Denise Ellsworth: So i'm so happy to have Dr Karen good out with us this afternoon she's a professor at the Ohio State University in our.
Denise Ellsworth: newer campus where she teaches courses, she has lab work, a lot of exciting field work and also does a lot of outreach.
Denise Ellsworth: One of her research projects that I find so fascinating is out of the wilds that's about a 10,000 restored strip mine area out in.
Denise Ellsworth: kind of southeastern Ohio it's actually part of the Columbus zoo and Karen has for years has some research they're studying pollinators be nesting.
Denise Ellsworth: Some of the remnant forest dynamics happening out there at the wilds now she was also the Co lead on the.
Denise Ellsworth: Our search for the rescue patch Bumblebee here in Ohio a two year Bumblebee survey with along with Dr Randy Mitchell, who will be here next week.
Denise Ellsworth: They together surveyed about had their eyes on about 23,000 bumblebees from across the state with their research teams.
Denise Ellsworth: out serving didn't find the rescue patch but found lots of other bumblebees had a good sense of where those populations were across the state.
Denise Ellsworth: And now her lab is heading and Ohio be survey trying to figure out, who are the bees here in Ohio we think about.
Denise Ellsworth: 450 to 500 species, but we're not sure so karen's overseeing that project, along with a specialist be project here in the state so Karen so happy to have you with us today it's teach us about our bumblebees of the eastern North America.
Karen Goodell: Thank you very much, everybody I hope can hear me, and thank you Denise for inviting me to be here today i'm really excited to talk to.
Karen Goodell: People you looking at the participants, we have over 1000 people, which is, by far, my biggest audience ever and, hopefully, I can I can deliver a talk that is exciting and also.
Karen Goodell: When that you can learn something i'm sorry that some people were having trouble getting to the pre test it's not super important it was mainly for my own.
Karen Goodell: knowledge to see you know how much is it possible to teach a group of people about Bumblebee I ID to species in.
Karen Goodell: In about an hour so definitely have never tried this before and certainly never done it over over zoom, but we are going to give it a try.
Karen Goodell: And i'm also Florida see so many people from so many different places, this is really great everybody from the Alaska to maine to Georgia to Texas, and even some people from my own home county Berkshire county Massachusetts so welcome everybody i'm going to share my screen now.
Karen Goodell: and hopefully this will work.
Karen Goodell: and start my presentation.
Karen Goodell: Okay.
Karen Goodell: Great So this is the identification of bumblebees of the eastern USA we have about 33.
Karen Goodell: Bumblebee species in the eastern us I won't be able to go over all of them, some of them are quite rare and I have left them off my talk, but i'm going to give you some resources and Denise has also provided links to resources, where you can look at learn all of 33 species.
Karen Goodell: So just to go over the goals of this hour that we have together i'd like you to learn to distinguish bumblebees from from other similar similar looking insects so that's the very first challenge.
Karen Goodell: learn the morphological traits that are used to identify bumblebees to species usually without a microscope there are some microscopic traits but it's nice for people who don't have microscopes to be able to make some headway on species ids.
Karen Goodell: to learn identify the most common Eastern bumblebees on the wing.
Karen Goodell: Learn characters us to identify some of the more uncommon species usually from photos and then, if we have time at the end i'd like to present some of the results from a Bumblebee survey that my lab did a couple of years ago in Ohio so we can take some lessons from that.
Karen Goodell: Just to start out Bumblebee identification tools are growing and number, and I think probably the most comprehensive book for the Eastern or for all of North America would be Paul.
Karen Goodell: Williams Robin Thor blake Richardson and sheila cola have this really wonderful bumblebees of North America.
Karen Goodell: So that's not a free book but it's definitely a really wonderful book and kind of similar to that, but just for the East coast is a free.
Karen Goodell: sort of small pamphlet that you can get and we have a link to that on the website that Denise provided that's bumblebees of the East and that's spearheaded by sheila color lake Richardson and Paul Williams and i'll be drawing on some of the images from this book and my talk today.
Karen Goodell: A lot of states and websites have little keys to bumblebees that are more regional, so this is one that you can find on the spotter.org.
Karen Goodell: For some of the Midwest states as Missouri through Ohio, and this is a nice little pictorial key that's kind of fun to work through here's one from Minnesota bumblebees again it's not really a key but a pictorial guide to bumblebees and that one is free as well.
Karen Goodell: discover life is always a wonderful resource for all different kinds of beads species focusing, I think, right now, more on the eastern these.
Karen Goodell: But growing in its possibility for identifying Western bees and there's a Bumblebee identification link on this when you go to ID nature guys right up here.
Karen Goodell: Right so just to kind of by way of introduction and to continue along the lines of things that were discussed.
Karen Goodell: By Jamie strange and TIM Smith in previous sessions now, why do we care so much about bumblebees, and these are some of the things that I noticed about bumblebees that make them really unique and special and and really useful to humans.
Karen Goodell: So in addition to being sort of the Teddy bears of the insect world they're these large body organisms that can fly long distances, often in cooler and windy or whether, which makes them able to pollinate plants under those conditions where other bees can't.
Karen Goodell: they're active from quite a long season, so in the East, usually from April through October and that's also unique among.
Karen Goodell: native bees, we don't have that many native bees that are active for that long they have these special abilities to do.
Karen Goodell: buzz pollination that Jamie strange talked about by vibrating the answers of plants and letting the pollen out, and you can see and hear this video online, but this is one that I took.
Karen Goodell: I don't know if the sound is really coming through or the visual, but that was a Bumblebee buzz pollinating the selenium flower.
Karen Goodell: They have some their social, so they can learn from their estimates, they have the ability to learn complicated flowers and that's been demonstrated by experiments and labs.
Karen Goodell: And they're especially good at pollinating some of our crop plants that have these answers that open and little pores like blueberries cranberries tomatoes and peppers.
Karen Goodell: So bumblebees are super important organisms for us to conserve and they're very unique occupy a very unique niche in our natural environments oops and.
Karen Goodell: One of my first goal was to make sure that when you're out in the field, you can distinguish what a Bumblebee is from other insects and.
Karen Goodell: Is it a Bumblebee or is it something mimicking a Bumblebee is the question bumblebees are very hairy and so they're large they have hairs all over their body.
Karen Goodell: Including on their abdomen and the females of non parasitic species will have these flattened Barbecue layer pollen baskets and so Those are some of the very unique traits bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: Now there's lots of different there's a couple of different kinds of mimicry where Betsy and mimicry where harmless species will mimic harmful species like ones that can sting so you'll see mimic.
Karen Goodell: Bumblebee mimics among cover flies beetles and loss for example mimicking those stinging insects and another form of mimicry that has evolved malaria and mimicry in which groups of harmful species all.
Karen Goodell: evolved to look similar to each other, which helps their predators learn more quickly that they're all harmful, and so the wasps are a good example of ones that might be confused for a Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: So just to go over some of these if you're out in the field, and you see things like this.
Karen Goodell: These are flies in the family acidity the the robber flies their predatory flies that are really hard to distinguish i've actually caught some of these.
Karen Goodell: rubber flies thinking, they were bumblebees but their behavior is quite different you'll also note that they only have two wings instead of four and they have very tiny antennae.
Karen Goodell: This moth clearing moth can look a little bit like a bump bump will be visiting flowers, but they typically have a much longer process.
Karen Goodell: And they have little scales on their wings, which, if you look up close bumblebees do not have those, this is a.
Karen Goodell: Viable lead fly actually a bee parasite can be quite fuzzy like a Bumblebee, but it will have only two wings instead of four and.
Karen Goodell: there's another psyllid fly very large eyes very small antennae and just two wings instead of four so that's different from a Bumblebee and here's our Bumblebee here.
Karen Goodell: And you can see that this Bumblebee has four wings 1234 it's got hair, all the way down on its abdomen.
Karen Goodell: And then non bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: Bees that are not bumblebees is what I mean by that that might be sort of part of a new larian mimicry complex might include things like this and trina so this.
Karen Goodell: Ground be these as MIA species, I would say that, as may be successful as really a dead ringer for a Bumblebee when you see it just out of the corner of your eye, you want to note that it's got.
Karen Goodell: A very, very wide head almost as wide, or at least as, why does it store X and you'll see that bumblebees lack that feature, they also won't have any Corbett killer hairs.
Karen Goodell: There are a couple of species of solitary be in the Opera and that's still a tricks Bomba for me is that are also very similar to bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: till atrix nessun the ground.
