What's your favorite food? Floral visitation rates by bees in the pacific northwest

Bees are the most efficient pollinators in the insect world, pollinating 70% of the top 125 most grown food products. Most people have food preferences, but do bees have such discerning tastes? We observed bees in early summer, mid summer, and late summer, over two years to monitor their floral visitation, and from these observations, have determined the preferences of bees throughout the seasons. Over 350 hours were spent observing bees visiting flowers in the field, working in a variety of agricultural settings. In that time, we observed hundreds of bee-flower interactions. We noted the type of bee and the type of flower they were visiting to gain an understanding of the predilection of honeybees and native bees across approximately 30 farms and urban gardens in the Pacific Northwest. Through these observations, we can provide recommendations to entomologists on best sampling periods and locations, and to conservationists and farmers on floral resources to provide to help support bee populations. I will present the methods and results of these observations, and share how our team has used this work to inform a variety of different pollinator conservation activities throughout the Seattle area.