Why Bumble Bees Are the Fuzzy Heroes We Need

In 2022, California decided this was a fish. Kinda. Conservation advocates were trying to protect bumblebee species under the California Endangered Species Act. But that 1984 law only covers native bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant species under threat. So it seemed like insects and other invertebrates weren't eligible. But under California's Fish and Game Code, fish means wild fish, mollusks, crustaceans, invertebrates, or amphibians. Which is casting a pretty wide net. So bumblebee lovers argued that bees could be considered fish. And the state court agreed. As of 2024, four bumblebee species are candidates for protection under California law. This means they get preemptive safeguards and helps conserve their habitats. It can be hard to drum up support for insects. And in general, as humans, we tend to suffer from taxonomic bias. We tend to love things that are warm or cuddly, that remind us of mammals or remind us of ourselves. But we need these critical pollinators. And they, along with insects around the world, are plummeting in numbers. We're still trying to understand why, but we do know that bumblebees face some unique threats. Maybe you could help figure out what's going on. Jessica, when I think about risks to bees, I feel like I've heard of this thing called Colony Collapse Disorder. What is that? So Colony Collapse Disorder is when a beehive kind of dies off. And in the late 2000s, this happened to a bunch of hives. And so the name was kind of coined to describe this new phenomenon that was happening. Colony Collapse Disorder is when a large proportion of the workers die off. So even if queens are left alive or the babies, if the workers aren't there to do the job, then the colony itself collapses. In the beginning, it was a mystery what was causing Colony Collapse Disorder. A parasitic mite was an early candidate. And then there were ideas about other parasites, diseases or insecticides. Now what we think is that probably it's an additive effect. So it's not just one thing. It's death by a thousand cuts causing the colony to collapse. I like honey. Who doesn't? But why did Colony Collapse Disorder make headlines? You can actually quantify the impact of the loss of bees. Cold hard cash can actually get people to start talking about conservation and direct action. So the Obama administration launched this presidential task force that was looking at pollination. And the numbers suggested that maybe a loss of these honeybees would be a loss of about $15 billion. So I think this was a wake-up call maybe to humans, right? So are honeybees the most important pollinators we have? No. So the irony is, of course, Colony Collapse Disorder, the kind of genesis that sparked this educational campaign, was something that was only happening to Apis mellifera, which is the European honeybee. It's actually not native to North America. And as an introduced species, honeybees can have negative effects on native species. They can out-compete other bees and even threaten the long-term health of native plants. Wait, honeybees are competing with native species? What kinds of bees are native here? What do we have? We have a lot of species of bees. There are actually thousands of species of bees. Like more than 4,000 bee species native to North America. Tiny little ground-nesting bees all the way up to chunky carpenter bees. And the majority are loners, solitary bees that build their own nests and don't live in a colony. In fact, the only truly social bees native to the United States are the amazing bees in the genus Bombus. They're big, they're fuzzy, they're really charismatic. What's also neat about bumblebees is because they're hairy and big, they are able to withstand cold temperatures. They're also generalists, and so they will visit a whole bunch of different flower species. They're not going to go specialize on one. Oh my gosh, I see one. Dr. Hilary Sardinius studies bumblebees in her role as pollinator coordinator for California's Fish and Wildlife Department. It's early in the year that California has some uniquely early risers. We're out here in January. It's not really a time when you think about being able to find a lot of pollinators. But it's when queen bumblebees tend to come out from hibernation and pollinate some of these plants that are blooming really early in the year. One reason bumblebees are so critical to our ecosystems is because they're usually the first bees buzzing around in late winter, and the last to make the rounds in the fall. Their stocky bodies can carry about twice as much pollen as honeybees, and they work faster and longer, pollinating flowers 50 to 200 percent more quickly and working 50 percent more hours in a day than honeybees. And they can do something honeybees can't. Bumblebees buzz, pollinate. So we're standing in front of some manzanita plants, and they actually have these things called poricidal anthers. And so the pollen is actually trapped inside of them. Bumblebees bite down on those anthers and sonicate. They vibrate muscles in their thorax, making this characteristic buzz. The anthers pop open and shoot their pollen onto the bee, which then flies off to its next stop, transferring the pollen and fertilizing some of our favorite plants, like berries. Tomatoes and peppers also rely on buzz pollination, and growers will actually check their tomato plants for bumblebee bite marks to make sure flowers have been visited. So we need bumblebees for the foods we love. Unfortunately, like for many insects, bumblebee population numbers are crashing. About a quarter of all bumblebee species are threatened or endangered, and that's true here in California. There's about eight species that we think are not doing as well as we would hope, and four of those have actually been petitioned for listing