Dear fellow gardeners please tell me your thoughts on participating in this bee study. Hello Michelle Shankwiler, My name is Chatura and I am part of a group of graduate student researchers at the University of Michigan interested in community gardens and urban agriculture. This summer our group will be expanding a project that documents bee populations in Michigan’s community gardens, and we’re wondering if we could solicit your permission to add your community garden in our study. Past research has found community gardens may be a valuable refuge for various threatened bee species, and in an effort to determine whether this applies to southeastern Michigan in general, we are hoping to include Frog Island Community Garden in our data set. Weve already worked with Ann Arbor’s Project Grow Community Gardens (projectgrowgardens.org/) to sample and catalogue bee species in individual plots across Ann Arbor. We’ve designed our sampling efforts to limit effects on bee populations and will not disturb or harm your plants in any way. All we would require from garden owners is physical access to the gardens and plots for sampling. If we can work within your garden, we will do one or more the following: (1) Place potted plants within your garden(s) and observe the bees that visit them. We will place 9-12 potted bean and flower plants along the edge of the garden, and use them to sit and observe what kinds and how many bees visit each plant. (2) Place small bowls with soapy water in the gardens to capture bees. These small (3.25oz) plastic bowls are filled with slightly soapy water, and placed in the garden for 24 hours (once every two weeks) to capture bees. (3)Capture bees with light netting every two weeks for genetic sampling. Bees will be captured so we can use DNA to ascertain population health. Please let us know at your earliest convenience if we could sample in your community garden(s). We are available to answer any questions whatsoever, and will be happy to share all our results with you when the study is finished! Thanks so much for your time, Chatura
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:46:03 +0000