Karen Goodell: As well as improper they have Harry hind legs they don't have bbq we are Poland baskets until the tricks is almost always associated with swamps and hibiscus flower is because it's a floral specialist.
Karen Goodell: And then, finally, the sila COPA virginica the eastern carpenter be this one is probably the most commonly confused for a Bumblebee it has.
Karen Goodell: Very large eyes very hairy the females are very hairy hind legs, so no Corbett your hairs and a kind of a much more shiny abdomen unlike your bumblebees which, again I have these very hairy abdomens and these flattened.
Karen Goodell: pollen baskets So hopefully Those are some characteristics that you can look for out in the field, I hope you see all of these beings while you're out in the field they're all wonderful, but they are not bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: Coming to two sexes, like most insects females, which includes the queen's and the workers and males.
Karen Goodell: And the taxonomy are the traits are little bit different between females and males so it's useful if you're going to try to ID one to know whether it's female or male.
Karen Goodell: If you see a be out there with Paul and baskets or a sting, then it would have both that's a female female is also tend to have broader abdomens males, on the other hand, have relatively narrower and longer admins they actually have a couple extra abdominal segments.
Karen Goodell: They tend to have longer antennae larger eyes and.
Karen Goodell: In the East, one of the traits that I often use to kind of check to see if it's a male is if it has yellow hair is on its face now that won't work for every single species.
Karen Goodell: But many, especially the most common species in the East, often will have yellow hair males will have yellow hairs on their face and that's a very uncommon treat for most of the common females in the East.
Karen Goodell: Queens and workers can differ in their characteristics as well within a species so it's useful to know if you have a queen or a worker also.
Karen Goodell: You don't want to want to kill a queen because she's the foundation for a whole colony, whereas workers are a little bit more expendable if you do need to euthanize one.
Karen Goodell: Queens tend to be larger and.
Karen Goodell: So there are really two things you want to look for with Queens how big they are.
Karen Goodell: So here we've got 17 to 21 millimeters, this is a very general for for Obama some patients anyway, the common Eastern Bumblebee whereas workers are much smaller they're like 10 to 16 you can get queen size workers and, occasionally, you can get a smallish Queen, so this, these are not.
Karen Goodell: Always super clear The other thing is there's a period of time and we happen to be just entering that time period during the season, where Queens are really the only be bumblebees that you will see.
Karen Goodell: So this is a time for Queens it's a really good time to go out in the field and get a feel for what Queens really look like around Bay or depending on the species June, you will start to see.
Karen Goodell: Workers and males coming in, so that will give you a nice contrast.
Karen Goodell: there's a lot of morphology and bees that are very useful for telling species apart, but not all of that is very visible without magnification.
Karen Goodell: So i'm going to start here on this right hand picture, some of the things that you'll be looking at our first of all, the color of the hairs on the abdomen bumblebees have these very distinctive color patterns.
Karen Goodell: And usually, when we the segmented abdomen has five or six or seven depending on the gender.
Karen Goodell: and sex of the species will have a turtle segments, and we usually call these turbo there the abdominal segments.
Karen Goodell: And we abbreviate that with a tea so T one would be the most interior abdominal segment T two would be the second most anterior and so forth, so you want to be able to get a good look at the Donald segments.
Karen Goodell: The thorax here this middle section of the be the back of the thorax here we've got the skeleton and in behind that posterior Lee the skew talon those are nice places to get a look we've got the the side of the thorax called the pleura.
Karen Goodell: there's characters on the head, especially the very top of the head, called the vertex oops I got that.
Karen Goodell: you'll be looking for core curriculum or bbq Lee plural that's on the hind leg only and then sometimes wings are useful to see if there are darkened or very light.
Karen Goodell: That can correlate with species now there's plenty of characters on the face of bs like how long their faces or why their faces how long the tongue is.
Karen Goodell: This little mallory space or this area between the eye and the mandible can be long or short, however, those are going to be very difficult to see without magnification.
Karen Goodell: So i'm going to show you a series of slides like this one, in which i've pulled some of the diagrams I think these were made by lane Evans, and you can find them on Bumblebee watch, so I shamelessly copy them from Bumblebee watch and I thank you, lane Evans for providing such clear figures.
Karen Goodell: And these you know our Bumblebee caricature, so they do show them of some of the most common color patterns.
Karen Goodell: But you need to be aware that there's quite a lot of variation in some species and i'll point you toward the cola at all book booklet.
Karen Goodell: for providing a little bit more detail about some of the color variations.
Karen Goodell: i'm going to start with boundless happiness or the rusty patched Bumblebee because this is our federally endangered species, if you do see this one, while you're out and about definitely report it get a picture up there.
Karen Goodell: This is a really.
Karen Goodell: Important species, at least for some areas we haven't seen this in a very, very long time and I happen to live in one of those states where we haven't seen it for many years.
Karen Goodell: I know some of you are in areas that have a little bit more of the rusty patch Bumblebee so i'll go through these characters.
Karen Goodell: Starting with the head than the thorax and abdomen so the rusty patch Bumblebee, the first thing you want to notice looking at these diagrams are there, the head has black hair is on it, and if you look at some of these specimens you can see that there, there really aren't.
Karen Goodell: yellow hairs up there on that top of the head from behind the eyes that protects.
Karen Goodell: The thorax of the rusty patch Bumblebee is black as yellow i'm sorry but it tends to have a little black spot or sometimes a little tech shaped.
Karen Goodell: Spot so we've got the Queen here on the left and a worker here shown on the right.
Karen Goodell: The pleura or the size of the thorax of the rescue patch or yellow mostly yellow hairs.
Karen Goodell: And then we get to the abdomen, which is where the famous rusty patch is so the abdominal segments on the workers.
Karen Goodell: Are yellow and then the second Donald segment the T to has that often has a rusty central band here.
Karen Goodell: That can look Nice and bright like this, but if you get an old specimen it might be a little bit more faded so be aware that that bright orange doesn't necessarily stay throughout an individual's whole life.
Karen Goodell: So where it says w only I mean workers only and then the hind sections of posterior sections of the abdomen.
Karen Goodell: Are all black on the rescue patch Bumblebee now notice that the Queen unfortunately does not have that rusty patch so she's going to be a little bit harder to distinguish from some of our other species.
Karen Goodell: But we do see a queen that's got two full abdominal segments tier one and tier two of yellow you want to really pay special attention, these tend to be out very early in the season, so I imagine they're getting ready to emerge if not already emerged now.
Karen Goodell: i'm going to move to probably our most common Bumblebee species in the East, this is a extremely common and it is increasing and its relative abundance anyway.
Karen Goodell: This is boundless and patience, the common Eastern Bumblebee, and this is a very distinctive be.
Karen Goodell: And I think the probably the most distinctive thing is it's it's one of the few species that has just one segment of the abdomen yep yellow and that's the tier one segment.
Karen Goodell: All the other segments are typically black it does have a little bit of yellow on its vertex and it will sometimes have some mixed.
Karen Goodell: Black in the yellow hairs on the on the.
Karen Goodell: thorax on the top of it starts there a little black spot and.
Karen Goodell: it's.
Karen Goodell: The queen's come out very early and the workers are around very late in the season and get extremely common.
Karen Goodell: there's a lot of variation in size, you can find a Bumblebee worker that is almost as big as a.
Karen Goodell: Common Eastern Bumblebee Queen and you can find tiny little workers that are smaller than honeybees so it's extremely variable in size really depends on how much these individuals are fed.
Karen Goodell: Another extremely common be in the East is the brown belted Bumblebee and I probably should have juxtapose this one right up against.
Karen Goodell: The rusty patch Bumblebee because this one also features a little rust colored band, but you can probably already tell that that little rest color band is different.
Karen Goodell: Because it's surrounded on the on the posterior side with black hairs rather than yellow hair, so the rescue pet Bumblebee would be yellow on on T to.
Karen Goodell: The brown belted been Bumblebee is black and rust colored on T to so you're pretty get can get pretty excited about seeing that rusty patch on the brown belt did Bumblebee but you want to look.
Karen Goodell: Down beyond that, to see what what comes after that, and if it's black then you've got a brown belt and if it's yellow, then you can still remain really excited.
Karen Goodell: they've also got a completely black head, so no yellow hairs on their vertex they've got the yellow on their pleura or on the size of their thorax they tend to have a black spot on their thorax and sometimes these sort of dark dusky wings.
