The Ground Nesting Bees project has surpassed 5,000 observations, a laudable milestone for the citizen science project. 385 species of bees have been observed and 2,164 people have submitted their observations as of Nov. 3.
The Ground Nesting Bees project, or the GNBee project, is run by the Danforth Lab and has mainly focused on the role of wild bees in the pollination of apples over the past 15 years. The project has three main objectives — identifying ground bees’ nesting sites, enhancing habitat suitability for these species and preserving these nesting sites.
Steven Hoge ’24 joined the Danforth Lab to pursue his curiosity about bees.
“I started off as a beekeeper. When I wanted to get involved in research, I got connected with the Danforth Lab,” Hoge said. “I was really fascinated by how unique each species was and how important they are in our environment in terms of pollination and environmental stabilization.”
According to the lab, 70 percent of the wild bee species that they have documented visiting apple flowers build their hives on the ground. The ground location makes the bees more vulnerable to factors such as erosion, footsteps and pesticides.
Therefore, to maximize pollination, the project works to protect these wild, ground-nesting bees. By collecting data on where the ground-nesting bees are, the lab is able to identify which areas need attention and care and what kind of policies need to be implemented to promote their species.
Anyone around the world can contribute to the project by taking a picture of bees forming a nest on the ground and submitting it to the GNBee iNaturalist website. The Danforth Lab will then analyze the picture to identify the legitimacy of the observation and add it to its database upon validation.
According to Hoge, the lab prefers to take photos of the bees nesting in the ground or around their nest site.
Observations are ongoing year-round, though Hoge said, “The bees are mostly active in the spring and summer, so the winter is sort of our quiet period.”
Hoge said the world of bees is more extensive than he imagined, with much still to be studied.
“I was also realizing that they are incredibly understudied,” Hoge said. “We don’t really know the habitats that these bees prefer yet.”
Val Kim can be reached at [email protected].