Bee Watchers Abuzz Over Fordham Instructor’s Blog

Kevin Matteson (GSAS ’07) is watching out for those folks who watch bees.

For a couple of years now, Matteson, a Fordham instructor of biology, has been a coordinator in the Bee Watchers of New York City program, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and the New York City Parks Department. Each summer the program enlists volunteers in all five boroughs to do bi-weekly counts of the number and types of bees landing on plants and flowers around the city. But with so many different kinds, sometimes it's hard to tell a bumblebee from a bottle fly.

Recently Matteson started “The Great Pollinator Project Blog” to help volunteers and others identify the 220 different species in the area. He pens a “Bee of the Week” column with pictures, writes about the most pollinator-friendly streets, parks, and gardens in the city, and posts information about other pollinators as well.

Link here to Matteson’s latest blogs on the Bombus Impatiens, otherwise known as the Eastern Bumble Bee, and that sneaky cookoo bee, triepeolus-lunatus.

Matteson is co-author of “Bee Richness and Abundance in New York City Urban Gardens,” published recently in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America. The Bee Watchers project enlists 200 volunteers and runs through the end of September.

-- J.S.