So at this point I'm really excited to have Jenan el Hifnawi and Sam Droege here with us to talk about some of those ways that we can make a difference for bumblebees the programs that we can all
use to access or to do Doctor bumblebees and yards, gardens, parks, and natural areas, and what plants they're on.
Jenan is a undergraduate student studying biology with a minor in entomology and sustainability, and she's also the survey coordinator for the usgs bumblebee
survey that we're going to learn more about the wonderful San Droege, who is a incredible bee biologist, manages so many different resources that he provides ready ready ready access to for those of us who are giving programs pulling information together
he has all these images, the very handy bee manual so many videos that he's done on b identification.
I've tried to access a lot of those or make a repository for those on our bumblebee shortcourse website.
So just really appreciate all that Sam does to build community in the bee world to pull people together and to share his many resources.
So, Sam and Jenan i'm going to pass the the podium over to you.
I should unmute. Thank you, all right, Good. And, Denise, I you know you feature us very well.
I have to say that your series is just absolutely fabulous.
You have. First of all, you have a wonderful speaking voice, and people in the chat.
Should you know. Praise you up because you know you're the person that makes this work.
I really love hearing you and you do you? You know you should do this professionally beyond the B world.
So I think we should just acknowledge you as a being component of all the series which I listen to
Eventually all the talks that you put together. So thank you for doing that.
Thank you and I also say that yeah things like the handy B manual discover life guides and things we're always working on.
And now we have a group of people we have clare mafia in our lab, and other folks who are are circulating through.
So it's very much a group effort so expect a new version of the Handy B manual.
There's lots of new things to talk about there today.
Bumblebees. and this is new ventures for us to working more specifically with bumblebees and very much our labs, new ventures, which is, be plant relationships.
So while we're talk about today, we're gonna speak about the general status of bees in the East.
So I know there's a larger audience here. but I'm going to focus on the Eastern half of the continent, including Canada.
We're gonna then talk about what's important for saving bumblebees hint it's all about plants.
And then we're going to talk. about a need for collecting more information about that bumblebee plant relationship which is not very well documented other than you know.
We know that they have pictures of different mum will be on these plants. so we'll talk about that Jenan's going to talk about that as a program, and the neat thing is that there's really 2 neat things Well, there's
many neat things, but the neatest thing is that this is something everyone can participate in.
There's not a high bar in terms of like what you bring to this program like we don't ask you to know all the different kinds of species of bumblebees.
Or all the technical parts that you learned about over the last few weeks.
We're asking you just to initially be able to discriminate carboner bees and bumblebees.
Most of you already know this and will tell you again how to do that there's additional things, and I don't want to give away Jenan's talk here.
But So i'm gonna stop with that let her talk about that later.
And then I also gonna say, this is not a monitoring program.
This is a data gathering program on plant b relationships and it will have immediate use.
So we're it's not like well in 10 years we'll tell you about how the trends of mumblebees are doing so with that.
Let me go to the slides and we will go to the top.
Not my email. Can I do that button? There you go right.
And now trying to make this full screen, this first slide should be replicated at the end. Contact information.
All the pictures here are public domain. You can grab them download and do whatever you want with them.
Don't even ask us because we're going to say Yes, you can follow us in various social media platforms where we go into detail about some of the really cool natural history things which we're not gonna have time for today.
And you can contact us for more information and we'll have contact for Jenan's program here in the course of this talk, too.
So now this is kind of laying the groundwork. I need you to really think about these kinds of things.
So we live in an environment in a location i'm using Maryland, as example goes for Ohio, or anywhere else in the world that is as complex, has evolved as you know, integrated among all kinds of plan and animal communities as anywhere
else in the world. So we send times we often diminish our own home territory. but it's as comp these relationships are as complex as in the Amazon and the arctic in the African savannah's
all those kinds of things. So first of all we have to think that we have this some responsibility now for maintaining our home places.
It's not all about like well the problems are elsewhere in the world.
No, these places need to be preserved bumblebees are one component of that, and there's going to be trickle down in helping bumblebees for the region as a whole.
And again, there's this plant b relationship that's a reflection of many kinds of plant interactions with many other kinds of insect groups, butterflies, and other kinds of things, and doing things for that plant group we're going
to emphasize the bubble B component but is also going to be very helpful for many other things.
I'll also point out that yeah, well probably i'll ask you this.
Okay, So think about where you live, and we'll have a little think more thinking about that in a second.
But I also think about where you go for walks. When you drive to work or drive anywhere.
Think about and I want you to start observing what you're seeing.
So you'll probably go by wood lots and woods and you'll probably go by roadsides and look to see.
So most of that's going to be green because things are greening up green and brown, right where's the color the color of flowers.
And remember this is what is always going to be bumblebee food and all be food.
So if there's no color, in those woods there are no flowers essentially, and if there are no flowers, there are no bumblebees, there are always some flowers somewhere sneaking around.
But the solution is going to be visible to you, which is, we need to get more flowers into these environments.
So. a lot of these are degraded in a way, you know.
They were something like an old field. They They start recovering that biodiversity has leaked out, or we've simplified it by spraying or mowing and things like that.
So your job is to add color, ie. flowers to a lot of these environments.
And 2, we will begin to flesh out some of the reasons why, but it's it's basically you know it's on you here's your your responsibility.
Your call. And what have we done with all this biodiversity? as a culture, as a community?
We've taken this really complex as complex as anywhere in the world environment. And here's here's the are the average solution. right?
So you guys are in the pocket of biodiversity and things.
But think about this. These are places that have no real benefit to the environment.
They may be even negative compared to parking lots because you're not only sheeting water off your sheeting all the chemicals that are in there, too.
I don't need to preach to you i'm preaching to the choir here, but these are also opportunities.
So these same environments can be moved back into usable, wonderful biodiverse kinds of places by increments, or in sometimes wholesale, depending on where you live.
So I'm on i'm gonna step off my my what is it my talking about?
What's the right version the what is it demand what's the box got it?
Oh, down off the soap box! Who even knows what a soapbox is?
So. this is the point again, when we're shading b saving bumblebees where it's about saving pollen. right?
So we want more pollen. We want for more flowers in the environment.
So i'm going to now do a brief jaunt through some databases that you guys know and can participate in.
