Get a buzz out of helping bees. All you need are some broad beans
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Version 0 of 1. Britain’s bees need you. With habitat loss, agricultural practices and changes to land use taking their toll on many wild species of pollinator, the impact on plants, from fruit crops to garden flowers, could be severe. Now scientists at the University of Sussex are enlisting your help to keep tabs on these industrious insects. Opening for recruits this month, Bees and Beans is a nationwide citizen science project designed to map the activity of wild bees in gardens and allotments to help inform conservation work. But with bee identification a tricky business, you’ll need more than binoculars and a spotter’s guide. “If you can’t necessarily measure so easily which bees are actually present, you can measure the effects of them being in an area,” says Linda Birkin, a PhD student who is leading the project. “The idea is to get people to grow a plant that needs pollination in order to produce fruit, then do that around the country and see what the difference in yield is in different places.” Sign up and you’ll be sent three pots to fill with compost plus some broad bean seeds. Once grown, one plant is left for insects to pollinate, the second is hand-pollinated and the third is wrapped in garden fleece or netting. The number of beans produced by the first plant can be compared to that of the second (maximum pollination) and the third (minimum pollination) to reveal the activity of insect pollinators. Broad beans have been chosen, says Birkin, because they are a favourite with long-tongued bumblebees. “While we wouldn’t be able to say exactly which long-tongued bees would be [pollinating the plant] you would know it’s that sort of group,” she says. After a successful trial last year, the 2015 project will also ask volunteers to grow a variety of radishes whose flowers are more commonly pollinated by smaller bees and even hoverflies. But Birkin believes the project goes beyond data collection. “One of the other aims is getting people engaged with the wildlife that’s around them,” she says. To take part, go to ljbees.org.uk/getting_involved. |