BeeWalk – the national bumblebee monitoring scheme
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By Helen Dickinson, Bumblebee Conservation Trust Senior Surveys Officer
The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is a science-led UK based conservation charity, established in 2006 due to serious concerns about the state of the UK’s bumblebee populations. The Trust is leading the fight to secure the future of bumblebees, inspiring others to take action for our bumblebees, monitoring bumblebee abundance, conserving and creating bumblebee friendly habitat and influencing environmental policy.
Working to protect our bumblebees requires a good understanding of what’s happening to all of our species, from the rarest to the most common. To gather this abundance and distribution information, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust established the national bumblebee monitoring scheme BeeWalk in 2008, and opened it up as a citizen science scheme to the public in 2011.
BeeWalk is a standardised bumblebee-monitoring scheme active across Great Britain (an equivalent scheme is run across Ireland https://biodiversityireland.ie/surveys/bumblebee-monitoring-scheme/). The scheme protocol involves volunteer BeeWalkers selecting and walking the same fixed route (a transect of around 1-2 kilometres) at least once a month between March and October (inclusive). This covers the main flight period of bumblebees, including emergence of queens from overwintering, to the last workers of the season. BeeWalkers count and record the bumblebees they see on their transect and identify them to species and caste (queen, worker, male) where possible. ‘Unknown bumblebee’ and ‘unknown caste’ are options where the species and or caste cannot be confidently identified. The data is submitted directly to the BeeWalk website for Trust use and also shared as widely as possible.
The Trust carries out a range of research in-house, such as annual population trend analysis for the BeeWalk Annual Reports, key to the scheme’s ability to act as an early warning system for species declines. We also collaborate with a number of research institutions, investigating a range of subjects such as population changes in response to land use and climate change, and species habitat interactions. The dataset is available via the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and through downloads from these sites alone, the Trust bumblebee data continues to be cited across a wide range of scientific papers.
The growth of the dataset into one of the largest bumblebee datasets in the world means its profile is ever-increasing, which is particularly important for the Trust’s policy and advocacy work, as well as the integral role the data plays in our scientific research.
To ensure our BeeWalkers are able to carry out their surveys accurately and effectively, and the data is the highest quality possible, the BeeWalk team offer a range of support and guidance. Live online and in-person training events are regularly scheduled during the bumblebee season and a dedicated member of staff is available three days a week to answer queries and provide support. There is also access to a variety of online training recordings and video tutorials on our You Tube channel.
If you could set up and walk a transect in your area, you would be part of improving our understanding of bumblebee populations, and contributing to how we best protect all our species into the future. Transects can be established anywhere with flower rich habitat, from nature reserves and wildflower meadows to urban green spaces such as parks and gardens. We also have a number of established transect which are no longer being walked, these are available for new BeeWalkers to “adopt”.
See the BeeWalk website for full details on getting involved and find out about the latest results of the scheme on our Data Use and Publications page.
Email Bumblebee Conservation Trust for more information.
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