Beewatching: A Project for Monitoring Bees through Photos

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Citizen science is the involvement of the public in scientific research, through the collection of data by volunteer members (“citizen scientists”), usually as part of a collaborative project with professional scientists. Beewatching is a citizen science project started in spring 2018. The project target is to acquire information on wild bee species in Italy and to promote knowledge among citizens on the diversity of bees and their importance as pollinators. Moreover, an attempt was made to follow the distribution of two alien bee species present in Italy. During the first two years of the project, 269 users contributed with 1086 reports. Overall, 38 Apoidea genera and 190 plant genera were reported. Furthermore, we received 22 reports of the alien species Megachile sculpturalis. The increasing number of reports and the higher percentage of correct ones throughout the first period of project implementation, but also the ecological data acquired, undoubtfully represent positive outputs, demonstrating the success of Beewatching project. ABSTRACT: Bees play a key role in natural and agro-ecosystems and their diversity is worldwide threatened by anthropogenic causes. Despite this, there is little awareness of the existence of the numerous species of wild bees, and the common name “bee” is very often exclusively associated with Apis mellifera. Our aim was to create a citizen science project in Italy with the following objectives: (a) raising awareness of the importance and diversity of bees, (b) obtaining data on the biology, ecology and distribution of Italian species, and (c) launching the monitoring of alien bees. The first step of the project was to create a website platform with a section containing informative datasheets of the wild bee families and of the most common bee genera present in Italy, a form to send reports of observed bees and an interactive map with all citizen’s reports. During the 2 years of the project 1086 reports were sent by 269 users, with 38 Apoidea genera reported on 190 plant genera; furthermore, 22 reports regarding the alien species Megachile sculpturalis arrived. The majority of bees (34 genera) were observed on spontaneous plants, including 115 genera native to Italy. Considering the increasing number of reports and data obtained in these first two years of the project, our objectives seem to be achieved. Future steps will be to outline the profile of beewatchers, to plan activities in a more targeted way, and also to start some sub-projects for conservation purposes.