So I, naturalist a lot of you are on I naturalist, and contribute pictures, probably of bumblebees.
So here's a big chunk of recent data so There's one thing you can do take more of these pictures.
It gives us some idea of status We don't really have a national bumblebee survey program.
So these are surrogates incomplete though they are they're at least giving us some portrait of what kinds of bumblebees are out there. and then old data we'll call this museum data
largely prior to I nationalists. ends up in a global database, global global database system called Gbif, And it's mostly harboring information that has been scraped out of museums over many
many years. So we're going to compare those 2 there are some issues here.
So on the positive side there's thousands of records Okay, for bumblebees.
In both these data sets they roughly cover the same distributions.
Bias though they may be in some cases geographically.
There are many people involved, so it's not like Oh, this one person has really, you know, skewed the data in some way.
Lots of different people doing lots of different things. They beauty of averages are that that smooths out a lot of differences, and there are many collection in it.
So people have gone out many, many, many, many many different times, and that also helps smooth out some of these sampling issues.
So i'm just saying these are imperfect data sets. but there's so much of them we can do a little bit in terms of looking for and hunting down big scale changes in rumblebee populations. So here.
Are some of the problems we won't dwell on them, and just, you know, stating what for somebody you might be obvious.
So it undercounts things that are away from data centers.
People live in cities. they don't live so much in rural areas.
So therefore there is more data in cities. and there are differences, great differences in why bumblebees are collected by naturalist.
We have people who are taking pictures and They are enthusiastic, and they're taking pictures of pretty much anything sometimes with some bias towards the prettier bumblebees perhaps, and the museum people They are all about
rare things. so every rare bumblebee was kept and a lot of the non-ray bumblebees were discarded or never collected.
To begin with. so they're a little bit biased towards these rare things so, but it's good because they really It is a good way of saying that there were a lot or a little of these these more rare kinds, of things, and
So we have common bumblebees emphasized by eye naturalists and rare bumblebees emphasized by the older data.
So we have to be aware that we start looking. at things we also don't have really good information about these bull boreal and polar bumblebee populations.
So there are lots of bumblebees in the arctic.
It's them kind of basically the biggest bee community up there for lots of cool and interesting reasons.
But because there's no one up there looking at this we don't have much information.
So we're gonna skip this group in terms of talking about things.
And now we're going to go to northern bumblebees.
So this would come down some of these species are within ohio i'm grouping things in convenience.
So the bulk of the distribution of Northern mumble bees are Southern Canada Northern us, and the red ones that you see here.
Sorry that that didn't use common names just you I have a block against most of those.
So if people in the chat want to put in common names for some of these things that would be great, The red ones are nest parasites of humble but other bumblebees.
So they're taking over so to speak the nests of the other species.
They are automatically rare right you can't support a system where the the the parasitic B is more common, and they they have a very different lifestyle that takes them thinking about so they're automatically rare i'll point
out Bomba sash. Tony is sometimes called bombus bohemicus, and bombus fernality is sometimes called something else, which I don't remember based on molecular things.
We follow what are essentially still deep old naming conventions.
And the ease, little ease. Those are bumblebee species that are somehow have been involved in the endangered species.
Act assessments so Afanus is our rusty patch bumblebee, which is endangered, and the others are have been evaluated, are going to be evaluated.
So they're already documented as being in trouble if we look at these Northern bumblebees.
A couple things to see. So this orientation I naturalist numbers here. and this is the old data.
So this is after World war, 2 data, 1,950 to 2,000.
And here's basically world war 2 and earlier data and you can see by the toals down here these are quite different.
So we're going to work with proportions because these are not comparable.
In terms of the actual numbers, and just a couple things to point out.
One is. Look at this bombus. Ashtoni number here for I, naturalist in the recent number of years, really low.
Okay, So it meets that sort of notion. of maybe we got a problem here with this particular species, and you can see, even though in in these other sets that they're quite quite a bit higher in terms, of overall numbers
proportionally. It shifts a bit when you start looking at proportions.
And here in the Post World War Ii. data, older data.
You can see bombus tricola, which is another species that was involved in an assessment.
But deained to be not in an endanger category had was very high numbers in comparison here to the more recent stuff.
So we need to do proportions to really speak allele, but at least a little bit accurately to correct, for the problem of different sample sizes here.
Light blue means. These are differences that are a positive in the positive way.
So increases, and the peach color means decreases, and we have 3 categories of comparisons.
We have current, and by that I would mean I naturalist with the Post World War Ii.
We have Pre World War Ii and Post World War Ii.
All that would be basic museum data collected in a relatively similar way.
And then we have the I naturalist and the pre-roll or 2 data.
There's a lot going on so i'm just emphasizing a few changes.
Bombas, turn areas what's the common name of that it's the one with all the red on this butt very northern, and, it turns out, has really shifted towards the common end of the spectrum.
So here we have 22% increases, orange. wet bolted orange belted, not rusty patched, but orange belted bumblebee, and so it's in our apparently very good shape.
Also super attractive. Take a picture of so maybe there's a little more bias to collecting that way. but we know it's on a positive up the negative.
We see that our friend Lumbus curricula, which was in that assessment of endangered species.
But deign to still be stable enough to be range.
It has really tanked in the East. So it's down 17% compared to right after World war Ii And prior to World War Ii down 15%.
So basically in both the comparisons of the old data there's a lot fewer of them apparently now that before we look at Bombus Afanus, it's really not hugely different right then, some of these other
categories. it's showing negativity. So 9% drop 3% proportional drop here with Pre World War Ii.
But you know the thing is with I Naturalist everyone is trying to take pictures of bombers Afghanistan. So there's probably an over-emphasis of that.
But still it's showing the the statuses as we know from more detailed, more sophisticated analyses.
It's basically retracted from almost all of its range populations.
So mid-latitude bees more in the pocket of Ohio, and a lot of the Mid-atlantic States.
Here smaller number, because the species decreases. You go south.
One species of nest parasite bombers to Tryinus, and then a bunch of friends that we see as relatively common.
Not a huge number of patterns here, but a lot of data.
Look at all these numbers down here particularly I naturalists over a 100,000 recordings in just the last few years, and that's going to increase.
And if we look at the changes we see again, like Turnarius, we have bombus and patients, which I think is the Eastern bumblebee.
