Collecting Bees and Getting them into Killing Jars

[@christinefowler2851]

I don't get it you want to save the bees but so many Atlas volunteers are killing them it doesn't make sense to me

[@polliNationOSU]

Great question. The amount of bees taken in these studies are not enough to impact populations. This has been confirmed by studies where sites with heavy repeated sampling (much heavier sampling than we do) is compared to sites where there is no sampling. Moreover, the bees that you are most likely to catch are very abundant (the whole concept behind a species abundance curve). On the flip side, by doing these surveys we are able to establish range maps for species that are largely unknown and determine the host plants the bees most use, leading to better conservation. In short, it is difficult to save what you don't understand (and for many, many species, there are simply too few records to say anything about their status).