In addition to the formal surveys (Point and Roadside), incidental surveys can also help to contribute to the project. They are more casual, and may happen almost anywhere, or at any time - and do not need to be in an adopted grid cell. They make take place while you are at home in your backyard or on a hike in a nearby (or far away!) meadow. You might be in your adopted grid cell, or 100 miles away from it. Nevertheless, and especially now that you have caught the bumble bee watching bug, you may observe bumble bees visiting flowers and decide to stop and take a picture. These observations are also great and can help fill in information gaps in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. These observations cannot take the place of formal surveys, but they can and will contribute to our understanding of bumble bee distributions in the Pacific Northwest.

Incidental observations/photos can either be in situ (directly on a flower) or in a vial/photo chamber, it is up to you. Still, please only submit photos that are in-focus with enough detail to determine the species in the photo (see photography tips). Including information about the plant on which you observed the bee is also very helpful.

Considerations:

• With incidental observations, you do not need to submit every photo you take at each location. Try to include only the best photos of each species (but see bullet point below). If you are not sure if photos are different species or not, error on the side of including too many observations.
• Include observations of the same species of bee visiting different species of flowers – that is great information to have.
• Do your best to identify the species of flower that the bumble bee was visiting. See our Project Resources page for ID resources.
• Follow the same rules about location, private property, and general respect for others' experience when collecting incidental observations as you would with point and roadside surveys.

Submit Your Bumble Bee Data
​We will be collecting all bumble bee data using the citizen science website Bumble Bee Watch. 

• Curate your photos and gather your data.
  • Make sure you know which photos belong to which individual bee.
  • Each observation can only include up to 5 photos. Please include a photo of the plant where you found the bee!
  • Make sure you know at which site each bee was observed (exact location within a site is not important, just the site). Note, if your camera records locations (e.g., most smartphones do this), you can use this metadata to report the observation location to us.