The BUG Project Launches Urban Bee Study Across the Great Lakes Region
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EmailThe BUG Project has launched a community-science initiative called "Urban Bees of the Great Lakes Region" to engage the public in studying urban bee behavior and improve pollinator habitats in urban agriculture across the region.
The BUG Project has created a new community-science project on iNaturalist called “Urban Bees of the Great Lakes Region,” which will engage with the public to learn more about urban bee behavior across the region.
The “Bee Urban Growers (BUG) Project,” based in Michigan State University’s Vegetable Entomology Lab, is dedicated to pollinator conservation and supporting small-scale urban farms. Led by Jen Roedel and Karma Thomas and funded by a North Central Region SARE grant, the project focuses on farms growing pollinator-dependent cucurbit crops like squash. Its goals are to improve pollinator habitats and services in urban agriculture, explore the effects of urbanization on bees and provide farmers and communities with practical habitat management resources through outreach events and hands-on research.
“Urban Bees of the Great Lakes Region” invites community members to photograph sightings of urban bees, which will help researchers gather data about where different species are found and which plants they are visiting. “It's especially important to make these observations in urban spaces because there are commonly less resources available to bees without intentional management,” said Thomas. “By observing bee-plant interactions in cities, we can improve the habitat we are creating for crop pollinators.” 
These observations from iNaturalist of species interactions between native bees and plants will be used to construct “visitation networks” for different cities across the Great Lakes Region which will help determine bee resource use by showing which flowers are most visited by bees. They also offer a look into network metrics like stability, how general or specialized interactions are, how important specific plants are, if there are rare interactions and more.
In 2024, the BUG Project used similar data to find native plants to attract effective squash pollinators. After gathering the results, the project donated and planted 240 native plants on nine different urban farms and gardens growing squash and pumpkins to attract wild native bees.
“Many wild native bees are excellent crop pollinators, but the hoary squash bee (Xenoglossa pruinosa) specializes on certain cucurbits and is an extremely effective pollinator for squash and pumpkins,” Thomas said of the findings., “They are also commonly found in urban spaces. Planting native flowers on urban farms supports bees that pollinate crops in a sustainable, cost effective way.”
In order to help with the identification process, they recently hosted an online training event for anyone interested in learning about how to collect community-science data for this project. In this webinar, they also taught about bee sampling methods, an introduction to native bee species in the region and different ways that all community members can contribute to scientific research. The presentation slides from the webinar are available here, and more information about the BUG Project and upcoming events can be found on their website.
In addition to the webinar, they will offer an in-person workshop on Saturday, May 17 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the East Lansing Public Library. This session will provide a hands-on opportunity for attendees to engage directly with the material and ask questions in real time.
Researchers will start analyzing the iNaturalist observations at the end of September, when most plants are done flowering. “We hope this is something that can continue so data collected could even be used to answer questions on how urban bee and plant communities and networks change over time too,” Thomas said.
