Fact File

Role in the Web of Life

Watch: Rusty Patched Bumble Bee Pollinating Purple-flowering Raspberry

Video by Sarah Warner/ USFWS

Bumble bees are very effective pollinators, making them a keystone species. They play a critical role in maintaining our food supply and keeping our ecosystems healthy. They are essential to native wildflower reproduction and the growth of seeds and fruits that feed a diversity of wildlife, from birds to bears.

Bumble bees are particularly important pollinators because they are “buzz pollinators,” a pollination process in which the bee vibrates its flight muscles while clasping a flower, dislodging pollen that is difficult to access. This process can make them a more effective pollinator of certain plants than other bees, such as honeybees, that do not buzz pollinate. It also is what makes them highly efficient pollinators for many crops. They are vital to tomatoes (one of the only insects that can pollinate them) as well as cranberries, blueberries, plums, apples, peppers, and alfalfa.

Where to See in Virginia

Rusty Patched Bumble Bees are currently only known to five counties in Virginia: Fauquier, Augusta, Bath, Highland and Rockingham. The later four, more western counties, have a slightly greater abundance, making them your best bets for finding the bee. However, even within those counties, their populations are extremely low, making it very rare to spot them.

To increase your chances of finding a Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, search for them in July, which is the best time of year to spot one in Virginia.

To view other bumble bee species, check out the DWR’s pollinator projects at the public lands described in the Conservation section below.

 

Conservation

The Road to Recovery

The Rusty Patched Bumble Bee is the first-ever bumble bee to be listed as an endangered species in the United States. Once common to the Eastern US, Midwest, and part of Southeastern Canada, this bumble bee has declined over the last twenty years from an estimated 87% of its historic range. In Virginia, the bee historically ranged throughout most of the Commonwealth’s mountain region and western piedmont, extending into the center of the state and the Northern Neck, but now remains in just five counties.  In January of 2017, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) listed the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.

Multiple pressures have likely contributed to this bee’s dramatic decline, including disease, habitat loss and degradation, intense farming practices, pesticides, and climate change.

One of the biggest threats to the bee may be a pathogen called Nosema bombi, a disease that affects reproductive health and fitness of bumble bee colonies, among other issues. Evidence has shown that this disease may have spread into the wild from commercial bee colonies and the increased incidence in the wild follows the timeline of commercialization. Rusty Patched Bumble Bee is one of the few bee species known to have had high incidences of the disease.

Habitat loss and degradation have also had a particularly negative impact on this and other bee species. Most of the prairies and grasslands in the bee’s historic range have been lost to urban and agricultural development, leaving the remaining grasslands isolated and small. Intense farming practices further the harm to bumble bees from their increased use of pesticides and low to no plant diversity.

Climate change challenges native wild bees with weather extremes, early snow melts, and late frosts. Bumble bee spring emergence may also become out of sync with the blooming of spring flowers. Additionally, historical data shows that bumble bee ranges are contracting, and their populations are moving north and also up to higher elevations.

Since listing Rusty Patched Bumble Bee as a federally endangered species, the USFWS developed a draft recovery plan for the bee in 2019, which contains a list of actions to address these threats, stop the bee’s decline, and prevent its extinction.

In Virginia, the lead state agency for federally endangered insects, such as the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, is the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS). VDACS has been working with the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Natural Heritage Program on the inventory and documentation efforts for the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee. Since beginning those surveys in 2018, the Natural Heritage program has documented four new occurrences of the bee in Virginia.

What the DWR Has Done/ Is Doing

DWR is the lead agency in Virginia for the conservation of wildlife and wildlife habitat. This includes conservation for any insects that are not listed as federally or state threatened/ endangered, making DWR responsible for the majority of Virginia’s pollinator species. Therefore, we have been working on improving pollinator habitat at our Wildlife Management Areas and Lakes and on private lands throughout the state. The nature of this work improves habitat conditions for the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, one of the priority actions listed in the USFWS’s Draft Recovery Plan for the bee. DWR also offers education and outreach on pollinator habitat.

Improving Pollinator Habitat

• Highland Wildlife Management Area (Highland County) – In 2020, DWR and DCR’s Natural Heritage Program documented 10 Rusty Patched Bumble Bees on Highland WMA; a significant finding as only three bees had been documented in the original 2018 survey. Furthermore, one of the documented bees was observed in a field that DWR recently began restoring.  This field had previously been degraded by a long history of cattle grazing and had been taken over by non-native timothy grass, so in spring of 2020, DWR started the process of transforming it back to a native wildflower meadow by conducting a controlled burn and treating it with herbicide. The presence of the endangered bee in the newly restored meadow demonstrates that DWR’s efforts are yielding positive results for pollinators. The DWR maintains 44 acres of native wildflower meadow habitats at Highland WMA (and an additional 7 acres are being added in 2021 thanks to DWR’s Restore the Wild fund). DWR maintains these meadows through controlled burns, small timber sales, and by seeding old logging roads with native plants. These habitats benefit pollinators and a wide array of other wildlife.

 

• Lake Shenandoah (Rockingham County) – DWR and partners transformed the western arm of the lake property from mowed lawn into a meadow habitat for pollinators.
  

  DWR pollinator workshop held at the pollinator habitat at Lake Shenandoah. Photo by Meghan Marchetti/ DWR.

