Executive Summary

Declines in bee abundance and diversity across California has led to a call to provide more habitat for these pollinating insects. Restoration practitioners need implementation guidance to choose a planting palette across a diversity of ecoregions and land uses. We partnered with the CA Association of Resource Conservation Districts and the state Wildlife Conservation Board to utilize a visual assessment of bee abundance and morphometric groups across pollinator plantings in California. We adapted the Xerces Society Streamlined Bee Monitoring Protocol to account for floral diversity and abundance.

Our goals were to evaluate the influence of floral abundance and plant species composition on bee abundance and diversity; identify which blooming plants appear most selected for, and use morphogroup observations to evaluate how the observed bee community explains which plants are being visited. This protocol can be utilized to examine the relationships between bee visitation and blooming plants across any landscape, not just restoration projects.