Volunteer Spotlight: Native Bee Monitoring

Austin Parks & Recreation Department’s Native Bee Monitoring Project is seeking additional volunteers from both the Balcones Canyonlands and Capital Area Master Naturalist chapters for the 2026 monitoring year. The next training session for volunteers will be on Saturday, February 7th from 9:00 to 12:00. A registration link will be provided to members via Slack (native-bee-monitoring-project channel) and email.

The primary goal of the project is to contribute photos and detailed field notes on behavioral observations of native Texas bees that will lead to the generation of valuable online and printed resources on native bees for Austin naturalists and gardeners. The initial site for observations was the Zilker Botanical Garden, and the project has since expanded to Mayfield Park, multiple Community Gardens around Austin, and the Austin Nature & Science Center. Observation notes will include the positive IDs of the plants in which bees are foraging and nesting and from which they are gathering nesting materials. The observations are uploaded to iNaturalist to increase the broader scientific understanding of native bee species diversity in Travis County by contributing valuable additional publicly available data.