Massasoit STEM

10 Years of Wild Bee Data Collected

The ongo­ing research project at Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege is focused on the abun­dance and diver­si­ty of local native bee com­mu­ni­ties. In the ear­ly 2000’s colony col­lapse dis­or­der became part of the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness. In 2008, Bio­Science pub­lished “Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der: Many Sus­pects, No Smok­ing Gun,” (2008, Wan­tan­abe). Since then colony col­lapse dis­or­der has been attrib­uted to neon­i­coti­noids and mite par­a­sitism (2009, vanEn­gels­dorp, et al.).

These stud­ies have been focused on hon­ey bees (apis mel­lif­era) which are not native to North Amer­i­ca. Our study is focused pri­mar­i­ly on the num­bers of wild bees in the area. Reg­u­lar sam­pling of six dif­fer­ent sites began in 2016. The study has been con­tin­ued to be man­aged by stu­dent interns since then under the direc­tion of Dr. Michael Bank­son and men­tors Adam Ger­maine and Thais Marino.

Since 2016

• • Over 20,000 bees have been collected
  • 35 pre­sen­ta­tions giv­en by stu­dent interns at nation­al sci­en­tif­ic meetings
  • One of only a few long-term bee studies

Research Goals

• • Good exper­i­men­tal design
  • Thought­ful analysis
  • Pub­li­ca­tion-qual­i­ty output
  • Con­tri­bu­tion to sci­en­tif­ic community

Why study bees?

• • Bees are incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive pol­li­na­tors, vis­it­ing thou­sands of plants per day.
  • As a key­stone species, bees have an out­sized impact on the eco­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty to which they belong.
  • Bees have diverse and abun­dant communities.
  • Bees are an essen­tial part of ecosys­tem health and food production.

Methods

Data Collection

We use two dif­fer­ent meth­ods to col­lect wild bees; sweep-net­ting and pan traps. Pan traps are used for col­lect­ing small­er bees that fly close to the ground. Sweep-net­ting is used for col­lect­ing larg­er bees that fly high­er above the ground.

In this study bees are col­lect­ed from six col­lec­tion sites in Ply­mouth Coun­ty, Mass­a­chu­setts that have dif­fer­ent ratios of per­me­able to imper­me­able sur­faces, a key mark­er of urban­iza­tion. There are pro­to­cols in place for pan trap place­ment and sweep net­ting to ensure con­sis­ten­cy across col­lec­tion dates. A senior intern is assigned to each site on a rotat­ing basis to ensure qual­i­ty con­trol and avoid cre­at­ing con­founds in the data.

Pan traps are set for 24 hours, after 24 hours the traps are col­lect­ed and sweep net col­lec­tion occurs. Addi­tion­al data includ­ing the weath­er, tem­per­a­ture, and GPS coor­di­nates of the traps are not­ed in the field data. Sam­ples are brought back to the lab at Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, where they are sep­a­rat­ed from non-bees, dried, pinned, count­ed and iden­ti­fied. Each step in the process requires pri­or train­ing and under­stand­ing of the pro­to­cols. Interns are test­ed on their knowl­edge and skills before they are allowed to work independently.

Sampling Season and Frequency

Sam­pling occurs every two weeks from thaw to frost (approx­i­mate­ly). We begin sched­ul­ing sam­pling dates when the first bee activ­i­ty starts for the sea­son, gen­er­al­ly some­time in April. After the first hard frost, gen­er­al­ly towards the end of Octo­ber, no more sam­pling will occur. Weath­er is tak­en into account when sched­ul­ing sam­ple dates, as well as rotat­ing interns across dif­fer­ent sites to avoid con­founds in the data.