(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Bumble Bee Atlas will host three field day trainings this month for people interested in helping track and conserve native bees, which have experienced steep population declines in recent decades. The Xerces Society and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources coordinate the state-wide community science project, now in its third year. Stephanie Shepherd is a DNR wildlife diversity biologist.
“It’s really valuable because our data from Iowa is contributing to this much larger data set across the entire country,” Shepherd says. “It helps scientists studying pollinators learn more about bumble bees, their distributions, what kind of habitats they’re using, what kind of flowers they’re foraging on, and all that important information.”
Shepherd says volunteers will catch bees with nets, take photos and release them unharmed during at least two, 45-minute surveys from June through September. “This is helping us learn more about a group of species that we really knew very little about at the start of the Atlas,” she says.
The upcoming field day trainings are not required to volunteer with the Iowa Bumble Bee Atlas, but Shepherd says they provide a hands-on opportunity for people to get more comfortable catching and releasing bumble bees. “Bumble bees are actually really docile, and the techniques for catching them and getting them into the vial are very kind of foolproof,” she says. “You really kind of have to not be paying attention for something to happen.”
The field days are at Honey Creek State Park, Pony Creek Nature Center and Nahant Marsh Education Center.
