Bees @ Schools

Our Mission

Providing classrooms with hands-on scientific experience while collecting valuable data.

Project Overview

Step 1

Each participating school receives a wild bee nest box in the spring that is installed throughout the summer.

Step 2

In the fall, nest boxes are sent back to the University of Guelph’s Centre for Biodiversity Genomics.

Step 3

Here, the contents of the nest boxes will be analyzed using DNA metabarcoding to investigate the distribution of wild bees in Canada and the food they eat.

Results

2020 was our first full year of the Bees@Schools program. Since then we have received about 150-170 successfully installed nest boxes at the end of each summer.

We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) PromoScience fund.

Overview

Each year the Bees@Schools project teams up with 200 Canadian school classrooms to provide critical information on the changing geographic distributions of plant-pollinator interactions across Canada. By combining DNA barcoding of bees and the pollen they carry with distribution and climate change data, we can show how distributions of Canada’s bee species are changing along with the climate. The project also determines how pollination services shift across Canada, impacting food production and landscape management advice to improve vital species’ chances of persisting in agricultural landscapes and alleviating pollination deficits.

Bees @ Schools

Our Mission

Project Overview

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Results

Overview

provides school classrooms with hands on scientific experience while collecting valuable data

Bees@Schools.ca

Projects

Research Units

Data Release Policy

Bringing Genomics to Biodiversity