Native Bee Surveys

For a number of years, starting in 2015, we conducted seasonal surveys (spring, summer and fall) of the native bees that live in and/or visit The Bee Farm and Alemany Farm.  The goal of this project was to understand the different native bee species that could be found in San Francisco's urban agriculture, community and residential garden environments, their flower preference and nesting needs, and then to share that information with the public so they could "help our bees" through planned plantings and creation of bee nesting habitat.

 

The principal investigator of our Native Bee Surveys was Jaime Pawelek, formerly of the UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab.  She supervised volunteers in the bee collection process and later did the pinning and labelling of bees collected, and she examined each bee collected (under a microscope) to confirm its species and gender.

 

For volunteers who participated in the bee collection process, Jaime gave an introductory talk about common California native bees, their flower preferences and nesting needs, as well as our survey methods so volunteers were able to learn about native bees and bee survey methods generally. At the end of the collection process, she shared with volunteers information on the native bees they collected that day.  

 

During 2015, we identified a total of 33 different native bees.  The Bee Farm and Alemany Farm each had 11 native bees in common. However, each also had 11 native bees that were not found at the other location. 

 

During 2016, our surveys resulted in identification of 53 different native bees.

​

In recent years, we've stepped away from native bee surveys to focus our energies to train apprentices in our Beekeeping Apprenticeship Program how to become skilled beekeepers.