Citizen science project in which measures taken for bees and pollinators are promoted. Cooperation with different partners and different targetgroups in the Netherlands.
This three year project is a cooperation between Nature&Environment, IVN Nature Education and LandscapesNL, and is funded by the Postcode lottery. It strives to help the wild bees in the Netherlands, and our role is to provide the scientific background, do the research and facilitate the citizen science part.
Research and outreach are closely combined in this project by using citizen science. We tested the quality of citizen science data in a master student internship by Dimmy van Ruiten. During this project education programs were made for different teaching levels. The Netherlands is buzzing advises municipalities on their landscape management by providing information about the potential distribution and suitable areas for bees. Every municipality can download a report with a potential species distribution map.
Naturalis organizes the yearly Dutch bee count in early spring where everybody is asked to count bees in their gardens for 30 minutes. The first year we had more than 4,000 participants that counted over 40,000 bees. This was widely picked up by local and national news.More about the Dutch bee count you can find here. In summer, we organize a dead bumblebee search under lime trees to learn more about the bumblebee diversity in Leiden.