partner piece

Wildlife Preservation Canada’s efforts to conserve native bumble bees would be nothing without help from our volunteer community scientists across the country, and without Bumble Bee Watch.

The Xerces Society’s blog post “Picking Plants for Pollinators: The Cultivar Conundrum” highlighted the lack of research on this topic. To help address this knowledge gap, Budburst launched the Nativars research project in 2018.

Researchers at York University are recruiting members from across North America for a very important mission. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it: find and submit sightings of bumble bee nests.

During this year's Pollinator Week (June 18 to 24) multiple locations in Ontario and Alberta were buzzing with activity, including an assortment of Bumble Bee Watch community-science training events led by Wildlife Preservation Canada.

This past February, Bumble Bee Watch users were invited to take a survey run by York University researchers to learn more about participant demographics, motives, and confidence with bumble bee identification.

Contributions to the community science program Bumble Bee Watch are expanding our understanding of where species have been - and potentially where they are going.