The American Bumblebee Has Vanished From Eight States

I have found them building nests in the insulation under the flooring of my place. But I believe it is more common to find them under the ground or under stuff on the ground.

It must be considered that some species or sub species have different behavior, like Florida swamp bees vs Colorado hill bees vs Canadian prairie bees, what have you.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: Lumenari

originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
a reply to: ketsuko

Yea, carpenter bees. They look like big bumble bees but bore holes into wood siding on houses and cabins. Perfectly circular holes like a inch drill bit made them.

A carpenter bee looks nothing like a bumble bee.

You just have to look at their ass... hairy or no?

Completely different behavior too, and they look different. Bumblebees still have black and yellow, but the wood-boring bees are pretty much all black.

I remember the story about my grandfather saying they didn't sting, so messed with one ... oops!

They also leave a stinger like other bees. I have I have a vivid recollection of that not feeling very nice.

a reply to: Justoneman

Luckily, they're not terribly aggressive like bumblebees, but they will sting if you mess with 'em too much.

We've got a bumblebee nest on the property this year, and coincidentally, I have 3rd wave pepper flowers still being pollinated & producing fruit -- habaneros, cayennes, and bell peppers, the bumbles love them, and I have a large bumper crop incoming for all 3. I just made 800ml of homemade Liquid Fire out of the trio a few weeks ago, good thing I have more coming in to make another batch with -- we're already running low.

I'm also drying about 50 or 60 cayennes to grind into my own powder, and same for the habs (about half as many, though)


But yes, the bumblebees still exist, and they're living peacefully with an allergic guy (hubs, lol) I'm just of the belief they may have wised up and are getting picky about where they set up shop anymore. I don't think we were an area that had Gypsy moth & mosquito spraying done this year, we use zero yard chemicals, and neither do most of our neighbors. Maybe one of those has something to do with it, comes across chemically to them as a safe place to live perhaps.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Neonicotinoids have been shown to be harmful to bees and were banned by the EU for use on crops back in 2018 , it is they not climate change that is killing bee populations and the continued use of them in the US is pure stupidity given the evidence.

We still have plenty of bumblebees in Maine. If you go to any field where wildflowers grow you'll find hundreds of them. I don't know why they would say they've disappeared when they clearly have not. Fear mongering maybe? All I know is that statement is not true at all.

originally posted by: PorteurDeMort
We still have plenty of bumblebees in Maine. If you go to any field where wildflowers grow you'll find hundreds of them. I don't know why they would say they've disappeared when they clearly have not. Fear mongering maybe? All I know is that statement is not true at all.

You and another poster have named two states this article said they were gone from, but yet you've both had them around this year.

Just the tone of that article makes me question if it's not just exaggeration of this data, but maybe an outright lie, for land grabs and excessive fines by the government when they label it as endangered.

a reply to: Nyiah

If you like having them and want more, there are articles out there online that show you how to set up plant pots in the proper places in the right ways to hopefully attract more.

Where my husband went wrong was that ours ended up in a place he mowed over and they didn't like it.

They do die off at the end of a season, but if the place they lived in was a good one, you might get them back in successive seasons if you're lucky.

I love bumblebees! I have seen some this year up here in western Massachusetts but not as many as 5-10 years ago

I drilled down into the source documentation and have found the following . . .

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was petitioned in 2021 by the "Center for Biological Diversity" (a non-profit) and an organization that calls itself the "Bombus Pollinator Association of Law Students of Albany Law School". It's seems that the main driver of this project to save the bumble bee is the Center for Biological Diversity that appears to be radically liberal.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, Todd Schulke and Robin Silver.

Kierán Suckling (born 1964) is one of the founders and the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group known for its innovative approaches to the protection of endangered species, wilderness, clean air and clean water.[1] He has infused the traditionally staid environmental arena with an unusual degree of creative energy, leading New Yorker to dub the Center "the most important radical environmental group in the country" and Suckling a "trickster, philosopher, publicity hound, master strategist, and unapologetic pain in the ass."

