Six years of intensive bee monitoring in western Montana: Insights, anecdotes, and prospects

Wild bees are the primary animal pollinators in nearly all terrestrial ecosystems. Pollination ensures the persistence of diverse plant communities, which means wild bees are also vital to the success of ecological restoration projects. In 2013 we began monitoring bees in intermountain grasslands in western Montana with the goals of 1) documenting bee species on in these grasslands, 2) investigating how bee communities respond to changes in the plant community such as exotic plant invasions and restoration, and 3) if the methods (pan trapping and netting) we were using were accurately measuring bee communities. To date, this long-term monitoring effort has not only uncovered a rich native bee fauna (230+ species), but has also contributed to our understanding of bee species distributions, and biases in a common bee sampling method. We will discuss how this knowledge can inform restoration activities and goals.