Bee walks for beginners

If one of your aims this year is to enjoy the outdoors more frequently, then Beewalks could be just the sort of prompt you need to get out and about regularly. A Beewalk is an hour-long amble through a pretty glade or other flowery spot. Armed with a crib sheet showing common bee types, you glance around you and note the number of bees you see and whether they are solitary or seen in clusters – on a gorse bush, for instance.

Beewalks are undertaken once a month and it’s best if you aim for a similar time of day each time. That way you get a better idea of whether bee numbers at that location are up or down. You also give yourself the perfect reason to go and spend time at one of your favourite spots. The beauty of the scheme is that you choose your own study location and the emphasis is on it being somewhere you can get to conveniently and regularly. Local parks and riverbanks are a good option.

Beewalks were set up by researchers at the University of Stirling and are a direct response to the sharp fall in honey bees in the UK (as well as many other countries). We need bees to pollinate flowers and fruit. Numbers have seemingly dropped off alarmingly. The BBCT (Bumblebee Conservation Trust) acts as a public census to discover just how widespread the decimation of the bumblebee population may be, and whether all varieties of bumblebee are affected. Ideally, you’ll log details of your Beewalk findings over successive years, so a picture can be built up of how your local bee population is doing. Results are collated on a national map.

In the three years that the scheme has been running, BBCT volunteers have made some unexpected discoveries. Several types of bee that were prevoiously thought rare have been found in strong numbers. Bees have also been seen outside their traditional March to September active periods. Winter bees are also now being enthusiastically logged, though beewalkers aren’t expected to commit to braving the harsh winter weather to confirm such sightings.

The discovery of a broader than expected range of bumblebees prompted the Beewalk organisers to add another option to the public survey: photography. This less formal bee sighting scheme is an ideal way of letting the Bumblebee Conservation Trust know about your bee sightings. Confirmed sightings of bees via the BeeWatch help the BBCT build up distribution patterns, says Elaine O’Mahony, the organisation’s surveys officer. Of course you also learn to distinguish bee types as you go, and have a great excuse to practice your close-up photography.

To find out more about Beewatch see this PowerPoint slide.