“Q: Hey biologizeable, I was wondering if you knew of a good site to find articles on the declining bee population? You’re the only science blog I follow so I thought I’d ask. Thanks!”
Hello! As with any form of online research, even such a deceptively simple one, it will likely take longer than you first imagine. But do not fear. You can do it.
Instead of doing your homework for you, however, I am instead going to provide you some super pro tips on finding information online. Way more useful, in the long run, and this way I don’t end up with 300 more questions like this! Everybody wins.
In general, a good launching point for research is (and I will fight you over this) Wikipedia. It’s a great place to get a mildly useful summary, keywords to use in further searches, and most importantly, a list of potentially legitimate sources. Never use Wikipedia as your only source of information, but I cannot stress how useful it is in starting out.
When doing general Google searches, a moderately solid rule of thumb for finding information is that any site ending with .edu or .org is probably more credible than a .com. Obviously, this is not always true, but it’s good to keep in mind.
Finally, for some serious science, Google Scholar is your new best friend. Provided your best friends are just really frustrating people. Most of the papers you’ll find are behind paywalls, and you’re gonna have to use all of the fancy new keywords you’ve discovered during your researches to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Anyway, I know this doesn’t immediately help you, so off the top of my head for specific bee things:
Check out some beekeeper association websites (the Ontario one is pretty great)
