As gardeners who spend lots of time outdoors, we can help save endangered bumble bees just by using our powers of observation and reporting what we see. Photo of bumble bee on Joe Pye Weed flowers copyright Robert Sousa/THBFarm.com.
Like it or not, we gardeners have a hobby that puts us right on the front line of international wildlife protection during what scientists are calling the Sixth Age of Extinction (the last extinction age 65 million years ago marking the end of the dinosaurs). At this point, there may not be much we can do at the individual level to save the polar bears, but many of the small but important critters that make their home in our gardens for some or part of the year — the bees, butterflies, moths, turtles, toads, frogs — across the planet, across the board, you’ll find these species listed in high numbers on endangered and declining species lists. They’re all suffering from the same problem – widespread habitat loss and declines due to human activity. The fact is, the simple act of tending a garden makes us habitat “managers” for all the wildlife that pass under, through and above our yards, so with that in mind, gardening can be an empowering tool for us to help at-risk wildlife in our own backyards.
If you’ve been reading Beautiful Wildlife Garden for a while, you already know that avoiding pesticides and planting regionally native plants are ways every gardener can help local wildlife and enhance natural biodiversity.
Here’s another way to help.
Learn to identify the bees and birds you see around you, and report your sightings to the conservation groups focussed on saving them.
If you love birds, you may have been busy this winter reporting bird sightings during February’s Great Backyard Bird Count and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. Thanks for helping! The data helps scientists determine the most at-risk species in order to prioritize protection efforts. But it’s time for the bees to have their turn…
You may have heard about the devastating European honey bee declines (Colony Collapse Disorder) that threaten global agricultural interests — in other words, our food supply! But our native pollinating bees also show large declines, and considering the keystone status of pollinating insects in our natural ecosystems, their escalating losses are a very large red flag being waved frantically by ecologists who can already see ecosystems begin to collapse.
But to understand what is happening and slow down the losses, scientists need to know the facts about our various bee species, of which there are a staggering number. Worldwide, there are more bee species than mammal and bird species combined. In New England alone, we likely have over a thousand varieties of native bees.
Among them, the humble bumble bee, one of our more important pollinating bees.
Once abundant on the west coast of North America, the western bumble bee has all but disappeared from central California north to British Columbia. Photo by Derrick Ditchburn, courtesy the Xerces Society.
The Xerces Society (a conservation organization that studies invertebrate insects, including bees) has noted rapid, precipitous drops in bumble bee species in just the past few decades. Several species that live only in small micro-habitats of the West are now almost completely disappeared, but what is really alarming is that formerly common American bumble bees are also in steep decline, including the western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis) (pictured right) and the eastern rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) (pictured below). Both were abundant across their range until recently but are now in the Xerces Society’s “top four” of American endangered bumble bees facing imminent extinction.
Bumble bees are particularly important pollinators for many of our domestic and wild food crops, along with many other flowering plants, because they pollinate flowers in a way that honey bees cannot. Bumbles perform buzz pollination, in which they vibrate their flight muscles inside flowers, causing pollen to discharge and in the process improving pollination for food plants such as tomato, pepper, blueberry and cranberry as well as wild flowers such as Dicentra and Solomon’s Seal. Bumble bees also have fur, which picks up lots of pollen that the bees carry to other flowers.
Why the sudden declines? One contributing reason is growers that import bumble bees to pollinate crops – the imported bees bring in foreign pathogens that infect our native bumbles, who lack immunity and die off in droves. Habitat loss and disruption of nesting sites is another big reason.
Have you seen bumble bees around your area? Look around your garden this year and report your findings to the Xerces Society to help scientists learn how to protect our remaining bumble bees. The good news is that bumble bees are quite docile when they visit flowers for nectar, and they are not likely to bother you while you hover over them with a camera.
You can fill out an online survey reporting your sightings, or email a photo if you think you’ve seen one of the endangered species. In New England, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies will be launching a Vermont Bee Survey later this year to document current bee populations in the state. Vermonters can help by IDing and reporting the bumble bee species they find to the survey – details to be announced later this winter.
Rusty-patched bumble bee, once common across the American east. Grab a camera and see if you can still find them in your gardens. Photo by Johanna James-Heinz, courtesy the Xerces Society.
Photo at right: The endangered rusty patched bumble bee was very common on most of the east coast of the US and upper midwest, until just the past few decades. Bee collections and a variety of studies dating from the 1960s and 1970s still showed high numbers of this bee, but more recent field monitoring across Vermont has found none at all in the last few years!
Have the rusty-patched bumble bee gone extinct in New England? Hopefully not. I am pretty sure I have seen this bee in my own central Massachusetts gardens, although I need to take photos this summer to confirm its ID. There are other bumble bees native to this area that have red/brown/orange bands similar to the rusty-patched bumble. My bee could be another “belted” bumble found in New England, including the tri-colored or orange-belted bumble bee (Bombus ternaris), or red-belted bumble bee (Bombus rufocinctus).
Which brings me to a problem about looking for bumble bees — many of them look alike and it can be hard to nail down the exact species of the bumbles in your gardens. Use a camera to get some good photos of the bees you see and refer to online resources such as BugGuide.net or DiscoverLife.org to ID your bees. You can also print out one of the Xerces Society’s free pocket guides to identifying bumble bee species:
So even if you don’t consider yourself a “wildlife gardener”, you can still contribute to wildlife conservation by reporting your bumble bee numbers. Your data will help scientists decide how to protect the biodiversity that we still have! And don’t forget all the other ways you can help native bees in your own garden…
This bumble bee nesting box at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA simulates the hole near or at ground level that many bumble bees prefer for nesting
© 2012, Ellen Sousa. All rights reserved. This article is the property of BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com If you are reading this at another site, please report that to us
About Ellen Sousa
Great post, Ellen. I had bees on my mind just yesterday. Thinking how many bees there are in my citrus trees now since it is flowering (smells heavenly). I think they like my yard because I don’t use pesticides! Now I have to figure out what kind of bees they are. The links you suggest should help. Also, I have Bumblebees that are black & love purple or blue-colored flowers.
