(BEE)ING ACTIVE

WRITTEN BY JOSHUA ABBOTT ILLUSTRATIONS BY MIHLAN GAVIOLA

“Bumblebees are charming. Th ey’re fuzzy; they’re large; they’re pretty personable; they hardly ever sting,” Christina deVillier, connections coordinator for the Greater Hell’s Canyon Council, said. Along with other volunteers from around the state, deVillier catches bumblebees and records her sightings for the Pacifi c Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas. DeVillier lives in Lostine, Oregon, in Wallowa County near the pristine Eagle Cap Wilderness. Winters there are cold and snowy, hitting harder and faster than in Eugene. Th e roughly 200 locals shop for groceries at an old general store called M.Crow & Co, which bears a red, hand-painted sign covering half the storefront. It’s the type of town that’s easy to miss, off ering a quick glimpse of community among long stretches of farmland and nature. Remote areas like these may be unknown to the greater population of Oregon. Still, their proximity to remote wilderness provides a unique opportunity for research that falls outside the infl uence of the state’s major population centers. While bumblebees can be found all over Oregon, sparsely populated regions like those in Central and Eastern Oregon need fewer people to cover larger swaths of ground when it comes to documenting bumblebee numbers. “It’s easier to get people out looking at nature where they are, and there are just fewer people in Eastern Oregon and east of the Cascades in general,” deVillier said. Researching and documenting bumblebees is important work to deVillier. Bumblebees are native pollinator

insects that allow Oregon’s plant life to thrive and propagate, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation website. Endangered Species Program Director Sarina Jepsen wrote that they are also of tremendous economic value due to their eff ectiveness in pollinating important crops such as blueberries and cranberries, doing so even more eff ectively than honey bees. Yet, according to a study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Bumble Bee Specialist Group, almost 50 species of bumblebees are experiencing signifi cant declines in population. According to the Pacifi c Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas website, some face extinction. Of particular note is Franklin’s bumblebee, an exceptionally rare bumblebee native to Southern Oregon and the northmost regions of California. Th e IUCN Bumble Bee Specialist Group lists the bee as critically endangered, acknowledging that no sightings of the bee have been confi rmed since 2006. According to Rich Hatfi eld of the Xerces Society, the work that community scientists like deVillier do for bees establishes a base of knowledge that drives future conservation

eff orts. For example, the Endangered Species Act protections and regulations mandate sustainable farming practices to protect bees and other pollinators. Th e crisis facing bumblebees, and thus the need to document them, may be better understood by looking at the plight of another well-known pollinator: the European honey bee. Greenpeace and the United States Environmental Protection Act have reported Declines in honey bee populations. According to the U.S. National Agricultural Statistics, honey bee numbers have dropped from 6 million hives in 1947 to only 2.4 million when surveyed in 2008. Unlike European honey bees, the bumblebees we see are native and better adapted to our natural environment. According to the Xerces, they are more resistant to lower temperatures than other bees and insect pollinators. Th ey are also adapted to the high elevations and latitudes seen in Oregon, making them crucial to the health of our ecosystem. DeVillier contributes to the Pacifi c Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas through Bumble Bee Watch, a public website with comprehensive information about bumblebee sightings that allows anyone to contribute by recording their fi ndings. Volunteers look for bees, catch them, photograph them, and then release them back into the wild. “Th ey’re fun to catch,” deVillier, who has personally submitted 185 sightings to Bumble Bee Watch, said. “You go out with your net, a cooler and some vials, and you swipe bees and catch them.” After she catches a bee, deVillier said she puts it on ice, bringing it into a hibernation state, making it easy to photograph. She then uploads the photos to the Bumble Bee Watch website, where an expert identifi es them. One of these experts is Rich Hatfi eld, the conservation lead for Th e Bumble Bee Atlas Project and a senior biologist for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Hatfi eld has published numerous articles about bumblebees, contributing to scientifi c literature and public education via the Xerces Society website. He also hosted a series of webinar tutorials about the Pacifi c Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas in 2020. Hatfi eld designed these tutorials to train citizen scientists in catching bees and recording their fi ndings to the atlas and are available for free on YouTube to anyone interested in future participation. Th e Bumble Bee Atlas Project began about a decade ago when scientists from the Xerces Society, including Hatfi eld, launched a community science project to fi nd and track rare species of bumblebees. Xerces published an email address requesting that folks from the community send photographs

of bumblebees from around their local areas. If people fi nd rare bees, it is important to know the location and frequency of such bees.

