CSIRO Bee Trap Surveys

Bees are fascinating and important animals. Most species rely on flowers to supply almost all of their food needs in the form of pollen and nectar. As they collect their food from flowers they often contribute to pollination, which is a critical process for most wild and domesticated plants. Much of what we know about bees in Australia is based on collections and observations of individual bees as they visit flowers. But to understand the structure of ecological communities it is important also to use repeatable general survey techniques that tell us what species are common, rare or even absent from a given location at a given time. All trapping techniques have biases because some species will be more prone to capture than others, making them appear more ?common?. We should consider these biases in interpreting these data.

The ?CSIRO bee trap surveys? include data from a number of different ecological surveys using bee traps. Methods include blue van traps and malaise traps. Our goal is to learn about bee communities and how they are influenced by time of year and the different landscape contexts such as the presence of native vegetation patches or crops in an agricultural landscape. The surveys were conducted by a range of CSIRO researchers and their collaborators from other research institutions.