SAVING THE AMERICAN BUMBLEBEE
From coast to coast, the American bumblebee is part of the fabric of America’s grasslands and open spaces. Described before the United States won its independence, this fuzzy bee was once the most commonly observed bee in the United States. Its powers of pollination have nourished our ecosystems and sustained our crops.
We're working hard to protect these iconic insects. Please help us save them now.
BACKGROUND
Over the past few decades, as our open spaces have become filled and degraded from agriculture and urban expansion, the American bumblebee has started to disappear — entirely lost from at least eight states in the northern part of its range in the past 20 years. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, this once-abundant species has declined 89% in relative abundance across its range. Pesticide use, along with the introduction of disease from honeybees and domesticated bumblebees, has remade much of the country into hostile territory for this beleaguered little creature.
OUR CAMPAIGN
In 2021 the Center for Biological Diversity — working with the Bombus Pollinators Association of Law Students, a group of law students from Albany Law School — petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse the loss of habitat and protect this important pollinator from pesticides and disease. We hope that by protecting this bee we can also improve habitat for many other species.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Bumblebees have stinky feet — whenever their feet touch a surface, they leave traces of an invisible, oily substance that other bees can smell.
• The queen bumblebee can store sperm inside her body for months.
• Some female worker bees can make their own eggs, but the queen will usually oust them — and the constant drama queen–worker drama continues until the workers sting the queen to death in late summer.
• Bumblebees have the most sustainable kind of air-conditioning — they cool their nest with their own wings. They heat their nest in a similar way by twitching their flight muscles.
• Bumblebees host many different parasites whose larvae grow inside their living bodies. They most commonly host flies, starting when an adult fly attaches to a bee midflight and inserts her egg, which hatches inside the bee and develops by feeding on its innards.
• An American bumblebee flaps its wings about 200 times per second.
• Some bumblebees “cheat” by swiping nectar from a flower without pollinating it—a shady scheme called “nectar robbing.”
Reposted from Center for Biological Diversity
Photo by Matthew Allen/Naturalist