Kathy – lucky you to have citrus trees blooming and the bumbles to help them produce their fruits! We saw limoncello and orange trees fruiting in the Orangerie at Tower Hill Botanic Garden last week (central MA) and I was dreaming about living in a climate where I could grow those….
Ellen what a perfect post for spring as the pollinators come out soon…I would love to join and report what I see here so we keep this going. I will definitely share this important post. I get lots of bumbles who love building nests in the ground all over my garden but perhaps they are declining.
It’s hard to believe that they are in decline when you see them so abundant in your own garden…but your habitat garden is most certainly helping to keep them going in your area!
One thing people can do is to participate with the The Great Sunflower Project: http://www.greatsunflower.org/, which is a lot like the backyard bird count.
Susan, thank you so much for posting the link about the Great Sunflower Project – I heard about this project (and the Backyard Bee Count) in NYC a few years ago and didn’t know it was still running. Great stuff! I will pass this along locally too…
Great information about bumble bees! I read a fantastic book about them awhile back and gained a whole new appreciation for them. Although it’s a British book and focused on their species, there is great information about bumble bees in general. http://www.metrofieldguide.com/?p=1111
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Thanks for this tip Kelly – there is a lot of good info out there about British bees that is relevant to our US bees. Happy you also mentioned the Xerces Society guide “Attracting Native Pollinators: Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies” in your post – that book was just released in 2011 and is a tremendous resource. I wish it had come out years earlier, it would have saved me a lot of research!
Ellen – beautifully written and good information.
Thank you Sue – hoping to hear about abundant bumbles at the Scalzi Reserve this summer!
Great post! I’m usually pretty well stocked with bumbles (and out of the native range of the listed four in any event) but I’ve noticed weird and freaky declines in the numbers myself. Hopefully it was a result of weird weather, but it’s the sort of data point that any gardener who’s willing to observe their yard can help with.
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Every bit of data helps….
Appreciate your post. Can you share the ID of the bumble on the Joe Pye Weed? That is the kind I have in my garden.
Ha! I was hoping nobody would ask – I didn’t ID the bumble in the photo caption because I was never sure whether it was a Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) or something else. I need to go back and closely study the other photos I have of this bee.
Nice article bringing attention to native bees. More and more people are getting over the fear of bees and enjoying sightings of the different species just like with butterflies and birds.
We grow native plants and have allowed much of the garden to be bee habitat friendly. Bumbles and many other solitary species have shown up so if you make the effort you will see much improvement. This is an area that the garden, even a very small one, makes a difference. Bumbles are the first to show each spring, and the last to be seen on the odd warm day of late fall. This last late summer/autumn with loads of asters ,goldenrod ,late blooming perennial sunflowers the October blooming liatris rough blazing star and so many others the garden was humming with bees. Mostly native though a few honey bees were spotted.
Illinois has a program called Bee Spotters through the University of Illinois with May Berenbaum. Citizens are encouraged to take pictures of bees wherever they find them in Illinois then post the pics to be identified. Just bumble bees and honey bees for now but they have some great finds.
http://beespotter.mste.illinois.edu/
Gloria – thanks very much for the link to the U of Illinois Bee Spotters! Sounds like another excellent partnership between gardeners & entomologists and a non-profit group bringing them all together. The photo ID submission is so valuable…it takes us amateurs hours to try to ID those bees…
What a beautiful post, thank you Ellen.
I was actually also thinking about bees the other day. I haven’t seen a bumble bee in so long that I can hardly remember what the beautiful creatures look like.
I’ve moved from South Africa to Australia, and the sad thing is that Bumble Bees are not native here. In fact the governments actually have numbers to call in case you do spot one as they are “controlling” the species.
I can’t imagine why they would be considered a pest, just because they are not native. Quite sad actually.
But thanks for the pictures. I do love Bumble Bees.
A timely post indeed. What a great resource the Xerces site is. That looks like a place to spend my rainy days and nights for a while, learning about Bumble bees and many other kinds of native bees. With my blueberries just starting to open, I imagine I’ll be seeing a lot of bumbles in the days ahead.
Great information, thank you! I will start counting/photographing my bumbles.
I love your blog and I too will start counting bumbles. Britain doesn’t have many native plants that blossom in mid-winter – the only one that springs to mind is Hellebore Foetidus. But now that the climate has changed and continues to change the insects want to wake up mid-winter. And when they do there had better be a snack waiting for them. So I am planting early flowering Clematis, to go with the winter-flowering Jasmine, Daphne Bohlua and Sarcococca Confusa. None of these are English natives, but they are full of nectar and that is what counts in the winter!
hi I have a large bumble bee thats been stalking me on my deck all day! its been out there since this morning & now its almost 6pm! i would like to enjoy my deck but everytime i go out it is somewhat aggresive. help!
Sara – is your bee still bothering you? Were you wearing a fragrant hairspray or maybe perfume? Sometimes bees will pick up a scent and check it out to see if it’s a flower they can visit…which would explain why it seemed like it was stalking you! Sorry for the late response to this – I didn’t see this reply til now…
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