The Bee Team Project

The objective of this project was to develop capacity within the community to record the presence of bumble bees. The project was inspired by our completed project entitled “Biodiversity Town” where 12 volunteers were trained to lead biodiversity themed walks and activities within the town environs. One of these activities involved developing a bee transect to record the presence of bees.

Although rich in biodiversity Monaghan has relatively few people recording wildlife and so we see potential in using our trainees to develop a community of people who would learn to observe and record bees for the National Biodiversity Data Centre. 

We had already developed one 1.5km route for a bumblebee transect with 7 different sections that have different types of plants and habitat. For the All-Ireland Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme, this route will be walked monthly between April and October. When completing the transect the volunteers counted bees within a virtual box.  We developed 3 further routes to bring us to a total of 4 routes which would be walked for recording purposes at least once per month by our volunteer leader and participants over the relevant period.

We proposed workshops to support our activities and we found that the volunteer leader needed assistance with both recording the routes and the results of each walk. An ecologist from Flyn Furney Ecologists supported this work.  

We invested in 25 Bumblebee swatches from the National Biodiversity Data Centre and copies of our Bumblebee Transect leaflet.

Below is a report from our volunteer community leader, John Nutley, who mapped the routes and led the walks with local volunteers including people from the local National Learning Network and the HSE’s Mise Day Services.

Routes and records were uploaded onto the online data submission system on the Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme web site, https://monitoring.biodiversityireland.ie/

Overall, we would have to say that there were fewer bees than we had anticipated based on our original training experience in 2023. The weather over the summer was not very helpful in that on many days, temperature and wind were outside the parameters for a successful walk. Nevertheless the exercise was a very useful experience for those who tool part and raised awareness in wildlife recording in general.

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Four Routes were selected including two sections of the Ulster Canal Greenway

A.  Greenway: from Convent to NCT test centre

B.  Greenway: from The Harps football grounds to Maurice Grahams Builders Yard.

D.  Old Cross Square through St Davnet’s Campus grounds and returning through Glaslough Street.

E.  Through the Town Centre to the Sage Garden, High Street, Hill Street and back again