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Entry-level bumblebee identification and monitoring training

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Bumblebee on lid of pot ready to ID

Date: Thursday 20 March 2025
Time: 13:00 – 16:30pm

Location: Online – MS Teams
Cost: FREE

Join Science Manager Dr Richard Comont for an afternoon of bumblebee natural history, monitoring, and identification. We’ll cover the interesting natural history of bumblebees – what are they, how did they come to be, and how do they work? We’ll dig into how the Trust monitor bumblebee populations, what the survey is telling us, and how you can get involved through the BeeWalk scheme and the PoMS FIT Counts survey.

After a break we’ll learn how to identify bumblebees as a group, and how to pick them out of all the other flying buzzing insects that call Britain home. We’ll learn how (and why) the castes (queens, workers, males) differ, and how to tell them apart, before moving onto field identification of the ‘Big 8’ widespread and abundant bumblebee species. These are the species which will make up around 99% of the bumblebees which you’ll see in your garden or local parks.

This session will last for around three hours (including a break, and the chance to ask questions), and will be delivered over Microsoft Teams.