Karen Goodell: That the Queens and then newly emerging workers have this trait of being very.
Karen Goodell: Short even hairs and you can kind of see it on some of these slightly blurry pictures here on this male they're very clean and neat looking.
Karen Goodell: And this is a feature that's kind of interesting about the the brown dog did Bumblebee that when you when you see a bee that's just very clean and well groomed looking at.
Karen Goodell: That has a rescue patch that's very likely to be a brown Belt is Bumblebee sometimes the brown belt doesn't show up very well, especially in Queens and you can see that that would be replaced with just sort of a yellow area here.
Karen Goodell: And i'm going to talk now about the third probably most common Bumblebee species in the East.
Karen Goodell: Which is bombus by mackey latest and, of course, by the East i'm heavily influenced by my work in Ohio so I recognize it in some areas, maybe a further north of New England or down South you might not have the same relative abundances of bees.
Karen Goodell: The.
Karen Goodell: Bahamas by Nike latest is sometimes hard to tell from.
Karen Goodell: bombus bruising a call us the brown belt it's second abdominal segment has these two yellow spots on it that almost looks like a little w but that can be blurred sometime if you notice this queen she looks a little dusky and.
Karen Goodell: It almost looks like a little half moon this worker also it's hard to tell that that's really two spots, it almost looks like a little half moon but they don't tend to have any.
Karen Goodell: Any.
Karen Goodell: sort of rust colored pile on them they're thorax is yellow.
Karen Goodell: They tend to have this black spot in the middle of their thorax.
Karen Goodell: Their third through fifth abdominal segments are are all black.
Karen Goodell: For workers anyway and males are extremely variable So if you look up here at this male it seems to have yellow hair sort of all over his body.
Karen Goodell: So it can have little yellow stripes down on T for sometimes or on T three and sometimes on the underside of its body they tend to be a highly variable the workers are much more consistent in their coloration.
Karen Goodell: see another thing that's interesting about bombus financial aid is there very early species so actually we found our first bond us by Nike and Columbus.
Karen Goodell: Columbus area just this week and I haven't seen any other Bumblebee Queens yet myself.
Karen Goodell: By August you're pretty much seeing the very end of bombus by immaculata so they don't really continue into August, very much and by September, October, they will really not be around at all, maybe a few emails here and there, but.
Karen Goodell: cycle is shifted a little bit earlier.
Karen Goodell: Hopefully i'm not going too fast, but I do have a break in here for questions and can go back to anything that anybody has a question on.
Karen Goodell: The golden northern Bumblebee, this is another pretty distinctive Bead on this service this be is very, very yellow.
Karen Goodell: It has a black head it's got a thorax that is mostly yellow, but it has this distinct black band, and so, rather than a spot it's sort of us straight and then going across.
Karen Goodell: This is at least true for the the Queens and workers, sometimes i've seen males that have more of a spot a yellow and thorax but what's really distinctive about the golden northern Bumblebee is it has four completes abdominal segments one through four they're all yellow.
Karen Goodell: The fifth and in males the sixth abdominal segments are going to be black, but here we've got a Queen.
Karen Goodell: A worker and a male and you can see that they're pretty consistently all yellow all the way across they also tend to have dark wings.
Karen Goodell: And if you do get a look at their face of their tongue they've got a very long face and a very long tongue.
Karen Goodell: And they tend to visit flowers that some of the shorter term Bumblebee species can't access very well like crimson clover.
Karen Goodell: Big red clover flowers you'll see them visiting those and sometimes some of the other bumblebees with shorter tongues can't get get their tongues all the way down to the nectar in those flowers.
Karen Goodell: So this based species some there have been some publications that suggests that we have fewer of them now than than we used to and that's a source of concern and.
Karen Goodell: For right now they're not listed as in danger, but it's certainly a species to watch and a species of interest, we want to kind of keep track of where and and how many golden northern we are seeing.
Karen Goodell: I am going to delve into some of the Bumblebee species that are technically in eastern North America and get into the eastern us.
Karen Goodell: That have either a pretty northern or pretty southern distribution and for those i've provided little maps that I downloaded yesterday from.
Karen Goodell: showing you where people are finding these bombus borealis the northern amber Bumblebee i've actually never seen this in the wild myself so.
Karen Goodell: Maybe not super qualified to talk about it, however, we did find it in our Ohio Bumblebee survey, we have one specimen up around lake erie so certainly you want to look out for this Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: This is one that defies my my rule of thumb that females don't tend to have yellow hairs on their faces So if you see something that looks like this, you don't want to just grab it thinking it's a male because the females can have yellow hairs on their faces.
Karen Goodell: Like the golden northern Bumblebee they tend to have a black band between their wings on their thorax and.
Karen Goodell: If you look right here, you can see, the side of the thorax is all black giving it a very dark look.
Karen Goodell: The abdominal segments T one through four are all yellow and sometimes T five is also yellow so they have a very yellow abdomen they're very long tongue and again they have this very northern.
Karen Goodell: Distribution here, so you might be wondering how in the world, am I ever going to tell this from a vonda service, the golden northern Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: So I provided this little trick here golden northern bumblebees do not have yellow hairs on their face, not the females anyway, and if you look here at the side of their thorax they have yellow hairs right, so this one has black hair is right here.
Karen Goodell: So the pleura is yellow in the golden Northern and black and the northern amber Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: It also some of the pictures that i've seen of them anyway, they look the yellow the quality of the yellow color is a little different little sort of richer almost more orange yellow whereas these tend to be a much lighter sort of baby yellow color.
Karen Goodell: The black and gold Bumblebee one of my favorite Bumblebee species that's quite common in Ohio.
Karen Goodell: at certain times of the year anyway, is a very interesting species is it's extremely large, it has a little bit of yellow always has a little bit of yellow on it on its vertex maybe not very much but a little bit and that's going to be an important trait to remember.
Karen Goodell: It has a thorax, that is, has quite a lot of black on it in the middle here so it's not a black band it's really quite a lot of black all the way down sort of into the skew tellem area behind the wing basis.
Karen Goodell: it's pleura are all black so it's quite dark on the sides of its thorax it has dark wings, giving it also a very sort of dark appearance.
Karen Goodell: Typically, the the abdomen of these black and gold bumblebees are also they have the first abdominal segment is often quite black it will sometimes have some yellow on it.
Karen Goodell: But other times, not so that's a variable T two and three are almost always entirely yellow so it gives it much more striped appearance and the posterior segments, the four and five tend to be black on the species so sort of got a very sort of stripes sort of banded appearance.
Karen Goodell: I have never seen a small worker of bombus or comas.
Karen Goodell: They are always almost always queen size to the ones that i've collected and that i've seen this may not be true throughout its range.
Karen Goodell: But I think of this as a quite a large species, both with Queens and the workers.
Karen Goodell: And the other interesting thing is that they are really getting started quite late so mid to late summer the queen's are coming out in May and June.
Karen Goodell: You don't tend to get a lot of workers until July, I often see them in association with bernarda, although I haven't really been able to demonstrate this quantitatively from our surveys it's kind of a hard thing to pull out, but if you have a big patch of this be bond here.
Karen Goodell: you're quite likely to find these if you're in their range.
Karen Goodell: And a very, very similar species is the American bumblebees so these two species, we often have a hard time training people to identify in the field, one from the other, this is also a large sort of later season Bumblebee sort of mid to late summer.
Karen Goodell: its head and face are all black and i've underlined that remind me to tell you that you will not see any yellow on the vertex of an American bumblebees up here on the top of its head, sometimes.
Karen Goodell: The the previous Bumblebee the black and gold will look like it has little eyebrows like little yellow eyebrows.
Karen Goodell: Almost little yellow lines can be very subtle you won't find that on the American Bumblebee and that's one of the traits that I use in the field to distinguish these but likely.
Karen Goodell: The species, like the previous one can be a little bit variable in its in its color patterns so here i've got the thorax tends to be all black posterior early, whereas the previous one had a little bit of yellow on the back of the store X.
Karen Goodell: And the pleura are all black, just like the black and gold Bumblebee its wings also very dark.
Karen Goodell: And it's abdomen again T one can be either yellow or black and.
Karen Goodell: Sometimes a mix of the two T two and three are almost always yellow and the back part of its for X tends to be all black.
Karen Goodell: And males similar, but you can see, this male here has yellow on the posterior part of its thorax little bit of yellow on its face.
