Biodiversity at AMNH: Become a Bee Watcher This Spring
03.11.10
HONEY BEES Compared to bumble bees, honey bees are lanky and lean. They can be golden or dark brown. One distinguishing characteristic: hairy eyes. © John Ascher
The Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC), in collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, is looking for volunteer bee watchers in all five boroughs for its Great Pollinator Project this spring and summer. Now in its fourth year, the program is tracking the pollination patterns of five categories of New York City’s native bees— bumble bees, honey bees, green metallic bees, carpenter bees, and “others” for the rest —with a view to conserving and improving bee habitat and plant pollination.
“By having all those different eyes out there, we are able to collect a lot more data than we ever could ourselves,” says Liz Johnson, CBC manager of the Metropolitan Biodiversity Program, who works on the Great Pollinator Project with Ed Toth, director of the Department of Parks & Recreation’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), and Kevin Matteson, an urban ecologist at Fordham University.
Would-be New York City bee watchers are asked to complete a brief orientation, transplant an annual sunflower and six native plants to a sunny location, and watch for bees for half an hour at least once every two weeks, then submit their observations online. If a volunteer doesn’t have a suitable outdoor spot for the plants, they are encouraged to visit public gardens or parks and record observations there. Researchers are interested in how frequently bees visit specific flowers to determine what plants and habitats best support the healthy bee populations so vital to pollination—a process without which wild and garden plants might produce small or less fertile seeds or no seeds at all, with serious implications for the ecosystem.
“Ninety percent of plants require an animal pollinator, and bees are the primary pollinator in the Northeast,” says Johnson. “Different bee species have unique adaptations specifically for carrying pollen. Butterflies, wasps, flies, and beetles also pollinate, but they are generally considered less efficient at moving pollen around.”
Aside from enlisting citizen scientists to track and map bee patterns across the city, another goal of the project is to increase public awareness of bees.
“When you talk of bees, people think of the honey bee and maybe the bumble bee,” says Johnson. “But over the years, Museum scientists have documented more than 225 species of bees in the five boroughs.”
To find out more about becoming a bee watcher, visit the Great Pollinator Project or email beewatchers@gmail.com.
A version of this story appears in the March/April issue of Rotunda.
 CARPENTER BEES These huge bees have no stripes, like this Xylocopa virginica spotted in Queens’ Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. © John Ascher |
 GREEN METALLIC BEES This category includes all green bees, such as those with green heads and black abdomens or green heads and striped abdomens, like this female Agapostemon virescens. © John Ascher |
 AND MORE Other bees buzzing around New York City include leaf-cutter bees, wool carder bees, and giant Asian resin bees like the one above, snapped at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. © John Ascher |
 BUBMLE BEES Large and fuzzy, Bombus species can be distinguished by their banding patterns. This male Bombus perplexus was photographed last summer in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. © John Ascher |
The U.N. proclaimed 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. The American Museum of Natural History has joined efforts to refocus the world on biodiversity, the complex tapestry of interconnections at every level that supports life on Earth.
Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History, represented the “informal science education” sector during an important congressional hearing last week in Washington, DC on science education in our nation’s schools.
How did the idea for 
