Bumble Bees and VIPs

By Cate Nelson

A low drone precedes the entrance of a fluffy insect barreling her way toward sunny yellow wild senna on the Shack Prairie. The two pollen baskets on her hind legs are an amber beacon for eager bee-seekers. Following her flight are two esteemed conservation figures, retracing Aldo Leopold’s footsteps to the Shack. Clay Bolt, a conservation photographer, is an authority on native bees and directs the World Wildlife Fund’s Pollinator Program. Neil Losin is a filmmaker whose multimedia conservation stories include the Emmy-nominated PBS show Human Footprint.

This isn’t their first time along this stretch of the Wisconsin River. Clay and Neil filmed at the Leopold Shack about a decade ago during the production of A Ghost In The Making: Searching for the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee, a short film advocating for the protection of a rare bumble bee. Lines from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac serve as connective tissue throughout the film, Leopold’s eloquent writing guiding the hearts and minds of bumble bee advocates. A Ghost in the Making played a significant role in the designation of the rusty patched bumble bee as a federally endangered species, earning the rusty patched the dubious distinction of first native bee ever protected by the Endangered Species Act.  

Once common across 28 states, the rusty patched bumble bee is now found in only nine states and has faced an 87% population decline. It’s thought that disease carried in by honey bees is partly responsible for this drastic change. Honey bees are not a native bee species, but a European bee employed to pollinate commercial crops in the United States.  

However, honey bees can’t effectively pollinate all food crops. Native bees are largely responsible for pollinating several fruits and vegetables where honey bees falter, including tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, and cranberries. Native bees also outperform honey bees in persistence: accustomed to cold weather, climate-adapted bumble bees can continue visiting flowers in September and October when other bees struggle. In addition to supporting food crops, native bees also have a long history of coevolution with native flowers and are essential supporters of diverse, productive native ecosystems. Fields with low floral diversity, like single-crop agricultural fields, are very challenging for bumble bees. Whereas honey bees can store honey as a lasting food source, bumble bees must continually collect pollen and nectar throughout the season. A field that is in bloom for only a few weeks thus makes for hungry bumble bees.

“Honey bees are a monoculture solution to monoculture agriculture,” says Susan Carpenter, Native Plant Garden Curator and bee expert at the UW-Madison Arboretum. Susan manages a four-acre native garden and monitors the rusty patched bee population at the historic Arboretum where, back in 1934, Aldo Leopold directed the world’s first prairie restoration. Incredibly, the first time Clay Bolt saw and photographed a living rusty patched bumble bee was while he was with Susan at the Arboretum filming for A Ghost in the Making.

Susan also recently paid us a visit to train the Future Leader Fellows in bumble bee identification. Because bees are an important indicator of land health, knowing how to identify and support bumble bees is a priority on the Leopold-Pines Conservation Area (LPCA). Even more notably, the LPCA is one of those few locations where the rusty patched bumble bee still can be found.

Jack Lindaas, Wildlife Monitoring Fellow, is responsible for most of the bee surveying on the LPCA and frequently samples at Ollie’s Prairie, a two-year-old restored prairie. He’s seen how bees respond to wet mornings (having no umbrellas, they often stay inside) and how they shift from visiting cool- to warm-season grasses as the season stretches from spring into summer. As he samples, Jack has been contemplating the life cycle of a bumble bee and each bee’s role within their small ground nest community. He’s also been thinking about how a bee’s biomass will serve as food for fungi and enrich the soil after it dies at the end of the season.  While surveying bees, Jack has been able to witness just why bumble bees are so important, not only as unique individuals, but also for their contributions to the interspecies ecosystem.  

One of Jack’s most meaningful interspecies experiences was an interaction between a bumble bee and himself. One morning, a common eastern bumble bee landed on his leg and rested there for several minutes. Having had some less-than-stellar experiences with “mean-spirited” insects, Jack had been wary of the bee. He was taken aback by the peacefulness and connection he felt with the Bombus impatiens specimen. As he finishes this summer of surveying, he’s decided that “bees are actually quite cute…I stare at pictures of them a lot.” (Using photos to identify bumble bees is part of his surveying process, but perhaps he’s looking at bees during his free time too!)

To care for bees on the LPCA is to care for the entire ecological community. Our land stewardship team continues to prioritize the bee populations on the property, especially the rusty patched bumble bee, through our surveys and habitat restorations. It’s an honor to have special guests like Clay Bolt, Neil Losin, and Susan Carpenter visit the property, but the real gift is the bumble bees that continue to draw us together.