When we think of a bee, the image that comes to mind is that of the honeybee: an insect that flies from flower to flower, collecting pollen for its colony, with a hairy body divided into black and yellow bands. However, there are hundreds of species of bees, often very different from what we are used to. In South Tyrol there are about five hundred species of wild bees, each one different from the other in terms of appearance, ecology and behavior. Like Osmia caerulescens, whose males have a metallic green livery with golden hairs.

The Eurac Research Institute for the Alpine Environment is conducting a project, funded by Bolzano’s Siftung Sparkasse/Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, aimed at assessing the impact of human activities on wild bee communities. The BEEhold initiative aims to reveal their surprising diversity and their importance for the environment. “Wild bees are an important part of local biodiversity, especially because they are pollinating insects”, says Lisa Obwegs, a PhD student at Eurac Research and the University of Innsbruck.

Within the framework of BEEhold, thirty photographs, each of a different species of wild bee, will be displayed the center of Bolzano, in one of the shops participating in the initiative. Each photo has a QR code associated with it, so that you can find out more about the species portrayed, from its habitat to its social behavior, the plants it visits to collect pollen to the place chosen for building its nest as well as each species conservation status and much more. “It’s important that research doesn’t remain confined within the four walls of the laboratory. For this reason, together with our communications department, we decided to bring the work carried out by our researchers to a place where anyone can see it”, explains Roberta Bottarin, deputy director of Eurac Research.

The wild bee research project is part of the Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol initiative, a permanent monitoring system, conducted in collaboration with the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano.

Link: https://beehold.eurac.edu