The Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University asked us to help monitor their network of bee boxes, and you'd better bee-lieve (bee-l-hive?) we jumped at the chance for an evening out in Wytham Woods.

There are 74 bee boxes in Wytham Woods, set up for monitoring the nesting habits of solitary bees. Unlike honey bees solitary bees are extremely unlikely to sting, even if picked up. Our plan was to divide into small groups to cover different routes in and on the outskirts of the woods, hoping to get to at least half of the boxes before the gates were locked at 8pm.

Armed with a googlemap of the box locations, logging sheets, and smart phones we fanned out in all directions in search of the bee nest boxes. Our routes varied from 1.8 miles to 3 miles long, so there were options from the jogging group and fast walking through to a leisurely walk. Rachael's Monday evening walks proved to have been excellent training for hiking fitness! We should have an award for best outfit, as Vanessa's sequin bee motif on her trousers clearly brought her and Holly luck, as they actually spotted one of the bees.

Monitoring the boxes is a great citizen science project - you don't need any knowledge of bees or their behaviour, just a camera and a willingness to explore.
* At each box you take 4 photos - 1 of the metal tag showing the box number, then a close up of the box, a photo of the box in the landscape, and finally a photo of the view in front of the box.
* If you're great at identifying trees and wild flowers you can log details of the surrounding vegetation. Many of us used Plant Identification Apps for this - we recommend Plantnet or Seek. Both are free.
* Finally you count up how many of the tubes in the box have been sealed and what materials have been used to seal them (usually mud or leaf matter) - although counting those is sometimes easier by zooming in on the photo afterwards!

Over the next week or so Alex will be a busy bee logging our data with the Department of Plant Sciences. We did our best to reach 48 boxes, although some were missing or inaccessible when we got to their locations. That is important data too, so we will report that back to the project. You really are the bee's knees!

This is an ongoing project, and we have been asked to return to monitor the bees again in the early Autumn. If you're still buzzing from an evening of woodland fun and you'll bee visiting the woods again before the autumn then please do more monitoring. There are also boxes dotted around Oxford City (also pinned on the google map). You can report your photos and observations direct to the Department of Plant Sciences on their googleform which you can find HERE.

You can find out more about the Plan Bee project and about solitary bees here.
You can access our googlemap of the box locations in Wytham Woods and Oxford City HERE. If you tap on the box number on the map it will give you extra info such as habitat and landscape features, orientation etc.

Many thanks to Task Force for their enthusiastic WhatsApping providing me with so many puns!