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**Policy & Planning
**Science & Statistics

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North America is one of the biodiversity hotspots for bee species with nearly 4000 species occurring north of Mexico.  So crucial are these insects to our landscape that without them most of our plant communities would disappear.  Yet despite their importance very little is known about their conservation status.  Even the most basic information regarding distribution and rarity is sketchy to completely absent resulting in the lack of locality or state lists for most regions.  Resent work on bee survey techniques have provided a means to design and accomplish large scale surveys using simple, volunteer friendly tools.  While it is now easy to survey bees, the identification of the resulting catch has become a limiting factor.

The most important goal of this course is to provide participants the tools necessary to identify bees to species.  To do that instructor ratios will be kept at 1 instructor to 6 participants and there will be an emphasis on learning to use online guides and other keys to identification along with good microscope skills. In conjunction with learning identification skills there will be 2-3 daily lectures on bee natural history, monitoring, and research techniques.  We will be going out in the field throughout the week to set traps and net bees so that participants see the entire spectrum of field to microscope work.  Numerous identified surplus bee specimens will be available to all participants to start their own collections and participants are encouraged to bring any bee specimens they have as instructors will be available to help with identification issues.

Who Should Attend:  Federal, state, county and municipal agencies, private consulting firms, citizen volunteers, neighborhood associations, environmental organizations, and teachers, performing native pollinator assessments or monitoring programs; with a desire to improve their identification skills.

Length:  4.5 days/ 36 hours

Objectives:  By the end of this session, the participant will be able to:

• Describe key characteristics and life histories of all the North American genera of bees east of the Mississippi River

• Identify native bees to species using Discoverlife online identification guides and other resources

• Use common trapping and netting techniques for Native Bee species in the region

• Survey native bee populations using common strategies

• Describe issues surrounding the pollination biology, natural history, research, and identification of native bee species.