Hi Jerry,

"But, it takes work, experience, and money - you need protocols, SOPs, coordination, training, and someone who is comfortable with working with everyone from backyard beekeepers to EPA officials.  Lacking that, it will deteriorate into just a bunch of data that can never really be used for the intended purpose."

So the bottom line is that it's too expensive?   Also, doing this on a national level seems logistically overwhelming.  Local IPM is different, so is basic beekeeping, and all that would have to be established for every region.

Here in upstate NY, there is an extensive watershed management endeavor that utilizes school kids, college students, and clubs to monitor the water quality of our streams and lakes.  It is a really nifty set-up:  Scientists initially figured out how the population profiles of benthic macroinvertebrates change as pollution levels rise and fall.  So, all the participants have to do is have somebody wade upstream of a beach seine that is placed downstream.  The dislodged critters are collected, and a very simple ID key is used with a dissection scope to sort the beasties into categories and count them.  Most participants really enjoy doing this.  The resulting data is useful because the experts can quickly determine where they need to look more closely based on the numbers of critters collected in each category.  The volunteers thus save them a lot of time.

Seems to me a similar idea might work for pollinator populations.  Even if the data does not become useful for a few years while baseline fluctuations are established, it offers a terrific amount of information that could be useful to researchers later on.  Insects are easily preserved in alcohol, so just obtaining collections from volunteers already saves a lot of time for the scientists who then can look at them.  The volunteers could also do a simple sorting much like those who collect the benthic macroinvertebrates do....wasps vs honeybees vs bumblebees vs solitary bees and so on.

The question is who would set this up and keep it on track, and who would do the analysis?  So many spending cutbacks have occurred.  We need a "Flow-Hive" type fundraiser for this!  

Implementing sentinel yards is a bit more problematic.  Even in my own local bee club, management style for the club yard is a regular struggle, as everyone has their own ideas about what should be done, hot debates about treatments and so on are the norm, and the urge to tweak the system is irresistible to many.  Might work better if there was a way to pay professional beekeepers to look after sentinel yards.  I'm guessing that one beekeeper managing 20 yards would be more consistent across all 20 yards than if 20 different bee clubs were managing 20 yards.

Christina

    
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