Is that right Eastern bomb will be and anyway, it's our most common one.
Most people are familiar with it way up compared to the museum information. somebody that's biased like people just threw out a lot of these bombus and patient specimens in the old days, but also an indication of
at least stability, if not increasing a proportion to compared to others.
If we look at a lot of the other patterns there's not a huge line of differences between the old and the new data in terms of changes proportions.
Mostly we're just seeing more impatience as the big change factor here.
Now, when we get to Southern bumblebee so the weight of the distribution of these species is way to the South, I didn't mark this pistambus Pennsylvania as American
bumblebee is something that's involved now with a proposal to be provided with a threatened or an endangered status, and it has retracted from certain parts of its northern range.
Is the most apparent change in that population. fraternis the Southern bum will be, I think that's his name is, and Bombus Variables is the this group's nest parasite.
So it's and let's see what some data show here.
So a couple things. First of all, there are no records of bombus variables, since I think the last one might have been.
We had a record in Maryland in the seventys but I think eightys maybe ninetys possibly, but really it's it's pretty much disappeared, really problematic also difficult to study.
Right. It was rare to begin with now. it's like how do you find It is a problem interesting problem with that we have so taking more pictures still, a good idea.
Maybe one will show up hopefully. One will show up hard to manage Thomas Pennsylvaniaus, though still large numbers.
Look at here at I, naturalist 16,000, and pretty much in comparison to that.
So at least in the Bulk of its range it's to the south there still seems to be quite a bit of bombus Pennsylvaniaus.
In fact, weirdly coming to why it was why they ask for endangered species status.
It is increasing kind of across the board Here, in these different comparisons, at least a little bit, and the other species have declined in terms of their proportional visibility.
Particularly bomb is very obvious, like is in in that kind of system.
So less evidence that obama's Pennsylvania is probably something that we need to be super concerned about.
But it gives you an idea that things change up and down.
We have a couple species that were really problematic Afanus and Barry Obelis, and a couple that we have big question marks on, and the rest just seem to be moving relatively around.
So the most common species is pretty stable list here, with some members down below going off and then coming back on 200 list.
But we still have many of the species. How absolute numbers, you know.
Number of bumblebees per acre pretty there is some weird evidence.
It's very difficult, because we don't have this monitoring stuff that the the density of bumblebees has gone down.
The We can all tell stories about how common they were on our in our childhood, and we stepped on them in the lawns and got done hard to say.
But there is some evidence that they were perhaps a whole lot more common density.
Wise species wise. Some problems Lot are still, you know, in our pocket.
We can do things with them back again now. diversity. of native plants equals diversity of native bes.
So we're remembering that in the big picture across all B.
Species, and we're going to ask questions about is that true for a generalist like Bumblebee.
So remember, bumblebees have to be out all year long.
They have to use a lot of different plant, sources for nectar, and you know importantly, for pollen, which is more restrictive to bees than nectar is so they're pickier about the pollen than they are about the
nectar, and since their colony is year-long, more or less in the season, there has to be some choosing of a broad list of plants that are good.
But it turns out as genetic will talk, about you know it turns out they're a little more picky than we realize in which plants they're going to choose, and some are like No, we're not going.
To we're not we're not using that borrow anywhere.
That kind of thing. so big. picture about 4,000 different species.
Or if you look at an individual state in the east you know there's It's going to be around 4 to 500 species, and most of our yards have access to all the species diversity whether they're there or not
depends on our planting list. Most of you again know the story. Honeybees not native to the Continent.
They are a very poor model for thinking about all of our native bees, including bumblebees. 2 they're so radically different that if mostly what you know about bees is what you know about honeybees you know because
culturally that's something that we we do know quite a bit about.
Well, you need to forget all of that, and start learning about some other things, because none of that honey waggle dance comb.
You know, Barb sting allergic reactions is present within our native groups, including bumblebees.
So the just just pointing out that the honeybee model is usually applied when we have the average person wants to begin to think about it's their framework, and we need to move that framework away and replace it
with different details. So one of the stinging so in general, when, you say all we want to promote flowers, Sometimes people say, Well, we really don't want any more bees around.
We don't want to be stung so the native species are not a stinging issue.
Flowers are not a stinging issue. you can if you grab a bee, perhaps be stung, but they don't defend resources.
So you're not creating community stinging issues by bringing things in and plus.
If you're mostly working with me natives you're not going to send anyone's little darling to the hospital, either.
So most are single. Most of the b species i'm gonna give you general information out seeing moms nesting in the ground that are going to use these same floral resources as bumblebees bumblebees
you might think, because they're a little more willing to defend their nests, but not much.
I've dug them up out of my garden, and it's like Oh, there's bumblebee nest that I've just exposed and not been stung but you can also still get stung because bombas
Pennsylvania, for example, is notoriously cranky.
If you mess with its nest it's going to you know give you a sharp kiss, but we're not going to be allergic to them.
So that's the good part of a possible stinging issue, and it's always a nest thing right stings happen around nests, not elsewhere, unless you're messing with the B to catch it in your hand Why, would you do
that I was your child. We know that we know how that works.
Having been a parent. So most bee species, particularly the solitary use pollen only from a few plant species.
Even the relative generalist species are still quite picky you know that rolodex of plants that I'm gonna call on for a bee species is pretty small compared to the larger fourth 1,000 species that are available to be called
on normal bees, as a hint here also have a relatively small rolodex, maybe a little bit bigger, because you have to go throughout the whole year.
Compare to others when we just talk about specialists to be so.
These are not mumble bees, but these are a lot of these other solitary bees, often up to 30 to 40% of the total population of bees in a region are highly specialized.
You get all kinds of really interesting things like here. is just and we're not going to talk about them.
But here's a list of things that have bees that are entirely are primarily focused on gathering pollen just from those plants.
It's different than you would think sometimes and you know one of those cool things about Bmb biologists is to discover and looking at those things.
So again, the stinging thing about 25% of all the females who are the only ones who have stings can't even sting, you know.
Put that sting through your skin. so just really emphasizing not a stinging thing.
So, and emphasizing it's about saving native plants and native and planting them so that's the solution, and the we end emphasize native not because bees aren't using and you'll see particularly with
bumblebees. there is a use, and sometimes quite a high use at certain times of year, of non-native plants.
