The B-Team

Pollinator species like honey bees and butterflies get most of the attention. One often overlooked group of species are native Bumblebees. Though honeybees are important to local agriculture, they are non-native–introduced species–competing with bumblebees for food sources. Bumblebees are critical to the health and maintenance of our local habitats and ecosystems due to their relentlessness in pollinating plants. The problem is that there are not enough plants that the native bumblebee species want to eat. They forage for native plants to feed off of, but it is a food desert out there–meaning that there is no food to their liking. Native wildflowers like milkweed and vetches are being taken over by honeysuckles and Dame’s Rocket flowers which are highly invasive, causing bumblebee populations to either leave the area, or even worse, die off. Bumblebees are just as important to the environment as any other species, and native plants and animals rely on their pollinator prowess. This is why Rogers Center conceived the idea of The B-Team. 

• The community should be interested in this project, because bumblebees are essential to local agriculture. The agricultural benefit of bumblebees cannot be stressed enough.

• Though bumblebees would prefer to pollinate native flowers, they are also essential species in pollinating crops like tomatoes, apples, peppers, blueberries, and eggplant.

• Plants like tomatoes and peppers require a special type of pollination–buzz pollination–a technique that Bumblebees are known for, and excel at.

• Without bumblebees, the agriculture industry would struggle mightily, and so would most of the ecosystems that also rely on them. The decline in their population is something that should concern anyone who loves the environment, produce, and their local economies. 

It became clear that native bumblebees were hard to find from the start of the project. But why? It seemed as though there are flowers everywhere. The problem is that they are the wrong types of flowers–the invasive kind. Native bees prefer to feed and pollinate native plants. Central NYS is a food desert for native pollinators, as the voracious spread of invasive species of Honeysuckle, Dame’s Rocket, and Garlic Mustard take up the lion’s share of flowers in the region. Removing and replacing these invasives with native wildflowers is costly and time consuming project, and would require grants for a not for profit like Rogers Center to achieve. Rogers Center has since recently been awarded grant money for a Pollinator Habitat Restoration project, in which the “seed funding” will be used to remove some of the many invasive species present at Rogers, and to re-seed the Adam’s Farm parcel of Rogers Center with Native Pollinator friendly native wildflowers.

Community Science is where scientists and the community intersect. Community science allows for the community to participate in studies and scientific problems, deepens knowledge of the subject, and the problems at hand. The B-Team is community science oriented, allowing and encouraging participation from the community.

Here at Rogers Center, we wanted to streamline the process of participation in the project. We are utilizing the iNaturalist app for data collection and management. All native bees observed on the iNaturalist app within the Central NY area will automatically be added to our bumblebee data being collected. Once an observation is uploaded into iNaturalist, the software will give a suggestion as to what the species is or you can provide your own. Then, members of the community can critique, suggest, or confirm your identification of a species.

A big benefit of community science is that it can handle large scale projects, like the B-Team, where data over a large area can be collected. It is not feasible for one person or a small group to canvas the region looking for bees. But, with the community's help and participation in data collection, far more data can be collected, allowing for a better inventory of species. This project gives the community the opportunity to better understand the decline of native pollinators in the region, and take part in change. The best data is accessible data, and iNaturalist offers this opportunity for both the researchers working directly on the project, and the community whose observations are being used as data.

The B-Team is a community science project that will rely heavily on the participation of the community for its success. Community Science is where scientists and the community intersect, creates a better understanding of problems at hand, and their solutions. Community participation allows for deeper understanding and participation in science projects. The more people that choose to participate, and continue to participate, results in more crucial data being collected on bumblebee species in the area.

It is completely free, all we ask is for your time to help collect data. Whether you're at Rogers Center taking your daily hike, or see bumblebees in your CNY surroundings, collecting data is simple and straightforward. All you need is your smartphone and the iNaturalist app.

Identifying a problem is great: Bumblebees are in decline in New York State and much of the country, but something needs to be done about it. The B-Team’s inception is the start of a community science project stationed at Rogers Center, aimed at collecting crucial data that is necessary for the overall understanding of this population decline. Mainly, we want to know what species call Rogers Center home. This is done by collecting some specific data. Firstly, an image is taken using a smartphone or a DSLR camera to record an observation. Next, time and date of the image capture is recorded, and lastly coordinates of the bumblebee in question are also recorded. Once these pieces of information are obtained, and initial “hunch” or prediction of species is given to an observation. These steps are done if obsbervations are bing done manually. We high encourage the use of iNaturalist, a free app that makes participation easy, and accessible to our community scientists.

Community Science based software iNaturalist is very easy to use, and make your bumblebee data accessible, as well as usable in science. The free app iNaturalist, is special in that species and spatial data can be uploaded and observed and critiqued by Naturalists in the community. This program allows for communication amongst the community as well as peer-reviewing observations for correct species identification. We have been utilizing this program heavily for the B-Team project, and encourage anyone who wants to contribute to this project to do the same. 

• iNaturalist is free to use
• Data is open to the community and the scientists
• This project focuses on bumblebees, but any living observations can be uploaded and identified