Karen Goodell: So, again I wouldn't feel bad if you can't tell these two species apart the differences are quite subtle they're both quite large species they're in similar habitats.
Karen Goodell: I can talk a little bit more about sort of some of the differences, we found in their distribution relative to Ohio they both tend to prefer to be in grasslands.
Karen Goodell: And you know are really not you don't tend to see a lot of workers in Ohio anyway until sort of mid summer.
Karen Goodell: This is also a species that is appears to be in decline, at it has been extremely widespread and common in the United States but there's evidence that is lost.
Karen Goodell: Distribution over a big part of its range, so we see this quite frequently, but I know that it is appears to be disappearing from much of its from parts of its range, and this is problematic it's been petition for the.
Karen Goodell: To be federally endangered and it's under review now.
Karen Goodell: Right, this is my break for questions.
Karen Goodell: And I be happy to answer any questions, right now, and I, while you're thinking of your questions i'll just point out these bees you got a.
Karen Goodell: Common Eastern Bumblebee, and this is actually also a common Eastern Bumblebee which reminds me to tell you that.
Karen Goodell: Sometimes you can get very unusual color patterns and it seems to be not that hard for a Bumblebee like the common Eastern to develop with a little bit of Orange.
Karen Goodell: hairs on its abdomen and I don't know a whole lot about the science behind this, but I know I know that these colored patterns have to do with hawks jeans and.
Karen Goodell: sort of his body body patterning gene so maybe small mutations and and a gene can give you a very dramatically different looking color pattern but we've often or not often but.
Karen Goodell: fairly regularly find a couple of these common Eastern bumblebees with orange hair on their happens, but nope the only yellow hair, you have here is on the first abdominal segment.
Denise Ellsworth: is scared so while you have that that worker up there, there were a couple questions in the Q amp a box about the size of workers and kind of what causes that or what influences that and how that may change through the season so maybe you could address that.
Karen Goodell: The size of workers okay so am I am I not supposed to read the questions myself so.
Denise Ellsworth: Oh sorry yeah I can I can hear them for you, if you want to field some to either way.
Karen Goodell: yeah so that's a really interesting question so in many of these species, the size of the worker is going to depend on how much food they get as a larva and that can be environmentally determined, or it might have to do with the ontogeny you know the onto genetic stage of the colony.
Karen Goodell: As I mentioned the common Eastern Bumblebee I have seen them everywhere from these tiny little bees they're about the size of a large and arena.
Karen Goodell: A little smaller than a honeybee all the way up to almost the size of a queen Bumblebee so it's a huge range and I know there are some ecologist and evolutionary biologists the biologist working on sort of the significance of bodies of.
Karen Goodell: Workers think that's a really fascinating line of research, but I think we're just beginning to understand you know how this is this an adaptive thing, or is it.
Karen Goodell: Something that just as sort of a result of food shortages, you know would they all be big if they could and then you'll get species, like the.
Karen Goodell: The black and gold Bumblebee boundless or comas and the American bumble bee balm of Pennsylvania guess, where I really have never seen a small worker.
Karen Goodell: So there may be something about just how those bumblebees are living Maybe the time of year during the mid summer where it's not advantageous to make a worker and lets you can make it large and I really don't know why we don't see anything very small i've seen very tiny.
Karen Goodell: Good golden northern bumblebees and.
Karen Goodell: i've seen large large ones too, so those tend to have a very big range in size, the.
Karen Goodell: The brown belt and the two spot but will be also tend to vary quite a bit in the in the size.
Karen Goodell: So I wish I had a better answer for you.
Denise Ellsworth: I don't know how many questions you want to take do you want to take one about ways to photograph to get those characteristics in.
Karen Goodell: I would love to wait until the end for that, because I actually have a whole little section on photography or very tiny section on photography awesome.
Denise Ellsworth: And then there are a couple queen questions and i'll bet you might want to wait for those two.
Karen Goodell: Possibly and not sure how much i'm going to go into Queens.
Karen Goodell: and see somebody talking about Beatty and there's a new layer and mimicry which I threw in because I think it's a very interesting subject and I teach biology lot but doesn't have much to do with identification.
Karen Goodell: And I think what you're getting at here is whether Margot hicks whether they're harmful or harmless.
Karen Goodell: it's it's really how harmful, they are to their potential predators that that determines whether it's Beatty and there are malaria and so things that are able to sting or venomous there's an there might be an advantage for.
Karen Goodell: Something that is not venomous to be able to mimic something is venomous to.
Karen Goodell: You know trick their predators.
Denise Ellsworth: And just maybe to clarify.
Denise Ellsworth: There was a question about how many abdominal segments, the females have with six verses males with the seven I think even spoken one of them, so.
Karen Goodell: i'm that's quite possible, I apologize yeah no problem.
Okay.
Karen Goodell: Is there any other burning questions.
Denise Ellsworth: There are a lot of range I don't want to take you too far astray.
Karen Goodell: Climate change, having the impact on phenology between bumblebees and flowers they require to survive, one of the neat things about bumblebees is they're highly generalized in their forging which makes sense because they have a very long life cycle.
Karen Goodell: Most of the research that I have read on sort of matches and mismatches between these and therefore resources, having to do with climate warming suggested there we we aren't finding very big.
Karen Goodell: shifts in in sort of the flower resources and the bees that use them now i'm not sure how much that would be really a problem for bumblebees anyway, because they are so highly generalized in their foraging.
Karen Goodell: How much be bombers enough to get through the black and gold Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: that's a great question yeah a big patch of it might attract them, but you know, there are other things that bumblebees need.
Karen Goodell: In order to survive, and one of the things about the black and gold Bumblebee that i've noticed you'll see from.
Karen Goodell: The results of our research is it it tend to be associated with open fields, and I think they're nesting out in these open fields and grasslands, so they would also need sort of access to good nesting habitat, in order to you know take advantage of any patch of the lawn.
Karen Goodell: Sally Adam says she wants a Bumblebee with a bright blue spot on the rear of its head what might that be, and that might be pollen that you might it might have been visiting a plant that has blue pollen.
Karen Goodell: Or you might be looking at the that a researcher has been painting, so they can identify it.
Karen Goodell: Okay, so I think, maybe I should move on and make sure I have time for everything and try to get back to some of those questions and if they're kind of groups of questions that I can answer at the end, that would probably be good.
and
Karen Goodell: I have controlled a nice there we go.
Karen Goodell: So i'm going to i'm going to move on to some species are kind of starting to get into some of the harder species here and.
Karen Goodell: The name of this species to death, that is going to be a hard one but confusing Bumblebee bombus plexus.
Karen Goodell: This is a be that you.
Karen Goodell: Is not super uncommon but it's not really one of our most common ones.
Karen Goodell: These tend to have a little bit of yellow on their head males will have a face that's yellow So you can see these pictures of males and the thorax of the.
Karen Goodell: Of the confusing Bumblebee tends to be all the yellow here, so you don't tend to get a lot of black hair it's got yellow on the sides of its thorax.
Karen Goodell: things get a little dicey in the in the APP so T one and two are almost always yellow T three can be black or yellow or a combination of black and yellow.
Karen Goodell: You do tend to get T five being mostly black one of the sort of gestalt.
Karen Goodell: features of this be is it a tend to look a little scruffy.
Karen Goodell: it's not a real clean yellow look at tends to have sort of uneven looking hairs it just got out of bed in the morning it's a very highly variable species, and you can see.
Karen Goodell: That in a second you'll see from the next slide.
Karen Goodell: that there are a lot of different color morphs the males tend to have a little bit more yellow on their abdomen than the females most more frequently so here are some pictures, this is from the cola Richardson and Williams.
Karen Goodell: pamphlet and you can see that here we've got the queen's.
Karen Goodell: Mostly tier one and tier two are yellow sometimes that extends into tier three here we've got a queen that's got a little bit of white hair on T five.
Karen Goodell: The workers also can be a little bit variable and how much yellow they have but, again, that thorax tends to be all yellow.
Karen Goodell: And then the males are a little bit all over the place, so they can be almost all yellow with the yellow face or they could be yellow with a little bit of black intermixed at their tails or they can have a black tail.
Karen Goodell: And if you do get up close and personal with a bombus for plexus one thing you might notice a sort of round sort of almost square off face that's.
Karen Goodell: Very common have this be and could help you distinguish it from other similar.