Pretty glee in the spring. a lot of these female bumblebees are tanking up on the nectar of get over the ground purple, dead nettle ba Barbary and other aliens and
so that's something we have to think about in terms. of our strategies for helping out bumblebees.
But for the for most B species and most b species conservation it's the native plants that are the anchor.
So, and the reason is that the generalist bees, often will play around with the use of non-native plants and non-native plans often provide nectar, which is a generalist sort of beverage.
Let's call it that lots of bees can use pollen tends to be much more highly specialized secondary compounds, poisons, repellents, different levels of lipids, fats and all kinds of
phytochemicals that are important for bees, and Hb.
Makes a determination about what on that chemical list it's tolerates and is usable and it's really variable.
So that's the importance of the native plants is that Sometimes they are the only thing that's providing that for these less common groups, not the crow and sparrow bees all of these are kind of a crow and
Sparrow B. but you know, still they have so many problems.
We tend not to degrade them in that way. So in general, when planting, without any other information, native plants, then perennials and shrubs, So most of the specialist bees and are specializing on a
perennial and shrub not trees and not annuals, and the bumblebees are working that whole entire system so still emphasizing perennials and shrubs is a good strategy and
you don't have to know all the the shimmering details about things, and also just to point out in terms of a like cocktail party.
Fact, about 5 flowers, on average, provide enough pollen and nectar to support a baby.
Be very variable you know there's flowers and then there's flowers, one so another interesting one so the annual sunflower, one annual sunflower produces enough pollen to support over a 100 bees just one
plant. So you know there's your contributions are not in gigantic acreages.
Sometimes it could be one sunflower plant at a time.
So good thing to play with schools and talk to kids about right is Here's something you can do plant a sunflower.
Lawns. We know we know this is not a good thing.
We may. at the end of this mumblebee study they'll say, you know what in the spring when queens are starting to come out, and if you have a lawn in which you allow weeds to grow which is different
from many of North america's. wonderful you know men I don't I'll pin it on them where weeds are not allowed to grow, but weedy things if you do the nomo at the beginning of the year when the
queens are out, there is probably some good possibilities that you are supporting at least the tanking up of nectar.
Using some of these weedy plants for your queens.
Otherwise. Hmm! You know it's a croone spiral thing again.
You could do better by replacing it with entire native plant planting.
So in general, some things that you can do that are relatively quick.
So you have a larger property or you're working with a municipality, or a school a lot of times long, long, long line woods, or a fence row.
Nobody is playing at that on those edges. No one plays at the woods lawn edge.
No one plays right at the edge of the fence or uses that.
So one mower deck that's what the maintenance people want you to tell them mow that area, but only once a year.
That's a lot of good right there remember 5 flowers is all it takes.
So there's some little things that you can do you can look at their backyard and talk about the back very back section.
Little pockets here and there, doesn't take many flowers and then you can also start adding in flowers to that environment.
You do have This is just my warning slide you know don't let everything go.
Your neighbors will really hate you and that's not a positive for the environment to have hate spread around for people who like pollinators. right?
So if you want a large chunk of your property to be in naturalized habitats with lots of flowers, then you need to keep all the sidewalks edges really trim the You know the edge of the road your
driveway. Your house should have traditional bedding plants.
The edges of the your yard with your neighbors fence should also be well trimmed.
It has to look like you did it on purpose, and that you did it consciously, and it meets some of the specs largely.
You can get away with anything after that. So there are. These are systems now that are important, for in in terms of big systems that are important for bees within our Eastern region and elsewhere.
And the these are also really important for bumblebees.
As a plant community. So your spring woodland flowers so a lot of these can be on anything that's blooming in the understory.
So in the bottom lands and other places, and all the rich slopes in the mountains.
You have all these plants at this point right now, that are blooming.
These vernal plants and they're providing tons of pollen and nectar lots of specialization lot of queen use of those environments at this time of year, when it shuts down they move to the edges right where
they're looking for additional product I pollen to feed their babies throughout the year.
So. but in the spring good woodlands! what did they look like in your area, you know.
Go on your walk. Where are you seeing flowers many of these woodlands? No longer have flowers, because of deer, and the fact that they've been isolated from reproduction by other plants that could be moved in so
you can think about transplanting and other augmentation of these areas.
Air cases, shrubs often associated with acidic soils and acidic systems within force, but also in bogs and edges of plants.
Another one that is very important in the spring for bumblebees.
And then in the fall, when the queens are produced for the next year, and also still some of the activity for late one will be species like impatience.
You have all these composites golden rods sunflowers, masters things that in some places just come in on their own are the the thing that will wrap up here's a big happy meal.
At the end of the year. and now the Queens can go to sleep fully fed, and live off that fat until the following spring, and poor places at our poor quality.
A lot of queens die because they're fat resources are not sufficient.
So we need to think about the 360 year.
So quality flowers matter. So we talked about Non-nat as having mostly generalist bees and that your big box store seed mixes.
You can probably realize this, a lot of that's European annual tracks, bees.
But again it's like bird feeders attract birds right so are we doing the conservation of birds a favor by having bird feeders?
No, it's and negative depending on where you got that seed, and we are emphasizing mostly non-native plants in these kinds of environments by planting a lot of the seed nexus Now, and then the professional
seed. Maxes is one of our target areas to work with, because we think they need to have a more biodiverse mix and something that's a little more.
This is what Jenan's going to talk about little more tight with what bumblebees actually use, which versus what's sort of hanging around on me Internet.
This which someone could copy and paste, please into the chat is a list of specialized plants.
We tell people to use a go to this as a first cut for an area again.
Save the bees, save the bumblebees it's always about saving the plants and plant diversity.
And now the shift to Jenan if I haven't used up all the time. and which well, how much time do we have left Denise?
Are we good? You could give a good 35 min, Sam.
All right, Jenan. Jenan will power through the rest.
Thank you. Hi, everyone. i'm janelle hawaii i'm an undergrad at umd as you heard, and i'm very lucky to be working with Sam on this very fun ascu bumblebee
survey hope that you all participate I think i'm really excited to have this spot, as the last speaker because I have a great action item for everybody to participate in.
