UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The López-Uribe Lab recently held its sixth annual Pennsylvania Bee Monitoring Workshop, an event in which scientists and Penn State Master Gardener volunteers gathered to share updates about data collected in previous years, review monitoring protocols and discuss the focus of the study for the upcoming year.
The program, organized by Margarita López-Uribe, associate professor of entomology; Nash Turley, postdoctoral scholar; and Sarah Kania, lab and collections manager, works with volunteers to monitor bee biodiversity by collecting and cataloging bee species across the state. The volunteers are contributing to advancing several projects aimed at generating baseline data about the diversity of bees at the state level and how it changes across space and time.
Over the past six years, volunteers of the program, including 18 Master Gardeners and four additional volunteers, have collected 32,000 bee specimens from 310 species, contributing to 15 new state records and hundreds of county records. As of this year, the program has collected 68% of all species reported in Pennsylvania, according to López-Uribe.
“Master Gardeners are great ambassadors for the work we do, for native bees, and for the importance of scientific discoveries,” she said. “In addition to the great science they contribute, they help us communicate the importance of what we do.”
As part of the workshop, program members toured the Frost Entomological Museum on the University Park campus, which now houses the specimens they collected. López-Uribe noted that the project has significantly contributed to the museum’s growing bee collection, which includes 120,000 bee specimens.
“This is a legacy that the Master Gardener volunteers are leaving for many future generations of entomologists and scientists who will continue to use the data from those specimens,” she said.
The event also featured activities such as presentations and project showcases by students in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, including Natalie Heaton, an incoming masters student in entomology from Florida, whose project focuses on how plant rarity affects pollinators; and Hailey Frontino, a plant science major from Altoona, who will develop monitoring protocols for species that are becoming less abundant over time.
López-Uribe noted that the program collects new specimens every day, with some discoveries, including rare or previously thought locally extinct species. This year, program organizers hope to implement DNA metabarcoding, a process that will help more quickly identify the bee specimens collected by volunteers.
López-Uribe encouraged those who are interested in supporting bee populations to use native plants in their garden, avoid unnecessary pesticide use and always follow label instructions indicated. She also encouraged people to contribute pollinator observations to iNaturalist, a tool for sharing and identifying observations of plants and animals.