Six years of wild bee monitoring collections data using Blue Vane traps in Southern Pennsylvania, USA

Turley NE, Biddinger DJ, Joshi NK, López-Uribe MM. 2022. Six years of wild bee monitoring shows changes in biodiversity within and across years and declines in abundance. Ecology and Evolution.   
Wild bees form diverse communities that pollinate plants in both native and agricultural ecosystems making them both ecologically and economically important. The growing evidence of bee declines has sparked increased interest in monitoring bee community and population dynamics using standardized methods. Here, we studied the dynamics of bee biodiversity within and across years by monitoring wild bees adjacent to four apple orchard locations in Southern Pennsylvania, USA. We collected bees using passive Blue Vane traps continuously from April to October for six years (2014-2019) amassing over 26,000 bees representing 144 species. We quantified total abundance, richness, diversity, composition, and phylogenetic structure. There were large seasonal changes in all measures of biodiversity with mon...