A rusty-patched bumblebee, a federally endangered species that had not been observed in Will County preserves since 1983, was discovered this summer in the Des Plaines River Valley.

“I almost started crying,” said Barbara Sherwood, a restoration ecologist for the Forest Preserve District, who had vowed earlier this year she would try to find the bee as part of a bumblebee monitoring program she joined.

“I was kind of shaking,” she said of her find. “As soon as I saw it, I beelined over to it and started taking video. And then I took some still photos. The bumblebee didn’t fly off because it was so focused on what it was doing. It went from one flower to the next and just kept going.” 

Bombus affinis, commonly known as the rusty-patched bumblebee, once inhabited a vast range of eastern and midwestern states and southern Canada, but it has experienced serious decline. Recent surveys have shown the bee, " ... has not been found in most of its range since 2003 with the exception of a few isolated areas," according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. 

Seeing a rare species in a preserve that has been managed for years by Forest Preserve staff makes all the hard work worthwhile, Sherwood added. The land where the bumblebee was found has undergone invasive species removal, prescribed burning and reseeding. 

“We do this job because we believe in what we’re doing, the conservation of nature,” she said. “A lot of the work we do is incredibly strenuous and you’re often in uncomfortable situations with heat and insects. So, it makes you feel like it’s worth it. What we’re doing is providing the habitat they need.”

Bumblebee quest

Sherwood’s quest to find the rusty-patched bumblebee started when she learned of a monitoring program established by U.S. Geological Survey. She joined it and followed the protocol for searching and detecting bumblebees in general and the rusty-patched bumblebee specifically. 

She decided to search an area that would be an inviting habitat for bumblebees. 

“You have to have prairie with a lot of floral resources that is adjacent to woods, because that is where the queen overwinters,” she explained.

On Sherwood’s first foray, she discovered other bumblebee species but no rusty-patched bee. There are 11 bumblebee species that are found in the Chicagoland region. 

“The most likely bumblebees people encounter are the Eastern common bumblebee, brown-belted bumblebee, two-spotted bumblebee and black-and-gold bumblebee,” Sherwood said.

But she was undaunted. On her next outing at a second site, she once again donned her sturdy boots, long pants, long-sleeved shirt and sun hat so she could walk among the blooming plants in the heat of the day.

According to the bumblebee monitoring protocol, she could visit a preserve for two 30-minute sessions. At minute 21 of her second session, she saw it. And, because she had seen them in person three times before at a previous job and had studied their traits, she knew immediately it was a rusty-patched bumblebee.

“I’m to the point now, from a distance I can identify a brown-belted, which is a very common bumblebee, just by the hairs on the thorax. It looks like it’s clean cut. Whereas a rusty-patched is a little scraggly and tousled, like she just woke up.”

The brown belted is the easiest to mistake for a rusty-patched bumblebee as they both can have a rusty or brown coloration on their second abdominal segment. There are multiple subtle differences between the two species, but the key factors are:

• Brown belted, the brown patch on the second segment will be bordered by black; there will be a black dot on the thorax in between the wings
• Rusty-patched bumblebee, the rusty patch on the second segment is surrounded by yellow; there will be a black band on the thorax in between the wings

To differentiate between bumblebees you might find in your yard or on hikes, the Illinois Department of Entomology has created a Color Pattern Guide to the bumblebees of Illinois and surrounding states. 

Critically endangered

The rusty-patched bee is endangered because of habitat loss, the use of pesticides, pathogens from non-native bees and climate change. Not only is the bee state and federally endangered, it’s listed globally as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

Additional bumblebee species are in jeopardy, too, because of the same issues that have affected rusty-patched bumblebees, Sherwood added.

“All bumblebees are potentially at risk from the same things that caused the decline of the rusty-patched,” she said. “We have other bumblebees in our preserves – the Southern plains bumblebee and the American bumblebee – that have been petitioned with U.S. Fish and Wildlife to possibly get listed as federally endangered.”

Bumblebees, like many other pollinators, are an essential part of the food production equation on our planet.

“Without them, we lose other things that I don’t think people realize,” Sherwood said. “Bumblebees are incredible pollinators of a lot of our crops. Cranberries, blueberries, tomatoes, onions. Things we all eat every day. If we lose these species, then we lose too.”

Bumblebees are able to fly in cooler temperatures and lower light levels than many other bees, according to the Xerces Society.

“ … and they perform a behavior called ‘buzz pollination,’ in which the bee grabs the pollen producing structure of the flower in her jaws and vibrates her wing musculature causing vibrations that dislodge pollen that would have otherwise remained trapped in the flower’s anthers,” the Xerces website stated. “Some plants, including tomatoes, peppers, and cranberries, require buzz pollination.”

the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service encourages homeowners to plant native wildflowers to help with bumblebee conservation. 

'Unless'

After Sherwood found one rusty-patched bumblebee in July, another Forest Preserve staffer found and photographed two more rusty-patched bumblebees in a nearby preserve a few weeks later by following Sherwood's guidance and looking in a large patch of bergamot.

“So, we have three documented sightings this summer,” Sherwood said.

In future years, Sherwood said she hopes the Forest Preserve District can have more staff members monitor bumblebees in the preserves and volunteers also could be enlisted in this effort.

Sherwood is so enamored of bumblebees she has one tattooed on her arm with the word “unless” in script below. When asked about the meaning of the tattoo, she quotes Dr. Seuss' “The Lorax” book: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

She said she got the tattoo when she graduated with her master's degree in zoology to remind herself, "If we don't care, who will?"

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