Karen Goodell: But yeah, this is a very confusing Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: A be that you might confuse it with would be bombers vegans that half black Bumblebee and I think this half black name refers to the fact that the abdomen has two segments of completely of yellow and.
Karen Goodell: The rest are black and that's a fairly consistent characteristics of this, be it tends if you're on the face, to have a slightly longer face.
Karen Goodell: it's got a little bit of.
Karen Goodell: yellow on its vertex you can see, on this specimen up here a little yellow hairs sticking out right there.
Karen Goodell: I think this is a pretty small Bumblebee even the queen's are relatively small, and it is associated with forest, so it tends to do well and slightly more forested landscapes, although it will certainly forage out in the open.
Karen Goodell: In comparison to obama's per plexus which also tends to be associated with forest and landscapes.
Karen Goodell: It has a longer so the this half black Bumblebee has a longer face, I would say it's often smaller and notice that it's thorax has a nice black spot right there which you probably would not see in the confusing Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: So i'm doing a bunch of species here that have the first and second abdominal segments yellow so you can compare them one against the other Bomba sanderson I the sanderson Bumblebee if you find this one, I would really like to know.
Karen Goodell: This is a particularly uncommon species, we don't know a whole lot about it and they're very hard to identify so.
Karen Goodell: Again, I always say if you find bumblebees with two abdominal segments yellow you've you know you've already got something pretty interesting you don't have one of the most common species.
Karen Goodell: So this one has a black face.
Karen Goodell: or yellow face it has a short tongue and it's thorax can be yellow or yellow with a little black spot between the wing basis.
Karen Goodell: T one and two, almost always yellow T three and four are black but T five can sometimes have a yellow or white band.
Karen Goodell: And so you really want to look out at the tales of your bumblebees to see if they have any evidence of yellow hairs down there.
Karen Goodell: Is that most certainly will lead you to a somewhat interesting Bumblebee So you can see it's pretty subtle on this image here it's not always that easy to see.
Karen Goodell: But really worth trying to get a good look at the tail they tend to be small bodied and late emerging they emerge in May and again very uncommon so for comparison.
Karen Goodell: We found a single individual of this species and our Ohio Bumblebee survey I don't think they're very common in Ohio at all or.
Karen Goodell: don't tend to show up and many Bumblebee surveys.
Karen Goodell: And this is this next be also is an uncommon Bumblebee in becoming less common depending on where you live.
Karen Goodell: This is the yellow banded Bumblebee bombus to record, so this be has a black vertex its its head is all black.
Karen Goodell: it's thorax has yellow anterior early and black poster yearly this first abdominal segment tends to be black and then it's got to.
Karen Goodell: yellow abdominal segments T two and three, and then will often have a yellow blue, yellow on its tail so T five, with a little bit of yellow or white pile right here, you can see that here, and that is true for Queens workers and often males as well.
Karen Goodell: This is a really.
Karen Goodell: Nice species, I have seen these in the wild before, but I happen to be in Vermont when I saw them.
Karen Goodell: Some of the studies that have come out recently suggested they're moving more northward or up into the higher elevations they seem to be responding to climate warming, perhaps.
Karen Goodell: There have been some sightings of these in Ohio near lake erie So if you live up in northern Ohio you want to keep people look out for these are especially interested in the in the yellow banded Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: This one was petitioned for the endangered species list, but ultimately they decided that it was still common enough that it didn't warrant federal listing.
Karen Goodell: But I would consider this rare and probably declining species, and I think if you do find one or a putative yellow banded Bumblebee people will be very interested to know that.
Karen Goodell: Varmus returning the southern plains Bumblebee so here I provided a math because this one doesn't occur.
Karen Goodell: Much in what I would consider to be the sort of central Midwest area, it has a more southern distribution and out into the great plains state, so it gets up North more in the in the prairie states there.
Karen Goodell: And I have never seen this species in the wild the southern plains Bumblebee so because I haven't collected in many of these areas.
Karen Goodell: This species has a has a black head tends to be a fairly large species, it has a thorax again with that Nice black band between the wing basis but otherwise yellow.
Karen Goodell: it's plural, so the sides of its thorax are yellow.
Karen Goodell: That to yellow segments on its abdomen and then the rest of its abdomen is black so that's a common feature that we've seen this one tends to have these dark wings.
Karen Goodell: A very round sort of short face, and this is another one like.
Karen Goodell: The black the brown belted Bumblebee, that is, it has a very neat looking appearance, if you look at some of these photos here, you can see how well groomed it looks like it's just been to the Barber.
Karen Goodell: And that's a characteristic of this Bumblebee species that comes from having very short even pile or hairs so neat and tidy be again with those very dark wings and to me it has sort of the the look of.
Karen Goodell: A black and gold Bumblebee or an American Bumblebee not the same color pattern but sort of a large size and those dark wings sturdy looking be.
Karen Goodell: promise ternary is the tri colored Bumblebee and here's one on providing a map for you can see, this definitely has a more northern distribution in the United States if you're lucky.
Karen Goodell: enough to live in these areas, this might be a very common Bumblebee in your area and to me it's an extremely beautiful species with it's very striking color pattern.
Karen Goodell: it's got a black hairs on its on its head, but sometimes the vertex can be a yellow so you may get a few yellow hair is up there in the vertex short tongued relatively short tongue for a Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: It has a very interesting thorax patterns of mostly yellow on the thorax but notice it has this sort of wedge shaped pointing backwards almost like a big thumbtack.
Karen Goodell: It has a fun abdomen here with the T one is yellow T two and three and it's an orange bright orange color teeth for is yellow and then T five is black, so this is a.
Karen Goodell: very sort of apple somatic coloration sort of warning coloration that is quite striking and i've seen these in the field, and they really do look as beautiful, as these pictures they're just gorgeous little bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: The hair is short three neat and tidy again.
Karen Goodell: And they can be quite variable in size i've seen very, very small ones and slightly larger ones examples of this species, so that would be the tri colored bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: And here we've got orange that is sandwiched in between yellow kind of like the rusty patch Bumblebee but it's a much bigger orange patch so and that tech shaped thumbtack shaped black spot would be a little bit bigger and a little bit different than the press the patch Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: A fourth species with red pile would be the red belted Bumblebee here's another of our more northern distributions and again.
Karen Goodell: This one is cross continental so you get all the west coast, all the way the east coast, I have never seen this one in the field that would be very unusual to get this down as far as Ohio, although they may occasionally get down here.
Karen Goodell: The red belted Bumblebee has the females have an abdomen were in T to they have a little bit of sort of bright red or bright orange red hairs.
Karen Goodell: and
Karen Goodell: T to cannot in some of them can also have a crescent of yellow hair so they're kind of a red morph and a black more both of those can can occur.
Karen Goodell: So these might be a little bit confusing to identify if you get a black more if you can expect to have.
Karen Goodell: T three is sort of black and then you start up with the yellow again on T, for if you get the red more 53 would be more reddish and then T for would be yellow and this is another fairly short haired Bumblebee species with a very round face.
Karen Goodell: And again with these different color morphs it's quite highly variable, so I would refer you to the Paul Williams book or the sheila color bumblebees in eastern North America to see some of the different color variations of this species.
Karen Goodell: This one alert emerges later in the season and in May, and it has this more northerly distribution.
Karen Goodell: Different from the tri colored Bumblebee right, so the tri colored Bumblebee remember has that sort of tech shaped wedge shaped black.
Karen Goodell: spot in the middle of it store X and this one would have more of around little spot and much more so black spot of hair on it store X.
Karen Goodell: Cork here great so bombus to China, says the lemon cuckoo Bumblebee, this is the only parasitic social parasite the that I decided to include in this presentation.
Karen Goodell: Many of these species are quite rare, but the lemon cuckoo be is fairly common through much of the East and Midwest again it's a social parasite, which means that the the female Queens they will invade the nest of another Bumblebee species.
Karen Goodell: suppress the Queen lay their own eggs, so they will lay female and male eggs, that they will get their host colony to take care of.
Karen Goodell: All of the female lemon cuckoo be eggs will grow up to be new Queens that will get to.
Karen Goodell: Go and Paris ties other Bumblebee ness and the males will get fed and then they'll go off and make another lemon cuckoo bees.
Karen Goodell: So in that way they don't really need Corbett easily and they don't have Corbett usually because they don't collect any pollen they make their host colony do all the pollen collection.
Karen Goodell: So this is a quite a color variable species and struggled a little bit trying to find pictures to show all these colored variants.
