Bumble Bees (Bombus spp.) are some of the hardest working bees in the business. They are large bodied, for a bee, and covered with hair; adaptations that make their ability to move copious amounts of pollen during variable daytime temperatures better than most. Bumble bees are highly efficient pollinators of both wild and cultivated plants. If you like blueberries, thank a bumble bee; they can pollinate up to six blueberry flowers in the same amount of time that it takes a honey bee to pollinate just one. This is the crux of why it’s important to conserve bumble bees and other native pollinators—they have evolved alongside our native plants and developed interconnected relationships with them that are efficient and necessary for both of their survival.
There are about 15 species of bumble bees in NJ, some of which are common, others declining or quite rare. Like many of our native bees, bumble bees are suffering; not just from conservation threats, but also lack of knowledge and awareness. They are one of the better researched native bee genera, but are still woefully understudied. They are our tireless warriors, fuzzy neighbors and busy friends; we owe it to them to try a little harder. Climate change, insecticides, habitat destruction and disease are hitting them big time, and it would be truly heartbreaking to lose bumble bees from our fields and gardens.
There’s much to be said about the value of native pollinators and their positive impact on our livelihood. Bumble Bees are significant pollinators of over 25 food crops and provide billions of dollars worth of pollination services every year. Food plants that Bumble Bees are particularly efficient in pollinating are tomatoes, peppers, blueberry, cranberry, squash and melon. However, several North American bumble bees have been experiencing population declines since the 1990s. Pesticide use, climate change, and habitat loss and degradation have likely affected Bumble Bee populations, but pathogen spillover from commercial Bumble Bee operations in greenhouses also appears to be a significant factor. In the early 1990s, bumble bees were shipped from overseas to provide pollination services for commercial production of sweet peppers and tomatoes. Disease from these bumble bees spilled over into wild populations, and the late 1990s saw the first significant declines in several bumble bee species. It’s now thought that roughly 1/4 of all North American Bumble Bee species are faced with some level of decline.
The first Bumble Bee to be listed as a federally endangered species was the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis) in 2017. B. affinis had been lost from over 90% of its range in the twenty years preceding the listing, and while it just made it onto New Jersey’s endangered species list, its has been many years since the bee was seen in our state and may be extirpated. Other bumble bees have followed suit and there are now several that are being petitioned for federal listing, with more sure to follow.
How to support BUMBLE BEES
- Insecticide Free
- Minimize tilling/ground disturbance
- Diversity of foraging plants and habitat- plant native
- Manage forest and field with pollinators in mind
- Participate in Citizen Science: iNaturalist, Bumble Bee Watch, Bumble Bee Atlas
