To build this envisioned international coalition — and invite you into it — we’re organizing regular online and occasional in-person events to bring us all together around the theme of free-living honey bees.
Symposia Series
Each quarterly symposium will feature invited guests diving into issues integral to Honey Bee Watch, this year including bee-lining, tree cavities, whether wild honey bees are wild bees too, and communicating and recruiting for citizen science. Speakers will share their experiences and expertise, participate in a panel discussion, then answer your questions. Free and open to all. To sign up, select which events you'd like to attend in this online registration form. Sessions will be recorded and videos sent to all registrants.
Honey Bee Watch Café
During interim months, we'll host supplemental gatherings, aka Cafés, whereby guests from around the world can present their free-living honey bee stories. If you'd like to share yours during a 10-min. presentation, fill out this quick application. Free and open to all. To register, send an email with your full name, location, and which Cafés you'd like to attend to ambeessadors@gmail.com.
One-Off Events
Periodically we will organize live events, whereby attendees can visit unique free-living bee sites, participate in hands-on workshops, and/or attend conferences and lectures. Stay tuned for more information.
Bee-lining involves searching for bees and patiently following foragers back home. While centuries old, this craft’s utility has become less effective in modern times, with dwindling habitat and an explosion of managed apiaries abutting swaths of forests and woodlands. To increase the effectiveness of one’s hunt, researchers have honed their bee-spying and -tracking skills and developed new techniques to reveal where bees live, some of which will be shared with us.
In partnership with the Arboreal Apiculture Salon, this co-presentation will be a continuation of the conversation they started in December 2023 — which we recommend you listen to in advance. Four of their original speakers return to dive deeper into the topic:
Studying free-living honey bees often brings researchers deep into forests to monitor colonies in their natural habitat. Observations of tree cavities have revealed interesting findings, including new occupants and/or unexpected co-habitants, such as woodpeckers, owls, squirrels, other insects, fungi, and more.
What do we know about these dynamically rich nest spaces? What can we learn about interspecies interactions within tree cavities? How can an intersectional, multidisciplinary scientific approach among researchers from varying specialties widen our understanding of free-living bee biology and behavior?
Three experts from different fields explore these themes:
It was widely believed that wild-living honey bees went extinct long ago. Even though there’s proof of their existence, some still believe that they’re only feral escapees from managed hives' swarms. In light of these and similar (mis)conceptions, coupled with recent studies positing that managed honey bees compete with wild bees (aka non-Apis mellifera species, often solitary and native), there’s a prevailing opinion that honey bees living on their own may not deserve conservation or even our attention. Although Honey Bee Watch strongly disagrees, we welcome a panel of experts to transparently discuss contemporary (and sometimes controversial) research, past myths, and present realities surrounding “wild honey bees” and their place within natural ecosystems.
Citizen Science projects like Honey Bee Watch tap into the public’s interest in and ability to contribute to research that scientists cannot do alone. In our case, we rely on you to help locate and monitor free-living honey bee colonies in order to more comprehensively understand how and why they survive via natural selection.
Building such a community necessitates organization, coordination, and multiple independent and interconnected regional cells around the world. But how and where to start? How do you get citizens in your area involved? And how do you engage them over extended periods of time?
Three experts share their extensive know-how and experiences establishing, managing, communicating, and recruiting for citizen-science projects:
This symposium tackled protocols, namely which data points we request citizen scientists and research partners collect when monitoring free-living nests. Intending to become the world’s greatest repository of data on survivors, Honey Bee Watch strives to standardize protocols to a great degree, then share them far and wide in order to ensure parity of data globally. But how do you converge monitoring protocols from projects with different research goals, that have spanned varying time frames, that do or do not involve citizens, and with origins in countries as diverse as Serbia, Ireland, UK, US, and beyond?
Featuring Dr. Jovana Bila Dubaić (University of Belgrade), Dr. Grace McCormack (Galway Honey Bee Research Centre, University of Galway), Filipe Salbany (Blenheim Estate), Prof. Thomas Seeley (Cornell University).
(Note: yellow highlights link to speakers' video presentations on our YouTube channel.)
Citizen science prioritizes collaboration, with scientists relying on the contributions of individuals, who collect essential data for their research. A simple enough concept, but when you scratch the surface, complexities and nuances are quickly revealed.
As a participating Bee Guardian citizen registering qualifying colonies into Honey Bee Watch, would you willingly share the bees' locations, periodic observational details, your name, contact info? As a researcher potentially entering into a global study like ours, what general concerns do you have regarding data rights, data sharing, crediting, publishing, etc.?
Featuring Roger Dammé (Honey Bee Wild), Paolo Fontana (Edmund Mach Foundation), Noa Simón Delso (BeeLife).
Honey bees are in a rare category within the animal kingdom, straddling wild and domesticated. In 2014, the IUCN assessed Apis mellifera in Europe, conferring a “data deficient” Red List status due to the difficulty of identifying and discerning wild populations. What defines “wild”? Why is this term so controversial? Does "wild" apply to the colony itself or entire self-sustaining populations too?
If scientists can accept a common definition, will we then be able to accurately reassess their Red List status as well as advance with coordinated conservation efforts internationally? During this talk, our guests talked about the usefulness of standardizing other terms and the benefits of widely distributing such a shared glossary.
Featuring Hannes Bonhoff (Honungsbiföreningen), Patrick Kohl (University of Würzburg), Fabrice Requier (University of Paris-Saclay), Michael Joshin Thiele (Apis Arborea).
During the months in between symposia (excepting July and August), we'll host informal gatherings, whereby you can share real-life experiences with free-living honey bees, whether related to science, personal observations, theory, or practice. These will be free-form "virtual handshake" sessions, a place to hear people's stories, learn about studies around the globe, glean new ideas, make connections, get inspired, and become part of our family of bee experts and enthusiasts.
Thursday, 23 May (19–20h30 CEST // 18–19h30 BST // 1–2:30pm EDT // 10–11:30am PDT) — CANCELLED
Thursday, 24 October (19–20h30 CEST // 18–19h30 BST // 1–2:30pm EDT // 10–11:30am PDT)
Thursday, 21 November (19–20h30 CET // 18–19h30 GMT // 1–2:30pm EST // 10–11:30am PST)
To register, send an email with your full name, location, and which Cafés you'd like to attend to ambeessadors@gmail.com.
If you'd like to sign up to give a 10–minute talk, fill out this Google Form application. We'll review applications and pick up to three talks per event. If you have any questions, email Steve Rogenstein at ambeessadors@gmail.com.
We organized a special tour of Blenheim Estate, Europe's largest and oldest ancient oak woodlands, in search of bees living in trees. Fifty guests from around the world strolled the grounds, stood in the majestic shadows of 1,000-year-old giants, and learned about them and their bee inhabitants from Filipe Salbany and Francis Gilio.
In less than three years, they have located 76 nest cavities on a small portion of Blenheim's 2,500 acres, a handful of which were espied that day. On an additional adjacent 10,000 acres, they're establishing a Conservation Covenant to protect this unique ecosystem and all the flora and fauna contained within.
Watch the video to learn more. Thanks to COLOSS and Ricola Foundation — Nature & Culture for their financial support.
Director (Project): Steve Rogenstein at The Ambeessadors
Director (Science): Arrigo Moro at University of Galway
Director: Keith Browne at University of Galway
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