Project lead: André Rey
Project team: David Frey, Rainer Neumeyer, Jürg Sommerhalder
With the web app bee-finder, in September 2022 we placed a freely available instrument in the hands of private individuals as well as architects, developers and public institutions, one that allows wild bee conservation to be carried out in a targeted way.
What it does
With a few clicks, users can display the wild bee species occurring within 500, 1000 or 2000 metres of the address they enter. Every query produces downloadable lists of the prioritised target species at that location, with details of their nest-site and pollen preferences.
Underlying data
The web app works on the basis of the following data:
1. A register of the 567 Swiss wild bee species that are not yet extinct
2. Almost 100,000 precisely located records of these wild bees
3. 273 flowering plants as pollen sources
4. 57,864 plant–bee interactions
All data rest on scientifically gathered foundations. The records come without exception from current systematic surveys by specialist ecologists, and from the records gathered in the course of the surveys for the new Red List of threatened wild bees of Switzerland (publication in preparation at the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN).
Coverage
Comprehensive records for the whole of Switzerland do not yet exist, as many municipalities have so far not mapped their territory. The records available today are based on systematic, verified surveys carried out between 2000 and 2021 and made available to us. At the beginning of each year we add those of the previous year’s data that are made available to us. For ecologists within the association this goes without saying; we invite specialists outside the association to pass on their verified new and earlier records to us as well – so that targeted wild bee conservation in Switzerland can be carried out through the Bee-Finder across the whole country as soon as possible.
Why are wild bees so important?
Why municipalities should survey their wild bee fauna and support it as well as they can is easily explained:
1. Unlike all other flower-visiting organisms (such as beetles, flies, butterflies and wasps), wild bees do not stop visiting flowers once they themselves have fed. Instead, well-fed female bees carry on tirelessly collecting pollen to provision their brood cells. They thereby achieve a markedly higher pollination effect than all other flower pollinators and are to be regarded as the most important group of pollinators of all.
2. Because wild bees are also a very species-rich group of insects, in part strongly specialised in their pollen and nest-site requirements, they play an important part in assessing the quality of habitats.
3. No wild bee species is so far known to avoid settled areas on principle, whereas hardly any of Switzerland’s roughly 240 butterfly species is of conservation relevance in urban space. Our charges are therefore chiefly responsible for pollinating flowers within towns and cities as well.
4. Scientific studies show a direct connection between the diversity of the wild bee fauna and the rate of pollination in a habitat (see for example Garibaldi et al., 2013). Wild bees therefore occupy a key ecological and economic role in terrestrial ecosystems.