[Pollinator] Conservation Journal -- Rusty Patched Bumble Bee

Tue Nov 22 17:34:36 PST 2016

FROM: *Conservation Journal* (Conjour)

http://conservationjournal.world/conservation/rusty-patched-bumble-bee/

Rusty Patched Bumble Bee

16TH NOVEMBER 2016    |    IN CONSERVATION

Gracefully hovering above the flowering canola, the small insect performs
vital work. A pollination process refined over millennia is at risk of
seeing its last days, as the bumble bee struggles to cope with pesticides
and other threats brought to their doorstep. The Rusty Patched Bumble Bee
is but one representative of a wider decline.

Species: Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (*Bombus affinis*)    |    Conservation
Status: Critically Endangered    |    Region: North America

Interview: Sarina Jepsen, Director of Endangered Species and Aquatic
Programs at the Xerces Society

·         The Rusty Patched Bumble Bee is one of 250 bumble bee species
around the world experiencing drastic declines.

·         It is a eusocial bee which nests in burrows and lives near
woodlands.

·         Sarina Jepsen from the Xerces Society outlines work under way to
save the species.

*About the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee*

The IUCN Red List outlines a dramatic story for the Rusty Patched bumble
bee (*Bombus affinis*): declining in relative abundance, persistence and
distribution across its range. This is a damaging tale of a path to
extinction.

Typically originating in Upper Midwest and North East America, the Rusty
Patch is like many bumble bees: nectar is a critical source of
carbohydrates, so whilst it performs a critical function for the flora of
the world, and, indeed, our crops, it also sources its protein through this
task. Hand in hand, the loss of one outcome is a loss of the other. That’s
bad news for both the bee and us.

The amount of pollen available, says Burns (2004), directly affects the
number of Rusty Patched queen bees that are produced in a year. According
to Cameron et al. (2011), relative abundance across the bee’s range has
declined by up to 95%, and range losses are between 70-87%.

Likewise, the historic range of the bee has dropped by 87% based on a field
survey a few years ago that collected more than 16,000 individuals. That
compares to more than 73,000 bee specimens in similar studies historically.
In New York, a 2003 survey of bumble bees, which consisted of over 1,200
specimens, did not find a single Rusty Patched bumble bee. In the past,
this species was known to be ‘moderately abundant’ in the region (Giles and
Ascher 2006). Across all ranges, average decline of the species is
estimated at almost 70%. A sobering figure for an increasingly important
insect group.

*The Details*

Normally existing in or around woodlands, on open or short-corollas
flowers, the rusty patched is a short-tongue species of bee and is
Eusocial. This means it lives in colonies consisting of a queen, workers
and reproductive bees.

The rusty patched queen ‘overwinters’ in a burrow and finishes hibernation
in spring. Burrows are often used as and when available, meaning thinking
exists that the amount of rodents in an area may directly affect the bee’s
nest numbers.

When compared to other species of bee, the colonies of the rusty patched
are reasonably large with up to 1,000 members living throughout a single
season (Macfarlane et al. 1994). Until the first of those workers come out,
the queen does all of the prep and care for the colony. Towards the end of
that work is when new queens and males are produced.

Rusty Patched bees, as with other bumble bee species, are not believed to
travel far from their nest, meaning appropriate flowers need to be located
close by (normally within one kilometre) (Jepsen et al. 2013).

*Rusty Patched Bumble Bee Conservation*

A number of threats are recognised as a danger to the survival of this
species. Namely, pesticide use – in particular neonicotinoid insecticides,
pathogen spill-over from commercial to wild bees, habitat loss and climate
change. As with many groups around the world, the domino effect of these
issues is the impact on genetic diversity within the species.

Sarina Jepsen is the Director of Endangered Species and Aquatic Programs at
the Xerces Society. She spoke to Conjour about the critical nature of
conservation for the rusty patched bumble bee.

“In this role,” she explains, “I manage our endangered species conservation
work, including work to protect the rusty patched bumble bee,” adding that
the severity of the decline of this species is a worry.

“It is certainly concerning that widespread, formerly abundant species like
the rusty patched bumble bee face significant extinction risk. We know that
more than one-in-four North American bumble bees face extinction risk,
according to the IUCN Red List criteria.

“If we allow too many species of bumble bees to go extinct, we will start
to see a loss of ecological function. More than 85% of flowering plants
require an insect pollinator to reproduce, and many of these plants produce
the fruits and seeds that feed songbirds and other wildlife.

So it is a dangerous situation that confronts us, but what about the rusty
patched bee in particular?

“The situation facing the rusty patched bumble bee is really critical,”
explains Jepsen. “This bee has been lost from about 90% of its historic
range. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s analyses predict that this
species will go extinct in all but one ecoregion in the next five years.”

Here, Jepsen references the Species Status Assessment which details: “Since
the late 1990s, marked and precipitous declines have been recorded in
spatial extent and in the number of extant populations.”

There are a number of issues, outlined above, that are putting the rusty
patched at risk of extinction. Jepsen highlights pesticides as a key.

“Most notably… neonicotinoid insecticides, which are really concerning
because they are highly toxic to bees, they persist in the environment (for
months to even years, in some cases), they are systemic (all parts of an
exposed plant, including nectar and pollen, become toxic to insects), and
they travel through the soil and are taken up by plants growing near
treated crops.”

Jepsen adds, “Unfortunately, little is being done to address these threats.”

*Fighting the Threats*

But conservation is only started by recognising what’s going wrong – it
also needs to be mended. So we asked Jepsen what the Xerces Society had in
the pipeline to save the rusty patched.

“We wrote and submitted a scientific petition to the US Fish and Wildlife
Service asking them to protect the rusty patched bumble bee as an
endangered species under the ESA in 2013″, says Jepsen. “Similarly, we have
engaged in advocacy for many years to ask the USDA and USDA-APHIS to
protect wild bumble bees by regulating diseases in managed bumble bees.”

Aside from this high-level push, the organisation is also working with
partners to raise public understanding, developing BumbleBeeWatch.org. It
is because of this site that a more detailed catalogue of the extent of
occurrence of the species has been developed. Consequently, says Jepsen,
they have reached out to dozens of land managers in the right areas to
encourage bee-friendly practices. This includes short courses covering
education around identification and conservation of the bees.

It is not just locally the organisation has been working though.

“Working with partners, we established the Bumblebee Specialist Group of
the IUCN, a global network of bumble bee experts who aim to evaluate the
conservation status and extinction risk of all bumble bees worldwide,” says
Jepsen. “We have worked with other scientists in the Bumblebee Specialist
Group to evaluate the extinction risk of North American bumble bees, and
found that more than one-quarter of North American bumble bees face
extinction risk, according to the IUCN Red List criteria.”

Jepsen continues with a long list of programmes under way for the bee,
including the petitioning of states to add imperilled bumble bees to their
Species of Greatest Conservation Need lists – which 26 have now done – as
well as getting municipalities to pass ordinances restricting neonicotinoid
use.

On top of all this, she says that, “Through the Xerces Society’s Pollinator
Conservation Program, we have worked with the USDA Natural Resources
Conservation Service and private landowners to restore pollinator habitat
for the rusty patched bumble bee and other bees on hundreds of thousands of
acres.”

Jepsen says the race against extinction is well and truly on for the rusty
patched.

“This species is on such a declining trajectory that we’re really racing
against the clock. We need to immediately protect all known populations of
this species from the threats that they face, identify new populations, and
improve habitat within this species’ historic range so that it can fully
recover.”

----------

Matthew Shepherd

Communications Director

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Protecting the Life That Sustains Us

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