Bee-hind the Bees and Heatwaves Project: Lessons Learnt from PhD Research with the Buzz Club

The Buzz Club’s Bees and Heatwaves project is part of a PhD study aimed at using citizen science to investigate how bees respond to heatwave events. This presentation explores the project’s objectives, discussing the advantages, challenges, and future prospects of working alongside citizens to support pollinators in a warming world.

Yanet Sepulveda is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Sussex. Her research is focused on investigating the impact of climate change, particularly heatwaves, on crucial pollinators such as bumblebees.

Q&A with Yanet Sepulveda

Do you think that time commitment was a consideration for volunteers signing up?
Yes, definitely. The project required people to be in the area for most of the day and not everyone works remotely or from home. We want to make it more flexible for the next season as we understand it may be challenging for some people to take part.
Do you need to be able to identify bumblebees in order to take part?
Not necessarily, but it is definitely advantageous. Last year we provided a previously-recorded free webinar, and this year we are providing free ID guides. We do want to see if different species have different preferences. Also, check out Dave’s guide to common bumblebees on YouTube.
What’s different this year compared to last year?
This year is going to be more flexible. We are planning to start in June and go through to around August. We are asking people to record once per week during that time, rather than waiting for a heatwave to occur. Ideally, we’d ask volunteers to record on the day of a heatwave (when they occur), but the weekly monitoring allows us to mitigate for those who can’t commit to this. We also understand that there may be some weeks when people are away or unavailable, so it’s ok if the occasional week needs to be skipped. You can find out more and sign up via the Bees and Heatwaves webpage on the Buzz Club website.
Have you thought about doing controlled experiments to see if there is a pattern in bee foraging behaviour during heatwaves?
As we monitor before heatwaves, this acts as a control and enables us to establish how bees are behaving when no heatwave has occurred. I go into the bee research aspect in more detail in my Bees and Heatwaves entoLIVE blog article.

Literature References

Sepúlveda & Goulson (2023) Feeling the heat: Bumblebee workers show no acclimation capacity of upper thermal tolerance to simulated heatwaves: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306456523002139
Hager et al (2022) Citizen science in environmental and ecological sciences: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-022-00144-4
Sepúlveda et al (2024) Heatwave-like events affect drone production and brood-care behaviour in bumblebees: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17135
Domroese & Johnson (2017) Why watch bees? Motivations of citizen science volunteers in the Great Pollinator Project: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.08.020
Cooper et al (2014) The invisible prevalence of citizen science in global research: migratory birds and climate change: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0106508
Hulbert & Liang. (2012) Spatiotemporal variation in avian migration phenology: citizen science reveals effects of climate change: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0031662
Groulx et al (2019) Citizen science and the public nature of climate action: https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2019.1597396
Miller-Rushing et al (2019) Creative citizen science illuminates complex ecological responses to climate change: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820266116
de Sherbinin et al (2021) The critical importance of citizen science data: https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.650760