So before I kind of get into what the survey how you would complete a survey. and why you should complete a survey.
First let's start with what are we trying to answer with this project. So we're trying to figure out which flowers bubble bees actually like the most, and even though bumblebees are generalists, as we've you know discussed over
the past couple weeks, as Sam was mentioning they don't actually like every flower, and you might think that we already kind of know which flowers that they like, which I that was the impression I had prior to starting this project but actually most of
the existing data on bumblebee floor. Preference is pretty anecdotal, or it won't.
Consider the flowers that are present and bees are ignoring So then, it's not really a super holistic picture of their preference, because, you know, if you have an entire field of black eyed Susan's chances are you'll have
A. B. visit one of them. But if you have a whole field of burgamon and mountain men and a couple black eyed Susans chances are blockchain students will not be your top bumblebee flour so to answer this question
we're really focusing on collecting as much data as we possibly can.
And we're trying to do that by keeping the survey really accessible and really just attainable for anybody to do so.
All you need to do. The survey is a phone and the ability to tell a bumblebee versus a carpent carpenter bee versus other bugs we do welcome species level ids for
bumblebees. if you you know are interested in doing that. but we're totally happy to just take bombba species, and we're pretty confident that everybody could tell a bumblebee from a
carpenter b and if you can't do that now we have some resources that we'd be happy to provide, and I'm sure you can learn that in 5 10 min.
So really anybody can do it you don't need to know bumblebee species, and you don't even need to know your flower species, because we use this free app seek by a naturalist which i'm sure some of you have heard of 200 and
60 to identify all our flowers that's really great for me, because I don't know my flowers, but I could still walk around.
Sorry about that in like these, and I can, you know, know the species of every single flower that I pass, just using this free app, which also has taught me all my wild flowers.
Well, not all but it's been a really great way for me to learn my local flowers and learn about be preference, and and we double check later.
And yes, so Sikh is not 100% accurate.
So we do have a floral expert, a botanist, to check all of our ids.
And and if you do know your floral ids, you can skip the app and just identify them yourself.
So now, actually, how to complete a survey another really fun thing which helps us with the accessibility factor is that you can do the survey anywhere.
So when you're picking your area to survey there's no randomized location, or anything like that you could walk wherever you feel like.
I like to survey in my backyard. you go to your favorite botanical garden.
The best places are places with high floral diversity, so that the bumblebees have a lot of options to pick from.
But you could go to, you know, a wild area a superbowl area, or even I've gone in Dc. and walked around.
You know the capital. So once you pick your area, you just walk around for 30 min, and again, there's no tr insects or area measurements, or anything like that.
So it's really user-friendly just walk wherever you want.
If you happen to see a big patch of flour somewhere, feel free to leave your trail and go venture over.
Look for some bees as you're walking you just want to record every single flower you pass, and this is where it's a little different from other surveys.
Whether or not these are visiting them. So, even if Nobes are visiting any of these flowers, you want to record that it was there, because that does give us some information about their preference.
So, as you are walking and recording all the flowers you do obviously want to tally.
If there are bone bees and carpenter bees on these plants, and then at the end, you just have to estimate floral abundance and distribution.
So we use 2 2 different measures for these for abundance we use floral rank.
This was pretty straightforward. It just is you want to imagine, if you were to take all the blooms from a certain species of plant, and to flatten them out to a flat surface which one would cover the greatest area so that's really
sheer abundance, and it's how much you know which flower has the greatest area of blooms for distribution.
It gets a little bit less intuitive, but it's still pretty simple.
So you just kind of want to imagine if your entire survey area was divided up into like a grid almost of 25 equal area lots, How many of those lots was that flower species present?
In. We have a little diagram for that. so you can imagine if you started a survey at this dot on the left.
Here, survey start, and you just are walking along this black line of you know.
You see this big patch of thistles, you walk off the trail, go over to the thistles and then walk back to your trail.
Your whole survey area would be what's encased in gray and this obviously is gonna be in your mind.
So it's not super it's really just a rough estimation.
But this kind of shows you that thistles even though they have a high abundance here.
They would only be in one lot because it's just this one concentrated patch where the golden rod, even though it might have a similar abundance to the thistles.
It's in a lot of lots so again. it's not that we really need the exact numbers.
But just to kind of get an idea of the abundance and distribution of every flower species.
So we did get some pilot results last year it's not anything that should be used for you know, management or to really draw conclusions from, because, as you can see here, we only completed 97 surveys was completely a pilot
year. Most of those surveys were done by Sam and I.
We had 12 collectors total, but a couple of them just did a few.
So yeah, this was all just last summer, trying to finalize the survey, so we can be ready to share it with all of you.
Now, and I can get into that data a little bit. So even though it was just the pilot year, you can see this grand total.
We did have quite a few bees that we ended up seeing with the 2,689, and we did actually get most of the common bumblebee species in the northeast.
Even though it was you know just a pilot year so i'm really excited to see what we'll get.
Once we get everyone involved, and we can really increase the scale of this.
So these were the flowers that the bump bees did seem to prefer.
Some of this is not so surprising. People might be surprised to see Cup Plant as number One, which we were kind of surprised by 2.
And again. this was all pilot data, so things will probably shift around.
But you know it is interesting to see that cup plant which is not even technically native in Maryland was our number one with most of our surveys completed in Maryland.
I don't think people will be too surprised to see mountain men and bergamas at the top there.
Gold and Rod is also not really a surprise. right Yeah, this was our pilot data, and these were some flowers that were not visited at all in these 97 surveys.
And again it's only 97 surveys so things probably would visit these flowers.
If you looked forever. But I was very surprised that these flea bans, and the Queen Anne's lace and yarrow.
I was, you know, expecting to see some bumblebees, because they're sometimes referred to as bumblebee plants, but we signed no visitation, and all 97 surveys so moving forward.
We are focusing on data in the northeast currently but we're hoping to expand to the entire country.
And coming years. and if you are interested in participating and you're not located in the northeast we're so happy to take the data we're just going to analyze data from the northeast first and then whenever
we finish that we can start to move on to other areas.
Yeah, we're really hoping to just get a lot of data from this region, and we're hoping to do so by collaborating with groups of master gardeners, naturalists, nature centers. and anyone else.
