Natural History Wanderings

The New York Times reports

Honeybees and their problems get the most attention, but scientists are using tactics learned from bird conservation to protect American bees.

“While regional studies have tracked the decline of native bees,” said S. Hollis Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, “there hasn’t been a coordinated nationwide effort to monitor these pollinators.”

Dr. Woodard and colleagues explained this problem in a paper published this month in the journal Biological Conservation, and proposed a new approach to monitoring native bees. But she and scientists at institutions across the United States are going beyond doing studies about the problem. They have also started an effort to collect better data on native bee populations, as well as efforts to conserve them, as part of the U.S. National Native Bee Monitoring Research Coordination Network. The project, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will train members of the public to look for and track wild bees.

 

Read more at How You Can Help Count and Conserve Native Bees – The New York Times