As for the Albany Law School, Andrew Cuomo went there if that means anything. Not sure how liberal they are there, but this Professor Keith Hirokawa seems to be pretty liberal.

A group of 14 students – with the unofficial moniker the “Bombus Pollinator Association of Law Students” or “BPALS,” for short – and Professor Keith Hirokawa teamed up with the Center for Biological Diversity to file a petition with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on February 1 to add the American bumblebee to the endangered species list through the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Keith Hirokawa, Associate Professor of Law, Albany Law School
Professor Hirokawa joined the faculty at Albany Law School in 2009. He teaches courses involving environmental and natural resources law, land use planning, property law, and jurisprudence. Professor Hirokawa's scholarship has explored convergences in ecology, ethics, economics, and law, with particular attention given to local environmental law, ecosystem services policy, watershed management, and environmental impact analysis. He has authored dozens of professional and scholarly articles in these areas and has co-edited (with Patricia Salkin) Greening Local Government (forthcoming 2012, ABA). Prior to joining the faculty at Albany Law, Professor Hirokawa was an Associate Professor at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law. Professor Hirokawa practiced land use and environmental law in Oregon and Washington and was heavily involved with community groups and nonprofit organizations. Professor Hirokawa studied philosophy and law at the University of Connecticut, where he earned his JD and MA degrees. He earned his LLM in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School.

List of Albany Law School Alumni
Albany Law School has numerous notable alumni. It is one of only twelve law schools in the United States to have graduated two or more justices of the United States Supreme Court: Robert H. Jackson[18] and David Josiah Brewer.[19] Nine judges of the New York State Court of Appeals, United States President William McKinley, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, and over a dozen members of the United States Congress also attended Albany Law School. The first woman admitted to the New York State Bar, Kate Stoneman, and the first African American man to graduate from law school in New York State, James Campbell Matthews, also both attended Albany Law School.[20] Other notable alumni include: Richard D. Parsons '71, Former Chairman, Citigroup, Lawrence H. Cooke '39, Former Chief Judge of New York State, Victoria A. Graffeo '77, Former Associate Judge, New York State Court of Appeals, Leslie Stein '81, Associate Judge, New York State Court of Appeals, and Thomas J. Vilsack '75, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Governor of Iowa.

en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

ww w.federalregister.gov

biologic aldiversity.org

www.albanylaw.edu< br />
theconversation.com

en.wikipedia.org

For the fact checkers, here some on the Smithsonian Magazine.

Overall, we rate Smithsonian Magazine a Pro-Science source based on publishing research-based information on science. We also rate them Very High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing to credible research and a clean fact check record.

mediabiasfactcheck.com

The following are Smithsonian Magazine’s overall bias and reliability scores according to our Ad Fontes Media ratings methodology. Reliability: 45.50 Bias: -3.72 Reliability scores for articles and shows are on a scale of 0-64. Scores above 24 are generally acceptable; scores above 32 are generally good. Bias scores for articles and shows are on a scale of -42 to + 42, with higher negative scores being more left, higher positive scores being more right, and scores closer to zero being the most neutral and/or balanced.

adfontesmedia.com

AllSides gives Smithsonian Magazine a Center rating. In July 2020, an AllSides editor conducted an independent review of the Smithsonian Magazine's website and gave it a Center rating for its straightforward, factual and well-researched writing. Smithsonian Magazine typically avoids political coverage, instead focusing on hard science, history, nature and technology. Note that a Center media bias rating does not necessarily mean a source is unbiased, neutral, perfectly reasonable, or credible. It simply means the source or writer rated does not predictably publish perspectives favoring either end of the political spectrum — conservative or liberal.

www.allsides.com

"Live Science" has a similar rating as the Smithsonian.