under the California Endangered Species Act. Things don't look good for bumblebees across North America, and we're seeing patterns of dramatic decline. The American bumblebee used to be found in 47 of the lower 48 states, but its population has dropped by nearly 90 percent since 2000, and it's completely disappeared from eight states. There's not one clear-cut factor. It's this suite of interacting factors, from climate change to habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, disease, exposure to chemicals like pesticides that are causing the decline. We know that insects are decreasing at a rate that we've never seen before, but in addition, bumblebees face some unique threats. While bumblebees are social, they roll with a smaller crew. A bumblebee nest has only around 50 to 500 bees, while a honeybee hive can buzz with tens of thousands. A small colony inherently has less genetic diversity. Fewer bees, fewer genes. And mating with your parents, siblings, or close cousins is not a good idea. Inbreeding tends to have you accumulate negative, deleterious, bad mutations, and that can spread quickly through a population. Without a healthy amount of diversity in its gene pool, a colony is less able to develop resistance to disease and parasites, and less adaptable to things like pollutants and climate change. So if you imagine that you have a lot of inbreeding already, if we further fragment the habitat, that actually reduces the amount of area in which you can have bumblebees existing, and without connecting paths between patches of bumblebee territory, queens are more likely to pair off with close relatives. So when it comes to helping bumblebees, we need efforts targeting small colony species. Protecting habitat is vital, but first we have to better understand where bumblebees are now. And this is where you can get involved, because we need community scientists to help us figure that out. One effort that Hillary helps coordinate is the California Bumblebee Atlas. Obviously it's the only pollinator coordinator in California, which is a huge state, I can't cover it, so we really rely on these impassioned community members to go out and help us collect this valuable data. Oh, I see one, I see one! Hillary and Atlas volunteers are trained to net bumblebees. I got it! So this is a yellow-faced bumblebee, this is our most common bumblebee in California, also known as Bombus Fosnesenskii. It's a queen, I think, given how big she is in the time of year. Once she catches a bee, she'll put it on ice for a few minutes. Just kind of stick it in, and this is going to chill her back out so that we can take close-up photos of her. Hillary and other atlasers take pictures for the record. So you try and get their abdomen, their underside. And then let the bees warm up and buzz off. We're hoping we can get a census of the population, how are they doing now, so that we can see how they're doing into the future. So are all of the species declining? Is there a specific threat that's impacting one of them? There are bumblebee atlases in many states. But you can also contribute the observations that you make through iNaturalist or through bumblebeewatch.org. And there are other ways to help these fuzzy flower lovers live their best lives. It can be really great if you can plant a pollinator garden. So when you say pollinator garden, sometimes you might think, well, I don't have a garden, I don't have a yard. That's okay, it actually doesn't really matter the size. You could have a small window box, and that's still providing important habitat for bumblebees. There's lots of plants that bumblebees will visit, but they actually prefer native plants. Because, of course, bees have evolved over millions of years with native plants. They like blue and purple flowers, so those ones are good ones to use. They tend not to be able to see red, so planting red is really just for you. That's just a you thing. They like to have a variety of sizes of flowers, because bumblebees have different sized tongues. And they have to actually be able to drink the nectar. It's also good to have flowers that are blooming throughout the year. Because bees, bumblebees especially, they need to be able to eat across the seasons. The other important thing you can do for bees is make sure that they have the habitat to overwinter in. They need to have holes and bits of twigs and leaves that they can nest in. So remember how we talked about taxonomic bias? Well, if there's one insect that could kind of break through this threshold, it's the bumblebee. They're hardworking, cuddly, warm, fuzzy, curl up after a long day. The insect that really reminds us of ourselves, an insect that we can love. And if we can save the bumblebee, we can save the world. Before I reveal our amazing extra credit bee fact, have you heard the buzz? It's Earth Month everybody! All this month PBS is dropping episodes about our amazing planet. Like the new Eons video exploring what future Earth might look like. Links to that video and the full PBS Digital Studios Earth Month playlist in the description. So bumblebees are one of the few insects that have shown what we like to call culture. Where an individual learns something new and passes it on to others. In one experiment, demonstrator bees learned how to open a complex puzzle box. And then showed others how to do the same. And just to make them extra adorable, bumblebees have been observed doing something like play. So if you give bumblebees, especially kind of younger bumblebees, little tiny balls, they actually do a behavior that's not work. It's not contributing to their immediate survival. There's no reward. It's a different kind of behavior from something they would do if they were looking for food or a mate. And they repeat it. Not obsessively. So forget about busy as a bee. These guys are out there having a blast.