[Pollinator] North state bumblebee goes missing

[Scott Black]

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North state bumblebee goes missing

http://www.redding.com/news/2010/sep/27/Bumblebee/

By Laura Christman

Monday, September 27, 2010

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Franklin’s bumblebee hasn’t been found in its 
home range of Southern Oregon and Northern California since 2006.

Robbin Thorp is on a lonely search for a single 
bee. He’s looked low and high, hoping to spot 
Franklin’s bumblebee. The last time he saw one 
was August 2006 on Mt. Ashland in Oregon. The bee 
might be extinct. Thorp, a bumblebee authority 
and emeritus entomology professor at the 
University of California at Davis, remains 
hopeful that it isn’t. That’s why he keeps looking.

Franklin’s bumblebee once buzzed around Siskiyou 
and Trinity counties. Its range stretches about 
190 miles north to south and 70 miles east to 
west, from Southern Oregon into Northern 
California. That’s the smallest range of any 
North American bumble bee, but if you happen to 
be the one looking for a bee, it’s a lot of territory to cover.

About once a month in the summer, Thorp leaves 
Davis and heads north on a bee hunt. He doesn’t 
just bumble along. Thorp has a plan. He follows the flowers.

“I walk around and look at the flowers. That is 
where the bees are foraging,” he told me.

He begins his bee hunts at low elevations and 
then works his way up as higher-elevation plants bloom later in the summer.

If he were to see a Franklin’s bumble bee, Thorp 
says he’d know it right away. The bee has a round 
face and is black with distinctive yellow markings on the head and thorax.

“It is recognizable,” Thorp said. “It has a very different color pattern.”

Thorp has been monitoring the bee since 1998, 
according to an article written by Kathy Keatley 
Garvey, communications specialist with the UC 
Davis entomology department. The first year’s 
count was 100, the article says. That dropped to 
three in 2003, one in 2006 and none since.

The situation looks grim. But why should we give 
a rip? Franklin’s bumblebee isn’t going to create 
jobs, cure colds or bring peace to the Middle 
East. It’s just a bee. Whether Thorp finds the 
bee, our lives will go right along.

That’s a lousy way of looking at it, however. The 
idea of “looking” is part of the problem. We seem 
to view nature as something to sit back and 
watch, like a television show that plays out in 
front of us. We forget that we’re part of the 
picture ­ that we’re all in this together.

“Every species is special and every species is important,” Thorp told me.

Even a little bumblebee.

“If you start removing elements, the systems begin to fall apart,” Thorp said.

Native bumblebees are key pollinators for a 
diversity of native plants. Wild creatures depend 
on those plants for food and shelter. There’s 
been a lot of bad news about bees recently. 
Pesticides and habitat loss threaten bees. 
Honeybees have been hit hard by mites and Colony Collapse Disorder.

For those of us who happen to like food, bad 
things happening to pollinators is not a jolly deal.

Thorp thinks the rapid decline of Franklin’s 
bumblebee is due to a disease that could have 
been introduced when native bumblebee colonies 
were taken to Europe. The bees were reared there 
and then brought back to the United States 
(bumblebees are used commercially to pollinate crops).

In June, Thorp and the Xerces Society for 
Invertebrate Conservation petitioned the U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service to have Franklin’s 
bumblebee protected as an endangered species. 
Thorp said it could take a year or longer before a decision is made.

But if the bee hasn’t been seen in four years, isn’t it too late? Perhaps not.

If it is a disease that’s to blame, it’s 
reasonable to think that some bees weren’t 
affected or were able to fight it off, Thorp said

“Typically what you would expect, is the disease 
sweeps through and a few resistant individuals in 
the population begin to reproduce and recover. 
That’s the basis for the future,” he explained.

There could be Franklin’s bumblebees out there, 
but so few that they aren’t being seen. It would 
take awhile for their numbers to build to the 
point that they start getting noticed.

So Thorp plans to keep looking. When the flowers 
unfurl next summer, he’ll be back in pursuit of the missing bumblebee.

“It’s a hunting game, and each year I go with the 
hope and expectation that they are out there 
somewhere, but just under the radar,” he said.

Laura Christman’s column runs every other week in 
the Home and Garden section. Contact her at 
<mailto:lchristman at redding.com>lchristman at redding.com or 225-8222.


   © 2010 Scripps Newspaper Group ­ Online




*************************
Scott Hoffman Black
Executive Director
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Chair
IUCN (International Union for Conservation of 
Nature) Butterfly Specialist Group
4828 SE Hawthorne
Portland, OR 97215
Direct line (503) 449-3792
sblack at xerces.org

The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit 
organization that protects wildlife through the 
conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.

To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work,
please visit <http://www.xerces.org/>www.xerces.org.


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