So if you're involved in any groups that you think might be interested in the survey, I would really appreciate if you would just shoot me an email, and we can know collaborate. And we're happy to provide data to groups we can make
you a project number and do analysis for your group independently.
If you would like to know, you know what bees and what preference you saw just within your master naturalist group, for example.
So once we actually collect this data here's what we're hoping to do with it, we really want to improve the list of bumblebee plants, because, as we're saying we don't actually really know which plants
are best to plant, to favor bumblebee conservation.
So once we get a list of really solid plants that we know that they love based on this data.
We can share those lists with seed companies in nurseries, so we can, you know, promote the planting of these plants across the country, and we can also just develop strategies for how to best plant to fever
bumblebees. you're interested and I hope that you are because we have such a lovely group of bumblebee fanatics.
And now experts at the end of this week you should definitely reach out to Bumblebee count at Gmo Com.
We don't have a website at the moment so the only way that you should contact us is through this email.
But I will be very excited and respond and send you all the forms and instructions and get you all set up to submit data.
And yeah, that's it do you like your seat back no we stay right.
So maybe unshare being there, and Denise will tell us what to do.
Okay, awesome, Sam. So Jenan and Sam, there was a question about time of day, and I might have missed that.
But it was a question of sorry time of day and the data collection for the Bumblebee Survey. Okay?
Yes, generally we say 9 A. M. to 4 P. M.
Is the best sort of time of day. but any time that bumblebees are out feel free to survey even though we say 4 Pm.
A lot of times. there are bees out a little later than that.
So yeah, if you see a bumblebee, it is a good time to start surveying.
I went all the way through April to October.
Last year I was still finding some of these. Okay, when you say northeast, Carrie was wondering what that area is.
It is fish and wildlife service region, 5 technically.
And then what is what is that state's list well so We're, leaving that vague because so for example, Ohio officially is not in fission wallet service region?
5. But Ohio has basically the same. bees and the same floral resources as region 5.
So we're not going to deny anyone anyone's counts who wants to participate because we'll learn from all of those.
So the but our skill set is northeastern we're negotiating with fish and wildlife service in Usg is to bring in some more people who can process the data from elsewhere.
So we're emphasizing. the northeast whatever that means to anybody, including Canada, and then where hoping that the data from elsewhere can be added when there's a little more resources we don't know what the
plants are those kinds of problems so there's only one Jenan
We don't want to completely overwhelm her but we'll take data, and then you know it's becomes permanent at that point.
Okay, great Angie's excited that the Canada data will be included.
Ontario is part of what you're looking for so it's great.
Okay, So Okay, So Sam, I've put the links to the special speed documents for the East.
The Central and the Western us as well as the host plants that's all in our on our website. folks.
So once you go back there, under links you'll find all those resources.
Let me back up just a little bit Sam There was there were a few people who wanted to know about crows and sparrows, and what you meant by crow and sparrow bees. so i'm using a bird analogy because more people.
Are familiar with birds than they are with bees so when I when I mentioned crows and sparrows.
These are a set of birds that largely don't need our help, right?
So when we go into urban areas there's tons of crows and house barrows, and things like that, when we put in a a bird feeder, we not necessarily crows, but we get a lot of sparrows,
and and a set of birds that are, no matter what we do, are going to be fine.
So we have that same situation with bees, which is that there are sets of bees that actually prefer the kind of disturbed environments the anthropogenic anthropology perfect you know, man, that regenic
habitats that we create lawns edges you know the weedy areas.
They don't need our help. so some of the plants that we might want to plant, particularly from.
Say if you go to, not to knock completely big box stores.
But if you go and they have the wildflower packet know you'll see bachelor.
Buttons, cosmos zinas those get bees on them.
But they're basically getting these crow and spiral bees that don't need our help.
The ones that need our help are these ones that are really and the reason is they're generalists like they are out all year round.
They have multiple generations, and they need to be the kind of Lucy Goosey.
Let's call it about their pollen and nectar They collect from lots of plants, so to theute the problems of
The poisons secondary compounds they're sampling many. Let's call it so. The specialists the ones that are on that list are the ones of conservation concern almost always which is if you don't have
willow You don't have a bunch of willow bees and and so on, and so forth.
So does that give the sort of the context for the comment about grow and spare obese?
Okay, I think you know, like crows as barrows.
There was a question is whether you could put up your plant list again, or is that too preliminary to share in a long way?
People are really interested in your preliminary plant list data.
Yeah, I mean, Do you want us to put it on the screen?
, sure. yeah, , Take a screenshot.
And yeah, yeah, that'd be great. and in the Meantime, actually Denise.
Sorry. The people who are interested email us we have an entire report where we go through, how what you're looking at is a index.
That's created by taking care of a bunch of problems in you know where you have high relative abundance and low relative abundance.
These are plants that had to occur on release 10 surveys before they're included, and we don't include the many, many other plants that were only courted once or twice.
So we have an entire report written up that recreates these lists in way more detail.
If people want that happy to send that out well, or do you want to do you want to send it to me, Sam?
And I can put it up there. it's a great idea sure I'll post it as well, knowing that it's kind of the beta season right, but I think folks would be really interested in what I mean in the report we say all
that, too. So yeah, that's great I forgot about that cool Okay, So we'll have that up.
Folks don't worry about that. many people wanted. you to they wanted to hear you repeat what you said about sunflowers, and how many bees a sunflower will support.
Yeah. So there's a a paper I believe by Bob Minkley. Robert Minkley, who's now at what is that Rit Rochester Institute of technology, I think, in New York?
And he has worked on different calculations of be use and pollen relationships, kinds of thing which we need more of.
And he, From his data he calculated that we one so he was mostly working with, I think A.
B group I don't know which one nomia so know me as a pearly banded bee from out West.
It's about the size of a honeybee though, and he calculated that the enough So let's back up a sunflower head is actually comprised of many many tiny flowers, so each seed is basically being created by
a tiny little flower, and if you look at a sunflower it's basically blooming these little mini flowers for many days, right?
So they these little rings that people will see so it's actually a quite a good long-term food source.
But if you actually look at the amount of pollen it's huge, and if you then do the calculation of how much pollen is needed to produce a baby, B, it's around a 100 for one you know on all kinds of
averages. So one sunflower annual sunflower head can feed a 100 at least.
