In Touch: Bumblebees!

They are fuzzy and cute, and many species are in peril

It zipped right, then left. I looked again, uncertain if I’d actually seen anything. I was in my pollinator garden, checking on the next area that needed weeding, when I saw a curious movement: a large insect darting around the blooms of a recently planted deerweed. There it is again! More zigging. More zagging. But what is it?

I waited. I crouched down and kept still. Then the insect lit on the thin branches of the deerweed. Roundish, black, and yellow. A bumblebee! He crawled about, visiting the deerweed’s red and yellow flowers. Big, with lots of fuzz, bumblebees might be the teddy bears of the insect world. I wouldn’t cuddle with one, but they make me teddy-bear happy when I see them.

And I was doubly happy to see this bee, as it was the first I’ve spotted in our pollinator garden since we broke ground on the new landscaping five years ago. I like to think the more diverse selection of native plants that I’ve added to the pollinator garden, like the deerweed, played a part in attracting the bee, but the truth is probably more complicated.

My sighting might be a bit unusual as bumblebees have become less common in recent years. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which analyses data and tracks the survival of species worldwide, estimates that up to a third of North America’s bumblebee species are in decline. In California, The Xerces Society recognizes five bumblebee species they say should be listed as endangered or threatened.

Like other species in peril, what is most noticeable about the diminishing populations of bumblebees is the decline in their ranges. They have just disappeared from large areas. Numbers of a subspecies of the western bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis occidentalis, have drastically plummeted. Once one of the most common bumblebees in its range, the western bumblebee’s population has dropped by 84 percent. The Suckley cuckoo bumblebee, Bombus suckleyi, depends on the western bumblebee to complete part of its lifecycle, so its population has declined as well, falling to 20 percent of its previous numbers.

Franklin’s bumblebees, Bombus franklini, which are listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, already had the most restrictive range of any bumblebee in North America. It was found only in the northernmost region of California and southern Oregon. Bee watchers noted a steep decline in their numbers starting in 1999, and no one has seen the bee since 2006.

I am not the best at identifying insects, but I was fairly convinced that the one that landed on the deerweed in my garden was a California bumblebee, Bombus californicus, a threatened species. I was pretty excited about this sighting and set about identifying the insect as best I could.