Honey bee flora of Western Australia
The development of the software for a citizen science project, monitoring and collating information
on honey bee foraging, would help beekeepers optimise the health
of their bees, and quality of honey product.
Honey bees require both nectar and pollen to maintain their health, continuously.
The Nyoongar have recognised that the south west of Western Australia has
six seasons, each with its unique climatic conditions that
result in different species flowering.
Flowering doesn't necessarily mean nectar production, and honey bees only appear to like some of these
flowering plants.
It is hoped through a citizen's project, recording bees foraging on a flower and providing necessary information,
a deeper knowledge of the most important plants for each season and area of the south west can be built.
This information could be used in many ways, to design year-round bee foraging gardens, inform nurseries on
which plants to propagate, ensure that land rehabilitation plantings include the
most favoured honey bee plants, and understand the source of our seasonally flavoured honeys. This
information could also include exotic plants, food plants, anything that bees love.
The contributions of volunteer-generated data have been well documented; resulting publications describe
trends in species population distributions, seasonal cycles, and implications for environmental and human health.
Together with a picture of the bee on the flower, the type of information that would help build such a
database would be date (Nyoongar season), time of day, place (GPS?), local weather, possible plant species,
possible bee species, source of food (pollen flower, nectar flower or pollen and nectar flower?).
Examples of similar systems are bumblebeewatch.org/.
Client
Contact Person: Dr Liz Barbour (CEO CRC for Honey Bee Products)
Telephone: 08 6488 8525
Email: [email protected]
Preferred method of contact: Coffee chat to discuss further
Location: Myers Street Building
Client Unavailability
None
IP Exploitation Model
The client says: "For the actual software system/app, the ownership can be with the student. I am sure they could use the model to develop other similar systems for ecological observation for other organisations. As for the data generated, this will tie in with many other Projects occurring so would have to be IP assigned to the project proposer. Will support public access and promotion of the app. Open to discussion."