The pollen component a 100 baby bees so don't forget bees, are they?
Don't generate their own heat they're exothermic. So we, by contrast, you know we have this 98 point, 5, or whatever it is on heater system that we're constantly maintaining we have to we have to
use energy. We have to provide food and and do that and we as vertebrates. for whatever reason we're incredibly inefficient.
You know, most of our food goes in, and 95% of that energy goes back out and insects are way more efficient.
There was a lot smaller and they don't have that in heating system, so they don't need much energy.
So it turns out, when you start playing around with those numbers, a average acre.
This is back of the envelope. Average acre in the mid-atlantic is pumping out about 26,000 bees per year, just with existing resources.
You guys can do better right? Just do your little sunflower calculation.
What if you had your whole backyard with sunflowers?
Not necessarily. Maybe the optimal for the you know supporting all the bumblebees, or bees in general.
But it's a that's a lot there's a lot of bees would be supported by it, and I should also point out that sunflowers which include the annual sunflower but also, the
perennials have a whole series of specialist bees that only go to Kellyanthus.
Okay. Great many questions came into the Q. and a box about your statement that there are no allergies to native bees. go to native be sting, So can you elaborate? And people want to be able to share that and talk so I can hear more.
About that. Yep: So if you look at allergic reactions, you'll see that the pattern is colonial Achilles so stinging insects.
So we have allergic reactions to honey bees.
We have allergic reactions to hornets paper wash yellow jackets, and probably some of the ants.
I just don't know much about them. Why is that and the answer is, the colonial bees and wasp their problem.
Are mammals. right i've got this gigantic pornet's nest. it's full of yummy grubs.
I would just like to go in there and eat them all.
What if I were a able to develop a poison That would inject humans and other creatures and kill them? That would be great.
That's what they've done it's pretty amazing and at least it's gonna hurt a heck of a lot.
So the other insects don't have so first of all, all, the solitary bees. their problems are other insects invading their tiny little nests that we would never or a skunk or a raccoon or
a bear would never bother with is way too small. Their problems are other insects, so they are sting, and their venom designed to repel and prevent other insects.
They can even sting us which a lot of them can't Then the sting is usually pretty innocuous, or mostly what we're getting is the petration of the sting itself.
Not a chemical reaction. The i'll only equivocate on mumblebees. a little bit here, so there are no known cases where wild bumblebee colonies have led to an allergic reaction there are known
cases, and this would be true for even people like who raised grasshoppers.
For example. there are known cases where these giant warehouses, which people are probably not aware of you.
Raise bumblebees and huge volumes that people can develop an allergy to bumblebees in there. but in the wild there's no known cases of someone getting stung by a bumblebee or
any of the other species but honey bees, that is not the case.
You have plenty of plenty of evidence for allergic reactions.
Also. Most of people know this, but when people say, Oh, but when all these bees came out of the ground, when I was mowing and stung me, and then, you know, I had to call 9, 11 one because I had allergic reaction to
those bees, you know it was yellow Jackets not bees. great?
Thank you very, very, very interesting, very useful. I don't know Sam If you have anything collected.
You have a paper or information on that as well, I think there would be interest in having, you know, some documentation.
Yeah, I don't it's one of those like negative data. you know there's I don't know any papers that say nobody is known to have allergic reaction so that information was pulled from a query we run
a roughly 1,200 person lists are which people can join.
That is just like, let's call it the more nerdy discussions of B.
So it tend to be scientists talking about you know.
Some of these these kind of details. and that query went out.
Does anyone have or know of a case of allergic reactions, And so that's where i'd pulled that information.
I've not seen it published anywhere. but it it's like that negative data that's hard to come up with.
I've never seen, and not a publication that talked about allergic reaction.
Okay, so it would be great if someone wanted to do more research, you know.
Do look through the the literature on allergic reactions, and if they find anything I would like to know.
But when it could be a could be a macabre community science project. right?
I like that idea, or why don't we get everyone to get stung by a whole bunch of nate bumblebees and native bees, and just see if anyone dies.
But maybe not. okay. i'll say Well, denise said I'm gonna clip out this Pvc webinar recording.
Do you think can also start and new program? after this one survivors of Okay. so we've had so many questions in the whole series about queen Bumblebees, And so i'm glad that you talked about some of our ephemeral
wildflowers, and also early season weeds that are important for queens.
Ken also asks, What else can we add to the garden that you've found to be really helpful for those queens that are coming out early in spring?
Yeah. Well, this is actually one of the most interesting questions. And this is why we really would like to get people to do surveys right now.
Because this is when the queens are out is it's not super clear, right.
So remember when a queen comes out in almost all cases a little bit fuzzy as to whether they want any pollen at all.
So the food for a queen itself is nectar right?
Not pumping so nectar as a of a food given by plants tends to be relatively free of extra.
You know, poisons and all kinds of other extra chemicals that's not completely true, but in general more bees can tolerate.
The nectar of almost any plant that they can tolerate eating the different kinds of Collins.
So when a queen comes out, it's like where's the nectar, and so it.
Fits on a you know, lovely non-native plant.
It's like gonna go for that. So What we need is more information about some of these woodland systems.
So a general pattern in the East at least appears to be that if in a natural kind of system that these bumblebee queens are mostly hanging out for these early season resources, where the flowers are which in you think about it there's
not much blooming in a regular field that's not a weed in the spring.
Most of the action is woodland plants of different kinds, everything from the
So, for example, blueberries, other Ericas shrubs, vernal plants, that things that are like trout, lily, and spring beauty, and and Virginia Bluebell is a dynamite bumblebee plant and
then, and actually easy to grow in the garden is in shade which a lot of people have.
So there's a a positive one. and then there's a variety of blooming a shrub sub shrub small tree kinds of things on the spectrum.
So, for example, we think of apple trees that's not native species.
But crabs are native and they're basically the same thing it's a generalist system.
They're I call them party plants so they are also something that could be.
If you want straight natives, you could plant also these crabs. so it's a long-winded response to say that we don't really know exactly what the favorites are bluebells for sure Gannon and I have
been out doing surveys and looking at these things and we'll have to probably craft together some you know, thinking about native non-native kind of resources for people for example, in most of what we see here this spring and the stuff
that we've seen so far is a is guil over the ground, which has a couple other names.
