ANBC Fall Newsletter 2025

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Fall Newsletter 2025

Bee Study Ahead: Featuring Local Bee Research

Article by Shea Giesbrecht

If you’ve driven on highways around Edmonton this summer, you likely saw bright yellow signs in the ditches reading “BEE STUDY AHEAD” and probably wondered what exactly was being researched. Wonder no more! My name is Shea Giesbrecht, and I am the master’s student behind the study.

Nesting habitat and flowers are limiting resources for native bees in agricultural landscapes, and highways pose a mortality risk to bees from highspeed traffic. These threats may be mitigated with changes in landscape features. Treed crop borders may provide a variety of undisturbed nesting sites for above and below ground nesting species. Additionally, roadside flowers may provide native bees with important food sources. High floral abundance in roadsides may lead to increased pollinator roadkill by increasing local pollinator abundance, but previous studies have demonstrated that butterflies are less likely to cross roads when there are sufficient flowers on their side of the road. This behaviour may also be true to bees.

I hypothesized that treed crop borders and high floral abundance in ditches would individually increase bee abundance, with the highest abundance occurring when both resources cooccur. Additionally, proportionally more bees should be found traveling along versus to and from highways when floral abundance is high. To test this, I installed Malaise traps to collect insects flying along, to, and from highways, as well as blue vane traps to collect abundance data at 22 sites along Alberta highways. Treed crop borders were present at half of the sites. Hand netting and floral surveys were conducted throughout the summer.

The next step now is to process the samples, so I have no results to share with you all quite yet. However, once I have more robust results, I will write an update article for the newsletter. Additionally, all published papers resulting from this project will be open-access. If you have any questions, you can reach me at:

[email protected]

Report on Your Bee Boxes!

In 2017, the Alberta Native Bee Council (ANBC) launched a citizen science bumblebee box monitoring program to better understand bumble bee nesting preferences. Similar to birdhouses, bumble bee boxes may or may not be colonized. Here in Alberta, we've found that about 25% of our boxes are colonized, with higher success in urban areas than rural ones.

If you’re interested in participating, you can build your own bumble bee box by following our assembly instructions here. Don't forget to report back about bee activity and remember that no activity is still important to report! Your participation in this program helps us better understand bumble bee nesting habits.

If you participated in the monitoring program this season and your box was colonized, congratulations! Your bumble bee colony will naturally die off in September. By mid-October (Thanksgiving weekend), you can safely inspect, report, and clean your box. To clean, remove all contents from the box and wipe the interior and exterior with a mild bleach solution. Your reports provide essential data for our research, whether your box was colonized or not!

Want to chat about bee boxes? Join our Discord!

Join us on the Discord app to chat to chime in about your own bee box, ask questions, and see what is working for other people. Use this link to join the Alberta Native Bee Council Discord!

Recovery Strategy Update: Gypsy Cuckoo Bumble Bee

The Government of Canada has released the official recovery strategy for the endangered Gypsy Cuckoo Bumble Bee (Bombus bohemicus), once widespread across southern Canada but now facing serious decline. Cuckoo Bumble Bees are unique. They don't build their own nests, but instead depend on healthy populations of host bumble bees like the Rusty-patched, Yellow-banded, and Western Bumble Bees, whose colonies they take over. Though this behaviour sounds ruthless to some, they are native to Alberta and play important roles in our natural ecosystem.

Key Threats

Declines in host species populations
Pesticide exposure
Habitat loss and fragmentation
Pathogen spillover from managed bees

Recovery Goals

Because this bee relies entirely on its hosts, the strategy focuses on maintaining and increasing host populations and suitable habitats. Recovery is considered feasible, but tied directly to the survival of host species.

What’s Next

Protecting and restoring wildflower-rich habitats
Reducing pesticide exposure
Supporting research on host-parasite dynamics
Promoting pollinator-friendly land management practices
Critical habitat is not yet fully identified and will require further research and consultation.

This recovery strategy is an important step in protecting one of Canada’s rarest bees, and a reminder that helping host bumble bees helps safeguard the Gypsy Cuckoo Bumble Bee too.

The Gypsy Cuckoo Bumble Bee (Bombus bohemicus)

An Update on Our Monitoring Program

This season we've made incredible progress on our monitoring program! With the help of 15 dedicated volunteers, we logged over 500 hours of work processing samples from our monitoring program, which runs every 5 years. Volunteers did everything from sorting bees, to washing and drying, to carefully pinning specimens for identification. We truly couldn’t have done it without them.

On top of traditional specimen preparation, our volunteer team has also been busy getting samples ready for the new identification tool we're testing out, metabarcoding, which we hope will help us improve and standardize bee monitoring across Alberta.

We’re grateful to our 49 sampling partners who helped us gather an impressive 363 samples, resulting in roughly 27,000 bees for study. This collaboration is helping us build one of the most comprehensive pictures of native bee diversity in the province.

Why are bees monitored this way?

By using standardized traps, we can track which bee species are found across Alberta and how their populations shift over time, while keeping our data comparable with other monitoring programs. Collecting and processing specimens is also essential in insect research. It allows us to accurately identify bees down to the species level, providing the reliable information needed to guide research and conservation. With over 370 native bee species in the province, identification can be tricky!

ANBC is Growing!

The Alberta Native Bee Council is excited to announce that we've officially hired our second Native Bee Stewardship Specialist, Sydney Worthy! Sydney recently completed her MSc on the native pollinators of southern Alberta, with a focus on wild bees. A member of ANBC since 2018 and a former board member, she now works directly with us to help protect Alberta’s native pollinators.

Her talents extend beyond research. Sydney’s photography and artwork have brightened our stickers, tea towels, enamel pins, colouring pages, and bumble bee guides. She has also identified more than 12,000 bees for our monitoring projects and continues to play a key role in both current and upcoming ANBC initiatives.

New Guide Coming Soon!

Keep an eye out for our new and improved Identification Guide to the Bumble Bees of Southern Alberta!

This updated guide is packed with easy tips to help you identify which species might be buzzing around your own backyard. Once you know who’s visiting your flowers, you can dive deeper to learn more about your local bees, and discover simple ways to support them, all featured right here in one downloadable PDF.

Stay tuned for the release!

Interested in Hosting a Bee Box Workshop?

Is your organization looking for a fun and engaging way to connect with nature while supporting native pollinators? Our popular Bumble Bee Box Workshops are a great way to do just that!

Bumble bees are some of the most recognizable and important native bees in Alberta. These workshops help raise awareness about their ecological role while contributing valuable data to better understand local populations.

During the workshop, participants learn about bumble bees, build their own nesting boxes, and receive guidance on placement and maintenance. The boxes not only provide potential habitat for bumble bees but also act as monitoring stations. Participants are encouraged to report annually on any activity they observe.

Workshops include a presentation, all necessary building materials, and handouts.

Interested in hosting a workshop with us? Email us at [email protected] for more details!

Upcoming Events

Come join ANBC at the following events this upcoming season!

October 5-8 - Joint Annual Meeting of the Entomological Societies of Canada and Alberta Conference (Calgary)
October 11 - Fall Migratory Bird Day at the Edmonton Valley Zoo
October 16 - BeeCon 2025 (Virtual event, in-person Oct 17 in Toronto)
November 20 - Grasslands Restoration Forum Fall Info Session (Claresholm)

Thank you to our funders!

It's thanks to our generous funders that the Alberta Native Bee Council is able to continue our work including our ambitious province-wide bee monitoring program, critical conservation research, and the heaps of outreach and education we do to support native bee conservation.

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