Abstract
A review of current capture and collection techniques for bees is presented. Information regarding primary collection techniques (i.e. netting, malaise traps, bowl traps, trap nests, visual surveys) along with issues of variability, bias, and the impacts of observers along with taxonomic impediments are discussed. Notable is the lack of standardization in any of these approaches along with a similar sparsity of statistical evaluation of the methodologies themselves. Practitioners deploy these and several lesser-known techniques, in a great many ways. We are at the beginning of a learning curve on how to develop accurate and precise research and monitoring tools for bee populations, and it is clear that there is much to learn.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge all our students, technical assistants, and colleagues who contributed and published information on monitoring, trap design, and sampling. Additionally, we also appreciate the tolerance and support of our families at home. We are particularly grateful to S. Droege for permission to cite many examples of his unpublished research findings and for discussions about the subject. We are grateful to Sam Droege, Madison Marshall, Caroline Tiegs, and Elsa Youngsteadt for permission to use their photographs in Fig. 3.1, to Scott MacIvor for arranging for us to receive some images, and to Liam Graham for amalgamating the photographs into one figure. The senior author’s research has been made possible by funding from a wide range of sources, in particular from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the National Geographic Society.
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Packer, L., Darla-West, G. (2021). Bees: How and Why to Sample Them. In: Santos, J.C., Fernandes, G.W. (eds) Measuring Arthropod Biodiversity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53226-0_3
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