Welcome to the Great Pollinator Project blog! Over 220 bee species are known to live in New York City. The purpose of this blog is to celebrate the natural history, ecology and conservation of these and other urban pollinators.
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By Meg Domroese, on August 12th, 2010
Twenty-five Bee Watchers turned out for a hot afternoon visit to the High Line on August 4th. We gathered on the south end of the park, near Gansevoort Street, and worked our way north, following the advice of a High Line gardener who suggested we’d see maximum bee activity on the sundeck near 14th Street where mountain mint was in bloom. Unfortunately not Pycnanthemum tenuifolium, the species of mountain mint targeted for bee observations by the Great Pollinator Project, but it was a popular spot for bees! There were many bees along the way, too.
While there were hundreds of European honey bees (Apis mellifera), Bee Watchers also saw a variety of others:
Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) – dozens
Brown-belted Bumble Bee (Bombus griseocollis) – several
Black Long-horned Bee (Melissodes bimaculata) – 1
Leaf-cutter Bee (Megachile spp.)- several
Wool-carder Bee (Anthidium manicatum) – 3
Masked Bee (Hylaeus spp.) – 1
Small Sweat Bee (Lasioglossum spp.) – 1
Equipped with a net for catch-and-release, and vials for close-up views, we could examine many features that Kevin Matteson pointed out to help identify bees.
A WNYC reporter joined our expedition. Check out the story to learn more about our adventures.
If you’d like to plan a bee watching visit to the High Line, check out the lists of what’s blooming each month.
By Kevin Matteson, on August 10th, 2010
A while back, bee watcher Richard Warden sent in this awesome picture of multiple bees on a giant sunflower head. At the time, this was a record image for the Great Pollinator Project— four individual bees on a sunflower representing three species!
Four bees on sunflower, photo by Richard Warden
But the record was recently broken [...]
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By Kevin Matteson, on August 6th, 2010
Augochlora pura on rotting log, photo by Kevin Matteson
The above photo is of the the drop-dead gorgeous Pure-green Sweat Bee (Augochlora pura). We have been seeing a lot of this bee and its close relative the Virescent Sweat Bee (Agapostemon virescens) visiting plants like Hibiscus/Rose of Sharon, Lavender, and good ol’ Lemon Queen [...]
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By Meg Domroese, on July 26th, 2010
At the beginning of the season we distributed a survey at orientations and to new Bee Watchers who had signed up online. We received 154 responses from these mostly new – and some seasoned – Bee Watchers. We thought you might be interested in what your fellow citizen scientists said about why they watch bees.
How [...]
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By Kevin Matteson, on July 20th, 2010
Bee Fly in the family Bombylidae and genus Xenox. Photo by bee watcher Jeff Polley.
We previously posted about common flower visiting flies in the NYC area, but bee watcher and blogger (www.thissideofscience.com) Jeffrey Polley recently brought a few more to our attention. The above massive fly has been seen recently [...]
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By Meg Domroese, on July 14th, 2010
In Dr. Seuss’s Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? there’s a Bee Watcher whose “…job is to watch…is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee. A bee that is watched will work harder, you see.”
When watching doesn’t result in harder work from the bee, a watcher is assigned [...]
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By Kevin Matteson, on July 9th, 2010
The following Frequently Asked Questions are in our presentation but I thought they would be worth posting here. Enjoy your bee watching and more posts will be coming next week!
Should I observing the entire plant or just one flower?
Answer- Record bee visitation to the entire plant (which may have multiple flowers). Some flowering plants, such [...]
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By Meg Domroese, on June 25th, 2010
We heard this question many times over the course of the day at Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s 100th birthday – “Bee Day” – celebration on June 12. Ed Toth, Liz Johnson, and I manned a Great Pollinator Project table where a small box of bees from the American Museum of Natural History’s collection attracted a lot [...]
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By Meg Domroese, on June 18th, 2010
On Wednesday, Ed Toth, co-founder and partner in the Great Pollinator Project, and I found our way – after some wrong turns – down a service road into the northeast corner of Van Cortlandt Park where one of the project’s Bee Watcher gardens is located. Ed is Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center on [...]
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By Kevin Matteson, on October 5th, 2009
Google Earth image showing the North Meadow of Central Park (highlighted in the top left)
While most people just use Google Earth to “fly” to their home address, this free software can also be used to identify biodiverse urban habitats such as meadows in New York City Parks. The image [...]
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