Karen Goodell: of no worker cast so they're all about the same size, they have a little bit of yellow on their head, they have a yellow thorax.
Karen Goodell: The ones that I personally have seen in the field tend to be like this left hand be so they have a yellow thorax they've got a mostly black abdomen but T three has a usually a yellow.
Karen Goodell: A little bit of yellow banding on it, you can get more yellow forms.
Karen Goodell: that some of the males are often a little bit more yellow and those will look a little bit like this, I think this males here, showing tier one and tier two those intermixed yellow and black hairs.
Karen Goodell: So again, a fairly highly variable species, you want to look for females, with a wide abdomen that lack.
Karen Goodell: palling carrying structures and that might suggest that you have a social parasite mumble the.
Karen Goodell: The other thing about the bombus to try this is they're almost a little bit like a carpenter be in the fact that their abdomen tends to be a little bit less very little bit more shiny so that's something else that you can look for in a lemon Cooper be.
Karen Goodell: Okay, so those are the the species that I chose to include in this presentation.
Karen Goodell: Probably I figured that probably including anymore when lead to serious amounts of confusion it's hard to remember even probably the ones that I have presented it, this is your first time really going through them in detail.
Karen Goodell: When you're out in the field, you often get a chance to kind of observe a be while it's sitting on a flower.
Karen Goodell: And this slide is my guide to where you want to look first you do get a few seconds well it's on that flower you want to first look at the abdomen and really note the color pattern.
Karen Goodell: You want to note, whether it has pollen baskets sometimes they'll be very obvious like this one, where they have pollen in them.
Karen Goodell: or they could be like this one, where there's no pollen in them, but you just see that sort of shiny flattened area where it sort of excavated with the hairs forming the basket around it, so that will tell you you've got a female and it's a non parasitic species.
Karen Goodell: Other things you want to know whether you know what's the form of a black spot or no black spot on the thorax.
Karen Goodell: What color is the top of the head here the vertex and if you get a really good look at it, what what the pleura or the.
Karen Goodell: You know, under the wing basis what color of hair does it have there, and those are some of the things that you really want to just automatically get used to noticing when you're.
Karen Goodell: Looking at a Bumblebee, because that will help you get through some of the guides and keys that are available to you to use to identify it.
Karen Goodell: photographer photo photography is a really wonderful way to share Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: Information and crowdsourcing your identifications is a nice way to learn your bumblebees and I can recommend a couple of different places to do that and I may be speaking to people who already are are doing these photo based web based.
Karen Goodell: identifications in in these naturalist communities, I naturalist is one of my favorites and you can make an account that I naturalist.org.
Karen Goodell: If possible, if you don't mind.
Karen Goodell: The slight lack of privacy, allowing people to see the locality, where you take your photos makes them more useful.
Karen Goodell: from a scientific point of view, because we can pinpoint locations, if you don't provide let the locality be known it's nice to see you know, a Bumblebee but it's not quite as useful because we don't know where it was so it might not be used in a scientific study.
Karen Goodell: If you do join I naturalist there are various projects on bees, that you can join the ones that i've been involved with the Ohio be atlas and they Ohio Bumblebee atlas.
Karen Goodell: And you can actually join these projects and your observations will get automatically logged into their.
Karen Goodell: databases, so the individuals that are following those projects can jump in and start identifying the beast.
Karen Goodell: And there are quite a lot of be specialists that spend a fair amount of time identifying these.
Karen Goodell: On I naturalist and Bumblebee watches, also a wonderful database, and that is mostly being monitored by a group of scientists.
Karen Goodell: So a little bit, unlike I naturalist where anybody can post an identification Bumblebee watch, you know that your bees are being identified by experts, and so, in that way.
Karen Goodell: It is, and you can really be about as sure as you can that the idea is correct.
Karen Goodell: And those are also been important databases for scientific.
Karen Goodell: Scientific studies on Bumblebee populations.
Karen Goodell: And then bug guide.net is a slightly different kind of community, but they also post things and experts will identify them there for you, so those are some options for crowdsourcing your identifications this picture here is the Ohio be atlas, and this is the Bumblebee watch a website.
Karen Goodell: When you go to photograph your bees.
Karen Goodell: You want to try to get as many of the characters that are important for identification in your photographs and many of these sites will allow you to upload multiple photographs of the same individual.
Karen Goodell: But you can see from my examples here this one on the Left would not be a very good photo for identifying the be, why not well really can't see what's going on in the abdomen you know you might want to say that this is a bombus and patients common Eastern Bumblebee, but it could be.
Karen Goodell: A brown belted or it could be a.
Karen Goodell: Two spot Bumblebee because you can't really see the back of the abdomen you can't see the top of the thorax.
Karen Goodell: And it's a little hard to see the the vertex as well, so you're missing some of the really key characteristics, if you go over here to the left.
Karen Goodell: or sorry to the right, you can see, this one will be, this is a really nicely photograph Bumblebee you can you can see, the two spots, right here so that's your two spot Bumblebee you can see, the total the whole abdomen get a really good look at the thorax and the vertex.
Karen Goodell: A little hard to see that has Poland baskets so it might be hard to know that.
Karen Goodell: A male or female, but in this case, because we know this species nails look a little bit different, this is probably a female be.
Karen Goodell: Okay.
Karen Goodell: You want to try not to cast shadows get them in focus, of course, and there are different ways that you can do this, you don't necessarily need the most fancy camera.
Karen Goodell: Famous photographer once said, the best camera to us is the one that you have right and that's often our cell phones and that's what you have with you all the time to document things and that's really going to be your best camera.
Karen Goodell: You can photograph bees and nets, you can catch them in little vials or and mason jars some people do even use plastic ziploc bags to catch things in and photograph them.
Karen Goodell: If you chill them down a little bit if you have that capability there they move slower and you can get maybe a better picture.
Karen Goodell: But one idea is if you've got to be that's pretty mad doesn't like being in the JAR and it's buzzing away very active, you can take a short video of that be, and then later go back and choose a frame where you have the characteristics.
Karen Goodell: that are useful in focus or choose a couple of friends that have different characteristics and focus, so I like I like that video idea is it could ensure that you could make the difference between an identifiable specimen and one that's not identifiable.
Karen Goodell: So those are my days, I have a couple more slides.
Karen Goodell: I see we're almost getting to the end and i'll just kind of run through these to show you some of the results that we found from our Bumblebee survey that we completed in Ohio and 2017 and 2018 and then i'll answer as many of the questions as I can.
Karen Goodell: This Bumblebee survey was funded by the Ohio Department of Transportation in response to the.
Karen Goodell: The rescue patch Bumblebee being federally listed they needed to know whether we had it and if we did where we.
Karen Goodell: want its habitat was I set out with Randy Mitchell, who you and I think later in this series there's Randy.
Karen Goodell: And Jesse novotny, who is a postdoc on this project here's Denise you as part of it as well and page we're who has randy's graduate students.
Karen Goodell: And we were asking what bumblebees live in Ohio whether we have the rescue patch Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: And wanted to know what the geographic and habitat distributions of ohio's be species, where we really want to learn at the species level, how are these distributed across Ohio.
Karen Goodell: Which means that we needed to make a lot of Bumblebee observations, because we have a lot of different species, but not all of them are very common.
Karen Goodell: And to get a chance of having enough observations of some of these rare species to really be able to say anything we had to.
Karen Goodell: observe a lot of bumblebees, I think, by the end of two years we had 24,000 observations and even then we felt like we were sort of borderline with having enough data to say anything about some of these individual species that are quite rare.
Karen Goodell: This is just sort of a summary of what we found so going from common to very uncommon we have sort of these first three here that were quite common the common Eastern Bumblebee the brown belt and the two spot Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: we've got the golden northern Bumblebee so so sort of in the next sort of Echelon of communists we've got the golden northern Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: The half black Bumblebee the black and gold Bumblebee and the American Bumblebee as well as the confusing Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: Pretty rare, what was the social parasite the the lemon cuckoo be and we did not find any sadly any rusty patch bumblebees, but there are a couple of other species that we didn't.
Karen Goodell: find we actually did find one bombus borealis and one Bomba sanderson I, but all of these other species are ones that might have been here, but we didn't actually get to see, since we have done the survey somebody has found bombus to regular the yellow band of Bumblebee in Ohio.
Karen Goodell: So how common are these species, and I said, we have sort of what I call the big three in patients.
Karen Goodell: So it's common Eastern brown belted to spot, and this is sort of our overall distribution half of our 24,000 bees were the common Eastern but will be.
