Watch bees, lend a hand to scientists

Some people have heard about the unexplained die-off of honeybee colonies in the United States. The malady, first reported last year, is called colony collapse disorder. It's been the subject of research, speculation and even a hearing earlier this year before members of a House Agriculture subcommittee. Bees are crucial to pollinating many agricultural crops, and commercial migratory beekeepers say they've lost from 50 percent to 90 percent of their adult bees.

That's quite a stinger for the apiary industry.

Now an Illinois bee expert who testified at the congressional hearing wants to enlist the aid of average residents in conducting further research - this time on wild bees.

May Berenbaum, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois, announced a new effort to turn folks across the state into citizen scientists. She's created a BeeSpotter Web site so people can log in, create accounts for themselves and then report on honeybees and bumble bees they've observed, whether flying in gardens, feeding in flower beds or buzzing around local parks.

It turns out that no one has conducted any kind of organized bee-watching campaign similar to how bird-watchers take a census of wild birds. Researchers who want to study wild bee populations are stung by lack of information.

"We don't know what is going on with pollinators because America has never deemed it important enough to try to keep track of its pollination resources. Given that 90 percent of crops in the U.S. agricultural sector depend on a single species of pollinator, and other crops depend on other pollinators, it would seem that for economic reasons alone this has been a serious oversight on our part," Berenbaum said.

This situation needs to change, and the BeeSpotter program is one way anyone can help.

Those interested are asked to visit the Web site (http://beespotter.mste.uiuc.edu), learn more about the bees they observe, take photos, post them and provide information on where the bees were seen.

The information will help experts such as Berenbaum get a handle on the state's wild bee population and monitor its viability.

A visit to the site shows no one from the Sauk Valley has signed up yet as a bee watcher. Most early participants are from the Champaign-Urbana and Chicagoland areas.