Bees monitoring in citizen science context

Abstract

Citizen science is based on volunteers involved in scientific surveys. In this innovative approach, we find a number of advantages, just to name couple like public education and the opportunity for volunteers to gain research experience. At the same time, using new tools and media, the science of species ecology can reach new, broader scale, which could not be achieved by scientists working by themselves (Dickinson et al., 2012). Therefore, citizen science can be treated as the common weal that extends the awareness of the valuable, surrounding nature. We are currently observing the trend of inflorescence of thermophilic species of insects (Durak, Wojton, Dampc, & Mołoń, 2018), like bees – i.e. Xylocopa (Pawlikowski, Olszewski, Sikora, & Przybylińska, 2018), which creates an excellent opportunity to involve the public in monitoring the emergence very characteristic species. The development of technology and universal access to telephones allows also to use the potential of mobile applications, like the "Bumblebee Detector" application. The aim of the work is to present citizen science solutions functioning in our country in monitoring endangered bees species.