But everyone I despise this plant, I have to say, because it takes over my garden beds all the time.
You know it is what most of the action is in my art.
On between bubble beats. I just talked with Jamie Strange a couple days ago, and he said that the first bum will be.
He saw the Queen the first one he saw in Columbus Ohio was on purple dead nettle, which is that the got winter annual and the Mint family that turns fields that cast of of purple?
And it's it's really actually a nice weed to have if you're not too worried about different weeds.
It's a it's a nice nectar source it recedes itself, and it's kind of done early summer. so it's It's something I kind of let go and it's also my lawn Now yeah so
a little story There is we've see that too it's seemed to be less attractive.
But the difference is, I think, that the long face things like bombers by Maculatus are probably more using that dead purple dead nettles, because they have a longer corolla.
The gill over the ground is a little dinky flower That, I think is accessible to these short-faced bumblebees, too.
So so much to learn. Okay, do you have either of you have a specific opinion about Nomo may, whether it's effective or not, or worth of more study.
So I think because of this this notion that there are certain kinds of weeds that live in and weedy lawns.
Let's call it that that could be pretty effective. you might want a nomo April in your more southern areas, right like right now would be way better than to stop have stopped mowing for example, later in the year you
know most. You have to ask, what are most of those plants that are in my lawn that went by, not mowing my bloom?
The answer. Almost all weeds answer to that, then, is, what do they support?
And that's mostly crow and sparrow bees these generalists.
Not a bad thing at all, but you know it's in the big picture.
We're not saving the planet with no mo may We could be, though, making a significant contribution to getting the queens off the ground. right?
So they have to get energy make that first nest produce workers so there's some things to think about.
There. I think the positives might be to think about it as no mo may for bumblebee's.
But this is what what we're about you know people who are participating. in.
No moment should be doing bumblebee surveys so we can see what's what's happening in that lawn.
And you know you can like Jenan mentioned you i've done highway right of ways and places that are really just all weeds that's still, you know, is teasel better than red Clover versus white
clover that's an important question too we're not sayings that you know.
These weedy things should be ignored because they still can be good for bumblebees.
Right. There were a couple questions, Sam, about bumblebee watch, and whether that data is useful. Yeah.
So i'll just point out that I use I and natural is simply out of convenience.
It's very symbol similar to bumblebee watch probably watches run by the Xerxes society.
It's even more focused obviously it's just bumblebees, not everything.
So. if you are like, which do I participate in?
I would do bumblebee watch, because that data is used by scientists.
More often I would say if you're already on a naturalist.
Then. yeah, just take your bumblebee pictures.
Probably watch is going to encourage you to keep taking lots of bubble B pictures, whereas financialists is it necessarily asking you anything?
You see what i'm saying and I think sam isn't that all that data from both places going into gbif, so that researchers can access whether it's from my naturalist or bumblebee so I don't
know about bubble b-watch but I do know that I, naturalist data gets once it so there's different criteria for inclusion.
Once it reaches what's called research, grade which is like a couple of people vouch for it, being that species.
It moves over to Gpif or they move it periodically to Jebus. too.
So yeah, there's a lot of these things are all interdigitated.
And then in Victoria, asked, if there's a particular project on I natural that that needs to be tagged.
I'm not sure I think it'll yeah I think it'll just be accessible.
You make that observation and and open up to the location, and right great. so it when it goes to Gbf: we just use the gbif filter in I Nationalists.
You can filter the data and get it in lots of different ways.
So both are great in terms of data. Sharing mobile be watch, probably is good.
They might just send you all the data. I don't know if you can get it from the site.
Okay, Mary, Jo asked. if there's information somewhere about or your opinions about relocating a bumblebee colony.
People come in, call in from the public, have bumblebees, and want the colony to be moved.
Perhaps. I don't don't have much i've heard people do that, but I don't know I can't give you any advice on how often how well that works and what how you should do it.
S. Jamie. I did notice in the humble bees so that 1,912 book that Hollis referred to last week, that there's a whole section in there on finding the Queen i'm not
advocating us to find the Queen, and we, you know, relocate colonies.
But there is information out there on How that's done and I think some of the Minnesota details to talk about that about relocating.
Yeah, in the scheme of things it probably doesn't matter that much, except to those bumblebees, and is a good education opportunity to.
So there's a question about carpenter bees I have a lot of them does their presence discourage bumblebees or bumblebee is able to hold their own among them.
I would say that basically it's there's not much interaction, you know you don't really so carbon bees can recognize that.
Oh, That's not a carbon or b and they're not going to beat up the bumblebees, whereas they would beat up.
They're constantly beating up each other these are the males
And there might be some floral competition so note that Jenan's survey is surveying carpenter bees and bumblebees.
Half of that reason is we want to make sure that people are discriminating the the carpenter bees, and the other half is that we're interested in carpenter bees. you know They are important. pollinators.
And they're maligned we're gonna maybe start a bumblebee, I mean a carpenter be support group or something.
But they're very cool, and so we you know we have at the B-lab.
We have tons of old pieces of of lumber from buildings that were being torn down, and where chaca block full of carbon dioxide.
For me are our, I should also say our building is made of metal so no problem there.
I have a friend who's high tunnel collapsed because of carpenter be damaged.
She saw them around a lot, but didn't think about them being, you know, really doing a lot of damage in the in the structural wood.
And then the wind came so oh, blame the carpenter being better than the carpenter.
I think it was her husband. So there was a question about purple flowers.
And what is it about bumblebees and and blue purple flowers?
Do we know don't know don't know but you're right.
That does seem like that's a theme and guess what we'll have a bunch of data, and people can do a flower color analysis, and that would be cool I hadn't even thought about that awesome.
Well, Janet and Sam, thank you so much for spending the time with us here and teaching us about your work.
I think you probably Jenan, are gonna have a ton of emails to get started on this project.
And Sam hopefully, lots of lots of data. And again, thank you for both of you for coming and for the work that you do to help us learn more about bumblebee conservation and all those resources.
You share, really appreciate all of your time and effort and thanks.
Everybody for for coming for being with us, and remember to take a minute or 2 on the evaluation and look forward to seeing it.
The next webinar, thanks to Thank you so much.