Preparing for a bee biodiversity assessment at UA Arboretum

UA Arboretum attracts a crowd at the 2016 Open House

We are getting ready to undertake a local bee biodiversity inventory at the University of Alabama Arboretum, a beautiful spot off of campus that is undergoing continual improvement thanks to director Monica Watkins. As part of this improvement, we hope to get a baseline assessment of bee biodiversity across the Arboretum, which includes pine and oak/hickory forest, a community garden, wildflower garden, and open areas with lots of general floral and habitat resources that should be great for bees. Ideally, bee habitat availability will increase at the Arboretum over time, and we would like to see how diversity tracks improvements.

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Undergraduate Clare Ols will be conducting an independent study to survey the bees using a method known as "bee bowl" collecting. We are largely going to follow the protocols of Sam Droege at the USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring lab which has found that particular shades of yellow and blue are most attractive to bees. Today we started prepping and painting bee bowls.

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