“Without a whole lot of work promoting this, we were getting hundreds of emails a week,” Hatfi eld said. “People were trying to share rare species with us.” As phenomenal as it was to see such enthusiasm from community scientists, according to Hatfi eld, the project lacked the infrastructure to log all of the fi ndings as they came in. Instead of logging everything, Hatfi eld and his colleagues positively identifi ed the rare species and recorded only those — everything else went unused. Th is created a new problem. “Just entering rare species in our database, it was actually making them look artifi cially common,” Hatfi eld said. In response, Xerces Society launched Bumble Bee Watch in 2014, allowing users to adopt a grid cell and spot bees for the Pacifi c Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas, covering Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Hatfi eld and the Xerces Society are currently expanding the atlas project even further. Hatfi eld said that in 2022, atlas projects will be launched in several more states, including California, North Dakota, South Dakota and Kansas. While citizens can catch and photograph bumblebees beginning in the spring, the season ends in November when the

queen bumblebees burrow into the ground, where they spend half their life cycle in hibernation. Th is process, called overwintering, is especially in need of community science. According to the Queen Quest website, a collaborative eff ort between the Xerces Society, the U.S. Geological Survey and a handful of universities around the country, we know little about where queens hibernate. Acquiring this knowledge is important for conservation eff orts and enabling the preservation and creation of healthy overwintering habitats. I decided to participate in Queen Quest by following the best advice off ered on the website. I purchased a trowel, pulled the measuring tape out of my toolbox and found a lightly forested area within walking distance of my home. It was a dark rainy day in December, and a thick chill hung in the air as I made my way to the site. Th e ground was soft from recent rainfall and covered in a couple of inches of loose leaf litter, which, according to Queen Quest, provides one of the best opportunities for digging. I sat down at the base of a conifer tree and began shuffl ing through the leaves with my hands and trowel, looking through the material for anything noteworthy. I dug no more than a few inches into the soil. I worked slowly, examining each inch of soil. I wish I could tell you I found a queen bee or two, but I didn’t. Even under the best conditions, fi nding queens is not especially likely, so I was unsurprised by my fi ndings. Nevertheless, Queen Quest asks participants to report their fi ndings regardless of success, which I could do by spending a few minutes on their website. Even with an incomplete and still-expanding knowledge base regarding both bumblebees and overwintering queens, Hatfi eld said scientists know some species of bumblebees are in decline and need help. Pesticide use and habitat fragmentation are signifi cant causes of decline, and unsustainable farming practices exacerbate these problems. Hatfi eld said he sees contention in the relationship between large farming corporations and bumblebees. According to Hatfi eld, large farming organizations are continuously challenging the state’s rights to allow bumblebee protection under the endangered species act. Certain states like California have laws that bundle bumblebees and other invertebrates into the same classifi cation as fi sh, muddling up the process for granting them government protections. Th ere is irony in needing to battle farming organizations for the protection of bumblebees, according to Hatfi eld. “Farmers, more than any other people, are dependent on pollinators for their livelihood.” DeVillier said habitat fragmentation caused by large farming operations could be a major threat to bumblebee health. When a bumblebee fl ies into a wheat fi eld, they enter a “food desert,” where they can’t fi nd the nutrition they need to survive. Wheatfi elds are also commonly treated with harmful pesticides intended to target other insects.

Some farmers understand this reality and have engaged with the problem to help conserve bees. Hatfield said the Xerces Society works with farmers across the country to establish bumblebee-friendly farming practices, including creating habitats that provide food and shelter for bumblebees. The Xerces Society helped farmers establish nearly one million acres of bumblebee habitat across North America. The Xerces Society works with farmers through Bee Better certification, which is done in conjunction with Oregon Tilth, a leading certifier of organic produce in Oregon. Bee Better Certification is awarded to farmers who provide 5% of their land to bee habitat while providing nesting sites and avoiding harmful pesticides. Growers whose farms are inspected and found to meet the requirements are then allowed to label their products as Bee Better Certified, attracting customers who are conscious about pollinator preservation. Creating habitat for bees helps them survive on farms, but it can be done elsewhere too. “Even creating a little tiny bit of habitat at a university campus can make a “I sat down at the base of a conifer tree difference, and bumblebees will and began shuffling through the leaves show up,” Hatfield said. “That’s not something you can do with and needles with both my hands and polar bears or snow leopards, so that’s a unique opportunity we trowel, looking through the material for anything noteworthy. I worked slowly, have.” DeVillier said anyone could grow bumblebee-friendly plants examining each inch of soil.” if they have a home garden and a little bit of know-how. She said it’s important to research Oregon native plants, which can be done using Native Plant Finder, a website hosted by the National Wildlife Federation. The site allows users to find native flowers, grasses, trees and shrubs by inputting their zip code and performing an easy search. “I saw two Bombus occidentalis for the first time in the six years that I’ve been on my property,” deVillier said, using the Latin name for an animal commonly known as the Western bumblebee. “That’s a bee that’s struggling so much that it’s currently in the process of being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.” The Western bumblebee was added to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2015, based on an assessment authored by Hatfield. While the assessment states that Western bumblebee numbers are declining, it also maps out solutions such as the management and surveying needs that Hatfield said have been embraced by community members. “We have a wildlife safari right here, and we don’t have to go to Africa to see it,” Hatfield said. “We just have to pay attention to the little things in our lives.”