  Beginning in the spring of 2015, DWR staff and volunteers prepared the 2 acre area and planted native wildflowers and grasses attractive to pollinators. Continued maintenance in collaboration with the Virginia Master Naturalists and the Lake Pointe Homeowners Association has led to the success of this project. Other restoration and management efforts have included prescribed burns to control woody vegetation and stimulate growth of native plants. Additionally, interpretive signs, outreach programs, and community meetings have been supported by a number of other organizations.

 

• Goshen Wildlife Management Area (Rockbridge and Augusta County) –This primarily forested WMA contains a special open habitat called, “The Meadow Ground,” a 35-acre high-elevation meadow. DWR maintains a diversity of native wildflowers and grasses in this meadow with controlled burns and herbicide treatments in order to support pollinators and grassland birds.
  

  A meadow at Goshen Wildlife Management Area. Photo by Meghan Marchetti/ DWR.

 

• Vic Thomas State Fish Hatchery (Campbell County) – In 2018, DWR created about 3 acres of pollinator habitat on the Hatchery grounds. DWR planted native seed mixes appropriate for the upland and wetland areas of the site. The project reduced lawn mowing, improved wildlife habitat, and created an educational opportunity for the public. With the Hatchery being located close to the Town of Brookneal, the local community heavily uses the area for walking, so DWR also created interpretive signage about pollinators for the project site. In 2020, with funds from Restore the Wild, DWR will expand this habitat by adding an additional 5 acres of wildlife-friendly native shrubs along a hillside and pollinator plantings.

 

• Cumberland State Forest (Cumberland County) – In 2017, DWR and the Department of Forestry (DOF) created 5 wildflower meadows, totaling 8 acres of pollinator habitat, at the State Forest as part of a national grant that encouraged partnership between forestry and wildlife departments.

• Amelia Wildlife Management Area
  

  Pollinators foraging in a wildflower meadow at Amelia WMA. Photo by Meghan Marchetti/ DWR.

  (Amelia County) – In 2017, DWR created 5 acres of wildflower meadows at Amelia WMA to provide habitat for pollinators.

 

• Big Woods Wildlife Management Area and Big Woods State Forest (Sussex County) – In 2018, DWR began renovating 20 old logging decks (degraded open areas where timber had formerly been sorted and loaded onto trucks). DWR and DOF planted those areas with a pollinator seed mix and we have been conducting controlled burns to encourage growth of the native seedbank, which includes multiple wildflowers beneficial to pollinators. This project was partially funded by the National Wild Turkey Federation.

Education and Outreach on Pollinator Habitat

• Habitat Resources – The DWR offers numerous resources on our website to help people get started and inspired on pollinator habitats.

 

• Habitat Partners© Education Program – For over a decade, this DWR program provided volunteer training for community leaders seeking to establish native plant demonstration gardens for wildlife viewing and public education outreach.

 

• Private Lands Wildlife Biologists (PLWBs)- For private landowners, DWR has a team of five PLWBs, hired jointly with Virginia’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), that specialize in on-site landowner habitat evaluations followed by detailed management planning where appropriate. Working with native plant species is a cornerstone of their technical expertise.

Learn More About Our Work

• Six DWR Habitat Projects Funded by Restore the Wild (2020)
• Celebrate Pollinators (2020)
• Lost Before Found? (2018)
• Monarch Spectacle at DWR Headquarters (2018)

Watch: Pollinator Habitat Restoration at Lake Shenandoah in celebration of National Pollinator Week (2017)

How You Can Help

• Purchase a Restore the Wild Membership to support the DWR’s habitat restoration work, such as what we have accomplished for Rusty Patched Bumble Bee and other pollinators. The membership also serves as your pass to visit DWR’s WMAs and Lakes, such as Highland WMA and Lake Shenandoah, throughout the Commonwealth.
• Plant native plants in your gardens, landscaping, and/or containers, especially the native plants favored by the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee. Native plants provide pollen and nectar for our native bees. Strive to plant a variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees, so that blooms will be present from April-September. This will provide the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, which emerges in the early spring and is one of the last species to go into hibernation, with a constant food supply.

• If you are a private landowner, consider creating a pollinator habitat. Find out if your land is suitable for a project, by contacting your local PLWB or Marc Puckett, DGIF’s Small Game Project Leader, at 434-392-8328, [email protected]. A PLWB can visit your property to help get you started and they are experts on multiple habitat incentive programs available through state and federal agencies.
  

  Joe Pye Weed, one of many native plants that supports pollinators and is favored by Rusty Patched Bumble Bee. Photo by Meghan Marchetti/ DWR.

• Avoid/remove invasive, non-native plants. They do not provide the benefits of native plants and can spread into your community’s natural areas, where they can take over native habitats.
• Provide natural, unmowed, brushy areas with undisturbed soil. Ground-nesting bees, such as the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, need a safe place to build their nests and overwinter. Avoid disturbing soil by reducing any tilling or mowing where bees may be nesting.
• Support the natural areas in your community.
• Avoid/ limit the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Pesticides cause lethal and sublethal effects to bees and other pollinators. Since Rusty Patched Bumble Bees nest in the ground, they may be particularly vulnerable to pesticides that persist in soils and lawns.
• Participate in Bumble Bee Watch, a citizen science project designed to collect data on bumble bee abundance and distribution.

Sources

Species Profile Authors: Jessica Ruthenberg, DWR Watchable Wildilfe Biologist, with contributions from Celia Vuocolo of Piedmont Environmental Council, T’ai Roulston of Blandy Experimental Farm at University of Virginia, and Ellison Orcutt of Virginia DCR Natural Heritage Program.

Last updated: September 10, 2020