Some good news about bumblebees: Insect hunters in Washington and Oregon have spotted and photographed several western bumblebees in locations where they had vanished.
The Xerces Society, an organization that helps conserve invertebrates and their habitat, has a citizen-led project to track North America’s bumblebee species. To participate, visit www.bumblebeewatch.org.
“Once you start seeing bees, you get pulled into it. You can spend hours sitting around and watching the bees on your plants,” says Matthew Shepherd of The Xerces Society in northeast Portland. Read more about spotting bees here.
National Wildlife Federation writer Laura Tangley offers these tips to gardening to help bumblebees:
- Provide pollen and nectar for food: Bumblebees prefer flowers that are purple, blue or yellow as well as perennial versus annual plants. Native plants are best, see recommendations at www.xerces.org/lbj.
- Ensure bumblebees have nesting sites: Habitats like compost piles and unoccupied birdhouses help bumblebees, as does minimizing mowing and tilling that destroy nests and potential future nest sites.
- Provide overwintering habitat: Queens seek shelter over winter in small holes just below or on the ground’s surface or sheds, rock walls and woodpiles. Leaving leaf litter, downed wood and uncut bunch grasses provides additional options. If you mow, do so with the mower blade set at the highest safe level. When spring arrives, avoid raking or mowing until April or May to protect hibernating queens.
- Avoid or minimize pesticides: The Xerces Society recommends that you “choose targeted formulations with the least-toxic ingredients, follow the manufacturer’s directions, apply the pesticide as directly and locally as possible and apply when bumblebees are not active” either after dark or during winter.
— Janet Eastman
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