What’s Happening To Bees & How Can You Get Involved?
This month our Environmental Calendar is focussing on Wildlife Gardening and looking at ways you can help increase pollenating insects and why they are so important.
Our interview with Beekeeper Keith McMahon.
Last year we interviewed Keith McMahon, a beekeeper, to discuss the general keeping of honey bees, the importance of them and other pollinator species in the UK and how you can help in your garden space. A year on we are wondering what’s happening to the UK bee population and is there a way to get more involved in their conservation?
Bees and other pollinator insects play a vital role in pollinator services to crops and wildflowers. It is thought that bees are responsible for pollinating one third of the food we eat, without bees we would have drastically different diets. Bee populations are rapidly declining around the world due to pesticides, pollution and habitat loss, among other factors. In the United States it has been reported that 45.5% of managed honey bee colonies were lost between April 2020 and April 2021.
Fortunately there are a lot of ways you can get involved in essential monitoring of pollinator insect populations ranging from surveys for complete beginners, to surveys which require identification skills.
The UK Pollinator Monitor Scheme has a quick and easy way to survey pollinators in just 10 minutes. It’s perfect for complete beginners as you don’t have to be able to identify particular species and it is a great opportunity to learn more about pollinator diversity in your area. The Flower-Insect Timed Count can be done in 10 minutes, simply pick 50x50cm a patch of flowers and record the types of pollinators that visit.
This survey can be done in good weather between 1st April and 30th September annually. “Good weather” is defined as dry, with temperatures over 15°C when overcast and 13°C when sunny. Select one target flower species from the target species list and record the number of flowers in your patch and then start counting the insects. Count insects in broad categories such as “bumblebees, hoverflies etc.” any insects you do not recognise should be counted as “other insects”. Once the 10 minutes is up send in your results via the FIT counts form or app.
If you are more confident with pollinator identification there are other projects and surveys you can get involved with. If you know the species of bees you’ve seen and have a photo you can submit this information to iRecords, you can also use iSpot for the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants Facebook page to help with identification. iRecords have experts who verify this information and submit the data to the National Biodiversity Network Atlas (NBN Atlas). The NBN Atlas is a free online tool hosting the UK's largest biodiversity data collection.
Blooms for Bees is another citizen science program which surveys flowers in your garden or allotment, where bumblebees like to visit. You can get involved by downloading the Blooms for Bees app.
The final citizen science project we would like to discuss is the BeeWalk. For this you have to be an experienced bumblebee identifier to help the Bumblebee Conservation Trust assess the state of the UK’s bumblebee populations by undertaking monthly BeeWalks. First you will need to attend training events to learn or refresh your ID skills. You can then adopt 1 of 75 transect sites across the UK. Each site is 1km square and uses a systematic survey approach using pan-traps to capture and take samples of insects. The project focuses on bees and hoverflies because they have been proven to provide a high proportion of the pollinator services to crops and wildflowers. Data collected in these BeeWalks are collected and analysed to deliver trends on the pollinator populations. This scheme is one of a kind, generating systematic data on the abundance of bees and hoverflies at a national level.
With dramatic reports of declining pollinator populations across the globe and serious concerns as to what this means for biodiversity and ecosystem health, there has never been a more important time to get involved with citizen science projects documenting change in pollinator populations.
If you would like to learn about other ways you can get involved in citizen science projects, please visit our Environmental Calendar.
