[Pollinator] The mysterious decline of North America's top pollinator

Thu Jun 19 17:44:04 PDT 2008

Beeing alive 
The mysterious decline of North America's top pollinator 

June 19, 2008

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(http://www.pioneerlocal.com/1008192,on-bee-061908-s1.article#none) 

By DAVID JAKUBIAK Contributor 
If you've got bees buzzing around your backyard, your local park, your office 
 courtyard, or your school playground, May Berenbaum would love to see 'em.  
Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois 
 Urbana-Champaign, also runs the university's BeeSpotter program, a project 
that  relies on citizen scientists to identify bee populations around Illinois. 

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Scientists have found that populations of managed honeybees  are dwindling. 
(Photo by David Jakubiak) 
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Tracking bees may seem less glamorous than, say, spotting a rare bird at your 
 feeder. But Berenbaum said her motivations lie in some very real concerns 
for  bees.  
With pollinator populations suffering from threats ranging from habitat loss  
to the mysterious malady dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder, which has ravaged 
bee  hives around the globe, Berenbaum was tapped by the National Academy of 
Sciences  to assess the status of North America's pollinators, which include a 
wide array  of insects, bats and even some birds.  
Where'd they go? 
After analyzing available data, Berenbaum's committee released a report.  
"Among our conclusions was that there has been a demonstrative downward trend in  
the populations of managed honeybees, but comparable data simply was not  
available for other pollinators."  
This lack of data was "shocking," Berenbaum said, "many of these pollinators  
are important contributors to the maintenance of not only agriculture, but 
also  natural communities."  
Berenbaum knew she needed to find a way to count pollinators. But she faced  
two very steep hurdles. First, she said, "there aren't enough bee biologists 
to  count them."  
And, she added, "There are some real challenges with recruiting the public to 
 contribute to citizen science involving insects."  
For example correctly identifying some pollinators requires not only catching 
 the insects, but also performing a very delicate dissection to determine 
subtle  differences in their reproductive organs.  
Berenbaum decided to limit the pollinator pool. "We needed a group of  
pollinators that could be easily identified without extensive training and  without 
even handling them. So, we settled on honey bees and bumble bees."  
Seeing bees 
With their target established, Berenbaum's team set up a Web site where  
citizen scientists could report their bee sightings.  
The way it works is simple. First, a bee spotter takes a picture of a bee  
with a digital camera. Then they visit the site, create an account, and upload  
their picture. They are asked to give a few bits of information, for example,  
the address where their bee was located, and a possible identity of the bee  
based on color chart on the site.  
Berenbaum said anyone from a gardener to school group can become a bee  
spotter.  
"We're not asking anyone to catch these bees, and we're certainly not asking  
them to kill them. We just want a picture."  
All you need, she said, is a computer, a digital camera, and site bees visit. 

"It should be s place you have access to and that isn't going to be turned  
into a parking lot anytime soon," she advised.  
Since the site was launched last fall, she said, it has received more than  
1,000 visits from 53 countries and 47 states.  
Among those visitors was Linda Slepicka of Westmont. An amateur gardener with 
 a "big flower garden" Slepicka said she has "tons of bees. So, when I heard  
about it I thought, well they are trying to track where the bees are located 
and  I have lots of bees, so why not?"  
She found the site, she said, when she was poking around the Internet reading 
 about Colony Collapse Disorder.  
Confirmed bees 
"I went to the Web site and bookmarked it, but it wasn't all the way up then. 
 By the time I got around to taking picture it was late in the season."  
Then, late this winter, Slepicka got an email from the project. They  
confirmed that some of her bees were in fact honey bees. One was not.  
"I know nothing about bees, so the distinctions between this kind of bee and  
that kind of bee are lost on me. But I printed that information, so that when 
I  take a picture I can see if it is what they are looking for," she said.  
While Slepicka has never thought of herself as an entomology buff, she did  
say it feels good doing something for the bees.  
"I'd never thought about how important bees are. But if the colonies are  
collapsing and you don't have the bees to pollinate your crops, it could lead to  
a global collapse of our food supply. You don't tend to think of honey bees 
as  being that important," she said.  
Do you have honey bees or bumble bees in your sights? To become a bee  
spotter or to read more about bee topics like Colony Collapse Disorder see:  
http://beespotter.mste.uiuc.edu/.  

Laurie  Davies Adams
Executive Director
Pollinator Partnership 
423  Washington Street, 5th floor
San Francisco, CA  94111
415-362-1137
LDA at pollinator.org

_www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 

_www.nappc.org_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2008. 
Beecome  involved at _www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 

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