagued Utah after a hard winter and cold spring.  Another example of the disappearing bee mystery occurred in 1995 in Pennsylvania, where bee-keepers lost 53% of their colonies with no known reason . These incidents have been isolated to a small area and due to the lack of significant data or research regarding these “mystery” disappearances no one really knows what caused them or if they could come back. 

                                                           Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)

In 2006, commercial bee-keepers on the East Coast started reporting shocking declines in their honeybee colony populations and by the end of the year the same reports had spreading throughout the United States all the way to the West Coast. This issue spread far and quickly with no end in sight, it was nothing like had ever seen before. Due to the severity, extent of the affected areas, and unusual circumstances, this phenomenon has been named colony collapse disorder. By the summer of 2007 reports indicated that 35 states were affected and at least half of all bee-keepers surveyed had abnormal or severe losses.  Some loss of honeybees is normal and is expected due many factors but the rates we are seeing are extremely uncommon. Follow the link below to view a 1st place infographic in the Broadcast Education Association’s 2012 Student Festival  by Chris Kirkham to find out more about this disorder.

http://chriskirkham.com/ck/imedia/colony-collapse-disorder-infographic/

The danger of CCD is that honeybees are not returning to their hives (which is extremely uncommon), the colony losses are extremely quick and in large numbers, and we are still unsure of the exact cause of this disorder. “The main symptom of CCD is very low or no adult honeybees present in the hive but with a live queen and no dead honeybee bodies present. Often there is still honey in the hive, and immature honeybees (brood) are present. Varroa mites, a virus-transmitting parasite of honeybees, have been found in hives hit by CCD”. Another odd phenomenon associated with CCD is that the abandoned hives typically have honey in them and neighboring honeybees who would normally steal the honey don’t. The other odd occurrence that was discovered about CCD is that no dead bees are found near the abandoned hive and there is no evidence that the hive was attacked . Leading one to question what happened to the bees?

                                                                    What Causes CCD?

The cause of CCD is still unknown making it an ongoing mystery and an unsettling fate for honeybees. Research has revealed many guesses but nothing conclusive. Some scientists believe that parasites, mites and/or disease in the bees and their young may cause this issue. Others believe CCD is caused by new types of pathogens, poor nutrition due to the lack of biodiversity, the lack of genetic diversity in the bees, stress from travel confinement or the environment, new types of agriculture related chemicals and pesticides, and many combinations of similar issues maybe contributing to the problem.

 

Recommendations

Until we discover a conclusive reason for CCD the United States Department of Agriculture recommends working to help improve bee’s health and habitat as well as provide supplementary nutrition as necessary.  Similarly, many believe that the solution for CCD is taking better care of our environment and make long-term changes to our beekeeping and agricultural practices. The back to basics methods of bee-keeping has become more popular due to the increase of CCD by using the old-fashioned methods of bee-keeping and pest control practices. 

 

 

Organic Bee-Keeping

One solution to help with CCD is organic bee-keeping. Organic bee-keeping technology is not a new phenomenon; it is simply a new spin on old-fashioned, traditional, bee-keeping technology to help find reasonable scientific solutions for traditional and modern bee-keeping challenges. Organic bee-keeping can help restore the health and habitat of the honeybee colonies by removing the chemicals and unnatural practices during bee-keeping. Organic bee-keeping is a holistic approach to bee-keeping that looks at the honeybee and the hive as a biological model using nature as the guide. Organic bee-keeping looks at bee-keeping as a tolerant, understanding practice that prohibits the use of chemicals to fight off pests.

Organic bee-keeping is focused on approaches to bee-keeping that avoids the use of nonrenewable sources, especially the ones that are made from petroleum.  It is a type of bee-keeping that is not simply focused on a chemical free product as one may initially assume by the word organic. The true goal of organic bee-keeping is to mimic the honeybees in nature helping it become more sustainable and keep the bees healthy rather than just providing a chemical-free environment.  This is very similar to the traditional practice of bee-keeping thought history. 

Challenges of Organic Bee-keeping

One of the biggest challenges with organic bee-keeping is that no matter what the bee-keeper controls with their environment and the hive it is difficult to know if the honeybees pollinate any crop or flower that was sprayed with chemicals. Bees can travel up to 3 miles from the hive in any direction making it very difficult to monitor what flowers or crops they actually visited. Flowers and crops that are equally attractive honeybees as those that have not been sprayed so it is very easy for them to bring chemicals back to the hive unknowingly. The real priority is to not use chemicals in the bee-keeping practices and care for the honeybees in way nature intended, with as little exposure to man-made chemicals a possible. One may assume organic bee-keeping and organic honey goes hand and hand but most bee-keepers say truly organic honey, by consumers standards of organic, is next to impossible. New strains of honeybees raised on organic principals have proved to be resistant to CCD and other known honeybee challenges.

 

Please visit the next post "Help the Bees" to see what you can do!

References

Acharya, N. P., Saville, N., & Upadhyaya, S. (n.d.). The Farmers’ Handbook - “Near The House 1”, Chapter 12 - Beekeeping. In The Farmers’ Handbook. Retrieved from http://www.permaculturenews.org/courses.php

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Conrad, R. (2013). Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Copeland, A. (2013, September 7). The role of plant partners. Presented at the AIP, Plants and People, Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, IL.

Cox-Foster, D., & vanEngelsdorp, D. (2009). Saving the Honeybee. Scientific American, 300(4), 40–47. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0409-40

Crane, E. (1983). The archaeology of beekeeping. Duckworth.

Crane, E. E. (2013). The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting. Routledge.

Garibay, S. V. (2011). General organic beekeeping data and market trends.

Fitzpatrick, D. (2014). Conscious Beekeeping Practices with Dan Fitzpatrick. Stonehouse Farm. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.stonehousefarm.com/interview-with-dan-fitzpatrick/

Freeman, J. (2013, February 19). Organic Bee Keeping: How To Prevent Colony Collapse Disorder. Earth Heal Videos. Retrieved April 9, 2014, from http://www.earth-heal.com/videos/viewvideo/1474/organic-bee-keeping-how-to-prevent-colony-collapse-disorder.html

Goulson, D. (2012, February 10). Decline of bees forces China’s apple farmers to pollinate by hand. China Dialogue. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5193

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Johnson, R. M., Ellis, M. D., Mullin, C. A., & Frazier, M. (2010). Pesticides and honeybee toxicity – USA. Apidologie, 41(3), 312–331. doi:10.1051/apido/2010018

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vanEngelsdorp, D., Evans, J. D., Saegerman, C., Mullin, C., Haubruge, E., Nguyen, B. K., Pettis, J. S. (2009). Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study. PLoS ONE, 4(8), e6481. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006481

Winfree, R., Williams, N. M., Dushoff, J., & Kremen, C. (2007). Native bees provide insurance against ongoing honeybee losses. Ecology Letters, 10(11), 1105–1113. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01110.x