Festival Bowland 2023 - Bumblebee Spotting

The bumblebee monitoring project in the Forest of Bowland hay meadows is taking place again in 2023. Would you like to volunteer?

Anyone can become a BeeWalker. All you need is some basic identification knowledge and a spare few hours once a week for six weeks in summer to walk a fixed route of about a mile and record your sightings.

If you would like to volunteer to monitor bumblebees with us this year, why not join us on this free training session? The session will provide an introduction to the ecology and life cycle of the bumblebee and highlight the different species you may encounter within the Forest of Bowland. The session will also include how to undertake the Bumblebee Conservation Trust Beewalk* survey.

The information collected by BeeWalk volunteers is integral to monitoring how bumblebee populations change through time, and will allow us to detect early warning signs of population declines, as well as contributing to important long-term monitoring of bumblebee population changes in response to changes in land-use and climate change.

*BeeWalk is a national recording scheme run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to monitor the abundance of bumblebees on transects across the country. These transects would be impossible without volunteers!

Booking essential. For more information and to book a place please email sandra.silk@lancashire.gov.uk or phone 07973 923142.