Karen Goodell: And 30% were the brown belt 14% were the two spot and tiny percentages were made up by all of the other species.
Karen Goodell: So, most of you know if you're looking for bumblebees in this area, mostly what you're going to see is probably these three when you see something different, be sure that you're seeing something rather unusual.
Karen Goodell: These relative abundances change over the season, so if you're looking in June you're much more likely to see a to spot Bumblebee than in July.
Karen Goodell: And if you're looking in August you're not going to see it to spot Bumblebee probably you might see a male.
Karen Goodell: But they're very uncommon by the time you get to August and effect by the time you get to August, and in my part of the world and in Ohio it was almost all common Eastern Bumblebee so the time of season.
Karen Goodell: makes a really big difference June and July are really peak seasons in this area for seeing the greatest diversity of bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: We also found that where you look is very important, so this is a map of Ohio showing for four of our different species we've got the golden northern Bumblebee and you can see, this one sort of distributed.
Karen Goodell: Throughout Ohio in terms of the north, south gradient but you're it's really missing from Western Ohio up in the agricultural areas of Western no no northwestern Ohio.
Karen Goodell: As is the confusing Bumblebee In fact the confusing Bumblebee is really centered around northeastern Ohio we didn't get very many of these.
Karen Goodell: In western Ohio at all, and there are some down here in the forest, but very few it we're looking at all these blue spots.
Karen Goodell: And the half black Bumblebee also tends to be somewhat associated with these more forested or green areas of Ohio we don't tend to see a lot of it out in northeastern Ohio and these agricultural planes.
Karen Goodell: And you can Contrast that with the this graph shows both the golden sorry the black and gold Bumblebee and the American Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: And you can see they're a little bit more broadly distributed in the in the sort of flatter agricultural planes areas and a little bit less in the southern forests of Ohio so we were able to.
Karen Goodell: get a little bit better idea of how these are using the landscapes of Ohio.
Karen Goodell: we're interested for both Queens and workers and what kind of habitat they use.
Karen Goodell: So this is a result of a one year.
Karen Goodell: messaging queen survey, we are looking for Queens that were cruising along the ground searching for nest starting in April and May.
Karen Goodell: And I have a few of the videos from that.
Karen Goodell: From that study that Denise uploaded to the website so you can see what Queens look like when they're not searching it's a very characteristic behavior flying low to the ground, stopping digging in some leaf litter getting back out flying again.
Karen Goodell: So we looked at two things we looked at what habitat where they end when we saw them, whether it was sort of a maintain graph SS.
Karen Goodell: woodland edges, in the middle of a forest infield wetlands and you can see there we found a fair number across all of these habitats, a little slightly more sort of in the edges.
Karen Goodell: and maintained areas than we did and sort of fields and wetlands and many of these Queens were the common Eastern Bumblebee which makes sense they don't tend to nest quite as much I think in fields as they do and sort of forest edges.
Karen Goodell: The other thing we were interested in and sort of the locations where we saw them stop.
Karen Goodell: To gaining what sorts of habitat features were right in there and we call that the micro habitat that's what that little area right.
Karen Goodell: investigating a possible nest and we found that things like leaf litter and wood and sort of herbaceous layers were pretty important but other things like grass clumps ponds.
Karen Goodell: bare ground and rock piles were not very important and, although these were similar across the three species that we had enough data to assess So these are the big three the common Eastern the brown belt and the two spot there were some slight differences so, for instance.
Karen Goodell: The brown belted Bumblebee was more likely to be.
Karen Goodell: associated are looking for a nest in a grass clump and we do tend to sometimes see them nesting above ground in things like sense test six or bunch of grasses.
Karen Goodell: We looked at habitat preferences of the workers, so this is a graph showing.
Karen Goodell: Where workers reach their maximum abundance for all of our different species so here on the left, I have are more slightly more common species.
Karen Goodell: And one of the takeaways of this is that, although each of the species has a slightly different.
Karen Goodell: sort of habitat preference or seems to do best in different habitats these planted habitats tended to be the places where we saw most of them so roadsides planted urban areas and planted hay fields were very common compared to roadsides shrubbery areas and just natural fields.
Karen Goodell: On the right, we have some other rare species, so this was the golden northern the confusing the American Bumblebee and the black and gold Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: And what I also take away from this is that, for many of these these planted habitats were quite important, but we have a little bit more variation right so each of these seems to be kind of.
Karen Goodell: Coming to its highest abundance in different types of habitats and I think these can be very useful as we look into habitat conservation.
Karen Goodell: And then the last slide i'll show you is.
Karen Goodell: The results of a landscape analysis, we did so here we're looking at sort of a broader landscape perspective so it's a two meter radius from the site square we found these bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: And we're just looking here at the probability of occurrence of some of our rare species, then these are.
Karen Goodell: sorry that I put all the Latin names in here, this is from a publication that I can translate them so where we see as a proportion of forest in the landscape increases, we see that.
Karen Goodell: The bombers vegans are half black Bumblebee, it is a lot more likely to be found in these more forested landscapes.
Karen Goodell: As is, to some degree the golden northern Bumblebee and the confusing Bumblebee but the the black and gold, and especially the American Bumblebee are not associated with for us, and in fact the American Bumblebee tends to be negatively associated with forest.
Karen Goodell: So.
Karen Goodell: The result of looking at 24,000 specimens is that we can actually get a little bit better idea at the species level of how these bees are using habitat.
Karen Goodell: and landscapes and hopefully it can help us to think about some areas sort of going forward what we need for conservation Okay, so thank you so much for your attention, I think I have a few minutes to answer questions.
Denise Ellsworth: Karen Thank you so much effort, I put the link to the post test in the chat box, you can click on that if you want to go ahead and.
Denise Ellsworth: give it a try for the post test Karen if i'm on the Q amp a box, if you click on your little box, you can either say most recent or most up votes so if you want to click on that.
Denise Ellsworth: That will be the best way to see questions if you want to look through there and see which ones, you want to feel.
Karen Goodell: Okay quick most votes and scrolling to the top there's so many questions here.
Denise Ellsworth: Right yeah so the top one is how many Queens might come from a typical ness per year and I know you ingest he did some awesome research about that.
Karen Goodell: yeah so my my graduate student and former poster Jesse novotny and Jesse lenderman actually counted the reproductive success of of Bumblebee calm is that she had placed out on replay mines and she got anywhere from zero Queens to over 200.
Karen Goodell: And so there's a lot of variation so and I don't think this is very unusual for bumblebees that we can see some of them do very, very well and some of them just really tank.
Denise Ellsworth: let's see you can answer the one that looked at different habitats for bottles, do you um so we'll ask if there's a wall charter poster for bumblebees.
Karen Goodell: Yes, there is, and I.
Karen Goodell: don't have the link handy right now, but I can certainly send it to Denise and.
Karen Goodell: Can one species of bumbles meet with others and produce hybrids I don't know of examples of that but, at least from the ones that i'm talking about i'm not familiar with that.
Karen Goodell: hybridization and animals is a little rarer than in plants, I know.
Karen Goodell: And maybe someone like the other people on in this course with correct me on that if i'm wrong, but I don't know if any examples of that.
Karen Goodell: what's the best habitat to look for the rescue patch well i'm going to be doing that this summer I would start by going to the fish and wildlife service website and looking at the distributions of maps, where it has been found.
Karen Goodell: i'll be looking in Virginia West Virginia up in the mountains and apparently areas where there's a lot of landscape heterogeneity sort of.
Karen Goodell: aspect and slope differences and little patches of open areas in forest I think that's where i'm going to focus my my attention I don't know if i'll be successful, I know that if you're in Minnesota you might find them flying around in open fields or new forest edges.
Karen Goodell: Where there are flowers and I get I would say June and July is probably a good time to look for them, because you won't be in danger of damaging any Queens by then probably.
Karen Goodell: And you'll be getting the point where the workers are really building up over this, you know if you get a colony that will have more workers will be more likely to seen them.
Karen Goodell: i've seen some bumblebees flying around low to the ground and even hovering in certain spots, is that clean behavior yes, that is, Queen behavior so they're looking for unless.
Karen Goodell: Collecting bumblebees so I mentioned collecting bumblebees to catch and release how careful does one have to be.
Karen Goodell: You can catch and release bumblebees you can put them in a jar and photograph them and let them go, I think, as long as you're not clipping off their legs in the edge of the JAR or leaving them in there too long, I think that's probably all right.
