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Video Q&A ViewAttendees 5

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

10-Minute Paper

P-IE: Pollinators On-Demand Presentations

WiBee, The Wisconsin Wild Bee App: Two years into a community science pollination project

On-Demand
On-Demand
Wild bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) are adapted for pollinating the plants in their native region and also outperform honeybees as crop pollinators in many systems. However, wild bee populations vary greatly both spatially and temporally leading to uncertainty about whether they can provide full crop pollination in some systems. Traditional researcher-lead sampling has been largely unable to provide the detailed information needed by growers to make evidence-based pollination decisions at an individual farm level. To address this challenge, we developed “WiBee: The Wisconsin Wild Bee App”, a community science program associated with a free smartphone app. With the mobile app, growers and interested community members follow a quick standardized sampling protocol to quantify pollinator visitation rates. During the soft launch in 2020, 1,051 surveys were submitted by 235 unique users. Survey participation increased in 2021 when we also partnered with the Wisconsin Master Gardener Program with volunteers surveying bees on both crop and non-crop flowers. We explore participation by crop and wildflower and how temporal and spatial patterns of bee visitation can be informed through a distributed volunteer-based program. Preliminary data show that visitation rates to flowers is, in part, landscape dependent. By actively engaging volunteers  and seeking feedback, we are building the dataset needed to explore wild bee population trends and habitat relationships ultimately leading to improved pollination information and expanded user understanding of the role of wild bees in pollination.