The honey bee genus consists of 11 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica. These social insects play an essential role in maintaining biodiversity, ensuring food security, and providing nutrition by pollinating a vast multitude of plants consumed by humans and many animals that we rely on. Unfortunately, around the world honey bees face a barrage of human-caused hardships—the spread of pests and pathogens, overuse of pesticides, lack of sufficient forage and natural habitats, poor management techniques—which have led to declining numbers in many regions. However, there have been a few documented cases of colonies surviving—even thriving—with little to no human intervention, i.e., “free-living.” Some of these have been studied in great depth, while many others await discovery. To date no wide-reaching study exists to record their numbers and geographic distribution.

Via a multi-year, international citizen-science project, the Survivors Task Force will gather data on surviving Apis mellifera populations—as well as Asian honey bees—to meet these main objectives: 

• To fill in the “data deficiency” status of honey bees (including Apis mellifera and other Apis spp.) as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List for Threatened Species
• To investigate and better understand how biological, behavioral, and environmental traits affect survivorship
• To engage a wide audience in a science-based initiative, thus indirectly increasing their awareness of and appreciation for the importance of honey bees

Would you be willing to share information about any surviving colonies that you know about that are unmanaged, untreated, and/or free-living? If yes, please fill out the preliminary survey here. This survey is completely anonymous and all information will be treated confidentially.

This citizen-science project aims to engage at least four distinct audiences:

• Bee scientists within the COLOSS network
• Existing projects that share our vision and are willing to merge data in exchange for COLOSS’s scientific guidance
• Conventional and natural beekeepers, whose colonies are unmanaged, untreated against Varroa spp., or free-living
• Citizens who find and/or are willing to periodically observe honey bee colonies in the wild or in unexpected places such as building walls, under eaves, in caves, on cliff sides, etc.