The Bees' Needs: A citizen science project

The Bees' Needs is a citizen science project designed to study the abundance and diversity of solitary wood-nesting bees and wasps in Colorado's Northern Front Range and to explore relationships of these metrics to surrounding landscape attributes.  The large volunteer workforce behind this project not only allows us to survey a greater study area and increase sample sizes, it also provides us with an avenue to educate and inspire members of our community by helping them to better understand and conserve native pollinators.  Volunteers are issued a standard bee block that they monitor throughout the summer.  Data on completed nests are submitted every two weeks via our website, which not only acts as a portal to submit data, but is also being developed as an educational resource.  During 2013, our pilot season, we partnered with 250 volunteers to provide 10,000 potential nesting sites for solitary wood-nesting bees and wasps. A preliminary summary of our pilot season findings will be presented along with plans for increased development of the project for 2014.