Protocols

Data Collection and Entry

TPSNR Bee Monitoring Protocol

Updated July 18, 2025

Monitoring overview

Thanks for joining in the effort to monitor native bees! Each survey is meant to be straightforward and fun. No prior experience needed — just care and curiosity. These surveys provide crucial baseline information about the native bees and flowering plants at Torrey Pines and provide endless opportunities to have conversations with Reserve visitors about the diversity and importance of native bees.

Wannabees photograph flowering plants and native bees along designated trails in Torrey Pines State Nature Reserve 12 months a year, then upload these photos as observations to the community science platform www.iNaturalist.org along with basic field data. Each survey takes ~1 hour, and roughly an equal amount of time to upload the data.

Before the survey

If you just joined us, welcome! Begin by starting an iNaturalist account!
Check in with one of the project leaders to make sure you have been assigned a trail. If you have already surveyed your trail for the month and you’re looking for more, feel free to survey any trail at any time!
Charge your camera and/or phone
- Ensure device time settings are accurate (especially during Daylight Saving Time transitions or after a trip to a different time zone!)
Pack sunscreen, a hat, water, and sturdy shoes
If you are monitoring the Margaret Fleming Trail:
- Wear a vest (you can borrow one from The Lodge), your volunteer nametag, and the WannaBee button.
- As always, stay on trail.
- If you are not a TPSNR docent, please check in with Gabriele Wienhausen (gwienhausen@ucsd.edu) so you can fill out the proper waiver to visit the trail.

During the survey

Each WannaBee has been assigned a trail to monitor at least once per month. You are welcome to survey that trail (or any other trail) more frequently, just make sure you cover your trail once per month. If you’ll be out of town or are unable to survey, contact another WannaBee to request coverage of the trail.

Surveys last one hour and should take place between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm. To stay within this timeframe, don’t start a survey after 2:00 pm. These are the hours when bees are the most active!

During surveys, you will record weather data and photograph native bees and plants that are in bloom. Begin your survey by recording the time you started, the temperature, cloud cover, and windspeed. We recommend taking a screenshot of your weather app as you begin.

Don’t get too caught up in capturing NatGeo-ready photos! If you’re curious about learning how to find bees and improving your photography skills, visit the tab on this website for “Photography Skills” prepared by Tom J. Barnes.

Start observing! You will photograph:

Flowering plants: Make 1 observation per species that is in bloom. Make sure to take multiple photos of a plant, capturing the flower, leaf, and full plant to provide as much information as possible for identification. Note: You will group multiple photos of the same organism into one observation.
Native bees (not honey bees):
- Multiple angles per species, which helps with identification.
- No bee observed? That’s okay, and to be expected during winter months. This survey still counts and there’s metadata for that.
- If you finish early, walk back and keep observing until time’s up.
- If you haven’t reached the end of the trail and an hour has passed, it’s ok to keep surveying. Always aim for an hour, but try to wrap up within 90 minutes and before 5 pm. You might encounter a very busy plant that could take all day if you let it. In cases like these, try to photograph each distinct bee species that you can see, and move on after 5 minutes or so.

Photo by Robert James

Photo by Craig Chaddock

Photo by Cindy Pencek

Photo by Thomas J. Barnes

After the Survey

On the trail

At the end of your survey, record the time you ended, the temperature, cloud cover, and windspeed. You can capture this information by taking another screenshot of the weather app on your phone.

Proof your photos

Check your photos to see if any need to be cropped, so the organism is the main focus. This helps improve AI identification.

Uploading to iNaturalist

Now that you’ve collected all of this wonderful data, it’s time to upload it to iNaturalist! Try to upload the data as soon as you can. We do a monthly check to make sure all trails were monitored, and this helps us know which trails have been covered.

We find that uploading your observations with a computer is much faster than with the mobile app. Some of the data entry is not possible from the mobile app. You can pair this document with this YouTube video that walks you through uploading data from a survey.

As you upload the observations, click in the box for the taxon, and the AI will offer a suggestion. When the AI suggestion seems fishy, you can type in a broad identification like “bee” or “flowering plant,” and someone will help you identify it.

If you get a notification that someone disagrees with your identification and you’re uncertain about your identification, it is best practice to withdraw your identification and wait for another person to give it a look. If an expert refines your identification (i.e. Halictus -> Halictus tripartitus), it’s best not to click the “Agree” button unless you understand the characters that define that organism, and instead better to wait for another expert to review the observation. Experts are sometimes wrong, and when an observation becomes “Research Grade,” after you click “Agree,” it takes longer to find the error.

You will be adding Tags and Observation Fields to each observation. In each survey, there is one metadata observation that requires 3 Tags and 11 (sometimes only 10) Observation Fields. All other observations will have 2 Tags and 2 (sometimes only 1) Observation Fields.

Metadata Observation

Your first uploaded observation will host the metadata (the weather data, start time, etc.) for the survey. All of the metadata information is uploaded under “Observation Fields” (Table 1). To find the correct fields, begin typing “TPSNR,” and all of the fields should populate. The fields that include a number (i.e. TPSNR_MD_1_BeeObserved) are for the metadata observation only. The Observation Fields with TPSNR in the title are unique to our project. “Interaction -> Visited flower of” is a field that many users on the platform utilize.

To familiarize yourself with a metadata observation, here is an example. Note that this observation only includes 10 Observation Fields because it is a plant, not a bee visiting a flower, so the eleventh field in Table 1 isn’t necessary.

Here is a PDF that is a cheatsheet that has of all the observation fields and tags you need to enter.

metadata

Uploading to iNaturalist - Visual Guide

Changing Location and Uncertainty Radius

All survey observations

All of the other observations from your survey will get 2 (sometimes only 1) Observation Field and 2 Tags. Here is an example of a non-metadata survey observation. It is easiest to do this after you’ve uploaded all of your observations, and you can click “Select All” at the top left of the page to highlight all of your observations uploaded and apply the Observation Fields and Tags to everything:

Observation Fields: Include “TPSNR_Route” and “Interaction -> Visited Flower Of” (rows 10 and 11 from Table 1) on all observations.

Tags: Include the Route Tag (unique to the trail, see Table 3) and the Project Tag (TPSNRBeeMonitoring2025). At the beginning of a new year, update the year in this tag.

Note: If you upload in batches, you’ll need to do this for each batch. Make sure you don’t have all observations highlighted when entering the metadata!

Optional:

Notes: This section is optional, but feel free to add anything you found interesting about that particular observation. How the bee was behaving, a funny field tale, etc.

After data entry

Look at the map of your observations for the day, and ensure that the location is accurate. Sometimes our cell phones connect to a farther away tower, and this moves the location of our observation. Here is a YouTube tutorial that helps you do this.

Tutorials & Help

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