Denise Ellsworth: Karen does that change if if you're in the like, with the rescue patch Bumblebee I was thinking tam last We talked.
Denise Ellsworth: About that you're not allowed to to gather molest right.
Karen Goodell: That that would definitely the rusty patch Bumblebee you probably do not want to pick that up to photograph it please or documented let someone know you see it but yeah do not catch that one.
Karen Goodell: If you catch it inadvertently I would let it go clean as possible without damaging.
Karen Goodell: Because that that you can get into some trouble for doing that, with a federal endangered species, you know that said, unless you're really in an area where they're common you probably won't be a species, you would be likely to select.
Denise Ellsworth: i'll put the post test link back in there's down to bottom roseanne got 10 out of 10 way to go, rosie on.
Karen Goodell: goo right that's the name I recognize and maybe been to a few of the workshops.
Karen Goodell: Is climate, so I think I answered the climate change impact one.
Karen Goodell: What best materials landscape arrangements helps offer the most option, preventing mess great question.
Karen Goodell: there's a lot of information on the web about putting out like look flower pots are little boxes are things, but I think bumblebees tend to nest and rodent burrows and.
Karen Goodell: Maybe even be attracted to mouse poop and that sort of stuff that you would find an analysis so i've actually thought of trying to make some little boxes, or even sort of flowerpot.
Karen Goodell: clay flower pot things and putting mouse stuff in there, like from an ass nest and see if I can get the bees attracted to it that way you have good rodent populations, you might have good bumble bee populations.
Denise Ellsworth: For awesome Thank you Karen for this wonderful overview of some of our eastern species of bumblebees and North America folks a lot of you have put a thank you into the chat box, thank you for doing that.
Denise Ellsworth: If you haven't done the post test go ahead and do that, to see how your knowledge has increased.
Denise Ellsworth: And if you're coming back for the Western ID you're welcome to stay on line you don't have to log back in it's the same link to login.
Denise Ellsworth: So you can just come back at the top of the hour Karen are you okay for a few minutes, do you have a few minutes to spend with us so guys, if you have Karen do you think you could go through the quiz and just you know just take.
Denise Ellsworth: Five minutes Max maybe I can just walk through the questions and tell people how they might know to identify all those those bees in the quince.
Karen Goodell: yeah let me, let me pull that up.
Denise Ellsworth: Great super so hang on if you want to go through the quiz come back if you're going to stick with us for Lincoln best session on Western bumble ID.
Denise Ellsworth: If you're heading off thanks everybody for joining us hope to see you next week with Randy Mitchell for Bumblebee botany which will be wonderful.
Karen Goodell: Open the one that hasn't been okay.
Karen Goodell: So, should I just share my screen again.
sure.
Denise Ellsworth: We haven't really planned on doing that Karen but somebody.
Karen Goodell: said yes okay.
Denise Ellsworth: Well that's a great idea let's say.
Karen Goodell: i'm working on my tiny laptop here.
Karen Goodell: Can you guys all see this yeah okay.
Karen Goodell: Okay, what is this.
Karen Goodell: And this, so this, you see, I didn't put Bumblebee and that's a hint if you look at the head of this be super wide right almost as wide as it's thorax.
Karen Goodell: This is a Lotus Carnegie Lotus flower I believe it's kind of small plants as a relatively smallish be, but this is an ice me a mason be so if you get down here, this will be, not a Bumblebee other kind of the so that's your as me and beautiful a buffalo headed Nice and be.
Karen Goodell: I yeah they really look like the movies.
Karen Goodell: But they're not.
Karen Goodell: here's a Bumblebee you'll notice this one has a single abdominal segment of yellow it's not the greatest picture for identification, because you can't see what's going on up here.
Karen Goodell: But faces should be pretty clear common Eastern has one abdominal segment of yellow so that's the correct answer.
Karen Goodell: lemon cuckoo be would probably have yellow elsewhere on the abdomen or be a little bit shiny around the abdomen.
Karen Goodell: The brown belted would have something going on, and the second abdominal segment like a rusty brown patch and a half black would have to abdominal segments, they were yellow and this one only has one, so the best answer here is common Eastern.
Karen Goodell: Here we got a really FAB I love this picture, you can see that little half moon of brown pile here.
Karen Goodell: and, beyond that, as black, so you might get excited that this is a rescue patch Bumblebee but no it's just the brown belted Bumblebee so that would be.
Karen Goodell: brown belt in the rusty patch would have yellow below it and it's not the tri colored, although it does have three colors because tri colored would have to bright orange segments, and then another yellow segment.
Karen Goodell: Here we've got our bombus service, the yellow Bumblebee and I could have made this harder by giving you some choices that had other bumblebees with a lot of yellow like the bombus borealis but I didn't make it that hard.
Karen Goodell: So you can see those four yellow segments are very typical of the boundless service and that black bar between the wing basis and as visiting crimson clover, which has deep flowers and it's got a long tongue.
Karen Goodell: Another gorgeous picture of a Bumblebee with showing the two spots, this is your bombus by Nike latest to spot Bumblebee it's really the only species that's got that distinctive pattern.
Karen Goodell: it's and you can see it's got pollen basket, so you know it's a bee so it's not a bee mimic.
Karen Goodell: This one.
Karen Goodell: Well, hopefully, you can recognize this one, this is your rescue patch Bumblebee or visually full of pollen there's the rescue patch with yellow below it and yellow above it so that's the rescue patch Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: The tri colored would have two full orange segments, and then yellow and red belted would also have yellow below, but it would have the rusty patch would be down on.
Karen Goodell: This one's kind of hard.
Karen Goodell: This you might think, maybe is obama's PR plexus.
Karen Goodell: But you see this big black spot so that mama's for plexus tends not to have that big black spot, so this is the half black Bumblebee with the two yellow abdominal segments.
Karen Goodell: And I yeah so I did I ask if it was bombus for plexus but that's how you would distinguish it from that and I think it's pretty obviously not a rusty patch and it's pretty obviously not the.
Karen Goodell: Common Eastern.
Karen Goodell: Oh, this one's a really hard one So if you if you guessed either American Bumblebee or golden northern you did really I mean sorry American Bumblebee or black and gold Bumblebee you did very well.
Karen Goodell: You can see tiny little yellow eyebrows right there that's really the main indication that what you're looking at is.
Karen Goodell: The golden northern Bumblebee and not the American Bumblebee so that was a very hard one.
Karen Goodell: And here's our beautiful beautiful let's see what the choices are here yeah so not the rusty patch because too much orange in the wrong place.
Karen Goodell: And the red belted Bumblebee.
Karen Goodell: would have a smaller bit of red here just one segment of bread typically.
Karen Goodell: And this one here.
Karen Goodell: This one shouldn't be.
Karen Goodell: might have gotten these mixed up this one, I think, is bombus or comas this one has a little bit of yellow up here so Actually, I may have made a mistake in mind here, because this one is pretty clearly bonus or comas.
Karen Goodell: it's got the yellow down here on the thorax and the yellow up here so i'm going to call that black and gold Bumblebee and i'm going to go back up here and correct mine, because now that i've seen it, I think this is my.
Karen Goodell: copy of the American Bumblebee and maybe, though, what i'm looking at there that I thought was the little bit of yellow pile is just a reflection.
Karen Goodell: pull you those were really hard.
Karen Goodell: I often get out my hand lens and look at these in the field to look at their faces to make sure i'm really looking at it in the right way.
Karen Goodell: Okay, so I guess I got nine out of 10.
Denise Ellsworth: Well it's helpful for those of us who don't do this, all the time, just to see how hard it is for those of you who are experts in it, I mean they're really challenging, especially on the fly in the field on a flower, really, really challenging.
Karen Goodell: yeah there's no there's a you know you're using experts, if you see something that you think is really interesting I mean I use I send it to colleagues to.
Karen Goodell: Make sure i'm really doing it right and we do a little bit of.
Karen Goodell: Collection destructive collection, so that we can get vouchers and really look at them at microscope but yeah Bumblebee identification is really tough on the other hand, a lot of these species are pretty rare So hopefully the common things you've gotten a good idea that.
Denise Ellsworth: Great and thanks again Karen folks in 20 minutes we'll start with our Western ID session so you're welcome to just hang out there grab some coffee and we'll be back together in a few.
Karen Goodell: Great Thank you so much Denise thanks Karen.