Nature Moncton April Meeting

April Monthly Meeting Presentation

“Wild Bees in New Brunswick”

April 15, 2025, 7:00 PM

Mapleton Rotary Lodge

Presenter: Emily Austen

Did you know that New Brunswick is home to over 250 species of wild bees? 

Wild bees perform essential pollination services, facilitating the reproduction of wild plants and several regionally important crops, including blueberry, apple, and cranberry. However, wild pollinators in general and bees in particular are threatened by land use change, climate change, insecticide exposure, pathogen spillover from managed bees, and more. A further challenge is scarcity of data on species distributions.

In this session, Emily Austen will provide an introduction to wild bee biology and some major groups of wild bees in our region and will share preliminary results of a project aimed at documenting wild bee diversity in backyard gardens in Sackville. Participants will get to examine specimens up-close and will leave with a new (or renewed) appreciation for these small-but-mighty organisms. 

Dr. Emily Austen is a biologist at Mount Allison University. A plant evolutionary ecologist with a special interest in pollination biology, her recent Wild Bee project has helped deepen her knowledge of the biology and diversity of the pollinators themselves.

This will be an in-person presentation at the lodge, but those who wish can join via Zoom at the following link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85734780857?pwd=4CcmeAaR5uNX5IDzlL2anE1nVByuML.1

All are welcome, Nature Moncton member or not.