Albertans snap photos of bumblebees for North America-wide study

Maura Hamill’s northwest Calgary backyard is a hive of bumblebee activity, with dozens of a pollinators buzzing between her charming flowers.

“I consider I’ve got 4 class of blow bees,” Hamill said.

Hamill is one of 50 citizen scientists in Alberta that perceived hands-on training during Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park in Jun on how to locate and collect bumblebees as partial of a North America-wide class count.

There are 29 opposite class in Alberta and 46 in North America.

A bumblebee perches on a flower in a Calgary yard. (Lucie Edwardson/CBC)

Sarah Johnson is a lead biologist with Wildlife Preservation Canada’s local pollinator initiative. The classification is a initial partner of Bumble Bee Watch.

“The bees that unequivocally need a insurance are a local bees,” she said.

“Since about a midst 1990s their populations have declined unequivocally rapidly.”

Johnson pronounced any member of a open can contention their bee photos to a Watch’s website, and afterwards informal experts determine a species’ identification.

Citizen scientists lerned during Glenbow Ranch initial attended classroom sessions to learn how to brand and sketch bees, and afterwards went out in a margin to learn how to locate them.

Johnson gave a discerning outline of how to locate and sketch a bee:

• “When you’re throwing any form of bee, mostly you’re going to find them on flowers since that’s where they’re eating.
• “You take a net and we appropriate it past where a bee is. You can lift a net adult and a bees will always try and yield or fly upwards. Then we can place your palm next a net to trap a bee in a finish of a net.
• “Take your cosmetic vial and slip it adult by a net and put it surmount of a bee. And we can kind of stratagem it so a bee falls into your vial and afterwards place a lid on top.
• “You can cold a bees down by putting them on ice or on a cold bag and afterwards they delayed down and aren‘t as vibrated or stressed.
• “And afterwards we can get photos of a tools of a bee that are critical for identification. You can brand them by a settlement of colours we see on a fur of their stomach or thorax. So mostly a best design we can get is from a side or on tip of a bee.”

Johnson pronounced citizen class depends are critical for training some-more about bee populations.

“By collecting information on all of them and carrying members of a open assistance us lane where these opposite class of blow bees are, we can get a improved thought of that class are during risk of going extinct,” she said.

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With files from Lucie Edwardson

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-bumblebee-watch-1.4788686?cmp=rss