Be A Roosevelt Island Bee Watcher - Join NYC Parks & American Museum Of Natural History In The Great Pollinator Project - BZZZZZZ

You Tube Video Of Bumble Bee On Sunflower

Are you interested in Roosevelt Island Bees? If so, you may want to get involved in the Great Pollinator Project which, according to WNYC is:

... a collaboration between the American Museum of Natural History and the New York City Parks and Recreation Department's Greenbelt Native Plant Center. The goal is to get members of the public — “citizen scientists” in Great Pollinator parlance — to observe bees and report what they see and where they see it. The project then uses that data to determine how bees are affected by habitat and land use....

and interviews a Roosevelt Island resident Bee watcher:

... New York City is sort of a hotbed for exotic bees."

This surprises some of the bee watchers. Erenia Meriton works for the Seychelles Embassy. She used to watch carpenter bees in the Seychelles islands, off the coast of Madagascar. Now, she and her two children watch bees on Roosevelt Island. "I was surprised that there were so many bee species here," Meriton says, "not only in New York and America but all over the world. I knew there were a lot of them, but I didn’t know the numbers."...

The full WNYC radio report is below.


More information on becoming a Mobile Bee Watcher for the Great Pollinator Project is available here. Bee Gardens have been established at 18 locations around New York City though none are on Roosevelt Island. Despite no Roosevelt Island Bee Gardens, you can still participate in the Great Pollinator Project:

... Become a Mobile Bee Watcher In Your Own Neighborhood

Walk around your neighborhood. When you find a blooming, sunlit flower observe it following our Bee Watcher guidelines and using our data sheet for as long as you can. Note when you see bees visit, following the Instructions and filling in a separate data sheet for each plant observed. If you cannot identify the flower you observed, please send a digital image of the flower (along with your completed data sheet) to beewatchers@gmail.com .