I guess the Smithsonian and Live Science's political bias may vary depending on the article writer but they are good for their source references apparently. Not much help here, but I suspect their is some left leaning bias in this particular article.

Interesting that these states where the bumble bee has supposedly "vanished" are along the same northern latitude. With no southern states mentioned, it certainly makes me question the climate change connection.

It also seems to be in cluster of states like Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and even New York is mentioned. One poster here who is in Massachusetts said they had bumble bees this year, strange how that isn't in this cluster. Then you have Idaho, Wyoming, and Oregon and North Dakota to the northeast (a state that another poster said that they had them there).

I'm tending to believe that the study is fairly limited with little on the historic populations of bees in a given study area. I may be all wrong about that without finding the exact studies they were using to come to the figures given in the Live Science article. I haven't dug that deep yet. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be conducting their study for a year to make a determination.

ETA: Perhaps this is all related to pesticides and herbicides or maybe I can "inject" some conspiracy theories into this one as a bumble bee pandemic of some kind, perhaps due to a novel virus the bees contracted from some other animal like bats. It was a bio-weapon virus created to eliminate all wild pollinators and replace them with GMO bees and other patented pollinators to charge all farmers for the pollination rights.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

RI is very limited geographically and possibly very urban.

I have a theory that people in urban environments are all-in on the idea that the natural world is dying because they've pretty well killed it all around themselves. Similarly, because they live in large, climate controlled hives, they think we really can control nature.

You aren't getting a very broad survey of things if you're using RI as one of your chosen survey points.

I'm in northern Colorado and we have had plenty of bumblebees my around our garden this year. I've also spent a bit of time up in Cheyenne, Wyoming and saw bumblebees at the baseball fields. Maybe they just aren't looking hard enough, but they are in Wyoming.

Given the group in question ...

Hear no bumblebees, See no bumblebees, Say no bumblebees ...

Get them declared protected/endangered, and you have large swathes of land that are suddenly under government management no matter what the landowners might have had in mind whether it was needed or not.

Look at what they do in California. And bumblebees range everywhere, could set up shop in your backyard without warning putting your land under management other than your own.

a reply to: ketsuko

MaMaa has now reported bumble bees in Wyoming, so there is another state that was reported to have no bumbles. Makes me question the veracity of this report even more.

As for you assessment Ketsuko, I agree. Take a rather common insect like the bumble and claim it is endangered to increase the reach of federal power, another power grab by the usual suspects me thinks. We have a year before they determine is it goes on the list and I feel certain it will.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Sad thing is that the bees will lose. If they get nosy about it and when have they ever not? ... people who find nests will silently and quickly eliminate them rather than report them.

I have a correction to make. There aren't as many flowers left in bloom as I thought. The little white clovers, flea bane, some goldenrod, a few black eyed Susans, the tobacco, morning glories, pumpkins and squash and the marigolds are all about whats left.

There was nothing but bumble bees out, 5 or 6 on the marigolds along with a large yellow jacket as well as a sulfur and a cabbage butterfly. Definitely American bumble bees. All were identical except one was a bit larger and had an all black abdomen. They were all very healthy looking and active.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

I dont think they vanished. They problary moved away from areas where there are human activity.

In two decades, the insect’s population has declined by nearly 90 percent due to a combination of threats, including habitat loss, pesticides and diseases

Pesticides are usually most of the problems for the bees.

originally posted by: PorteurDeMort
We still have plenty of bumblebees in Maine. If you go to any field where wildflowers grow you'll find hundreds of them. I don't know why they would say they've disappeared when they clearly have not. Fear mongering maybe? All I know is that statement is not true at all.

Do you people know the difference between bumblebees and an American bumblebee? They didn't say all bumblebees were gone, just the American bumblebee species. Here is what an American bumblebee looks like. They're smaller than regular bumblebees and slimmer. They're easy to mistake for drone honey bees:



That's my picture, by the way. I have studied bees locally.