We love trees at Woodpecker Tree Care headquarters, and we also loves bees! Kevin has filled his front yard, formerly full of monoculture turf, with native plants over the years. It has become a tended meadow of flowers and grasses, which makes it heaven for our friendly pollinators. When Kevin heard of the Sackville Wild Bees project via project leader (and client) Emily Austen of Mount Allison, he signed up without a blink.
The overall goal of the survey is to take stock of the bee population in the Sackville area. In the words of project lead Emily Austen, the goals are to “assess the effectiveness of measures taken by individual rural residents to improve bee habitats and help support bee populations,” and “evaluate the role of human-built naturalized sites, like the Sackville retention pond, as habitat reservoirs supporting wild bee populations” (Sackville Wild Bees 2023). This small team of students and faculty study from yard to yard, setting up bee boxes and gathering data.
Recent Mount Allison graduates Logan and Malachai visited Woodpecker Tree Care HQ on an overcast June morning to collect samples and data, with a curious Kevin in tow. Kevin has a pre-existing interest in bees due to their undeniable impact on environmental health, and because his son (and former Woodpecker arborist Dan Aurell) is an apiologist at the Auburn University Bee Laboratory in Alabama.
The Mount A scientists have stopped in to check on the bee population a handful of times, and we can’t wait to hear about their findings. Thank you especially to Emily Austen, for directing us to the project.