The Secret Lives of Bumble Bees: Nesting and Overwintering

We’ve all heard the familiar buzz of a bumble bee. Their fuzzy bodies fly around looking for pollen and nectar. But where do bumble bees nest? Where do they spend the winter? And how can we support this part of their lifecycle?

To talk with us about this topic is Genevieve Pugesek, Xerces Endangered Species Conservation Biologist. Jenny is one of the project managers of the Bumble Bee Atlas, a community science project aimed at tracking and conserving bumble bees. She works with Atlas programs in Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. She is broadly interested in conservation biology, land management, and animal natural history. She earned her Ph.D. at Tufts University, where she studied the nesting and overwintering ecology of bumble bees.

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Photo: Kent McFarland Flickr CC 2.0

Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Transcript

Matthew: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society, where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate.

Rachel: Hi, I am Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: We’ve all heard the familiar buzz of a bumble bee. Their fuzzy bodies fly around looking for pollen and nectar. But where do bumble bees nest? Where do they spend the winter? And how can we support these parts of their lifecycle?

Rachel: To talk to us about this topic is Genevieve Pugesek, Xerces’ endangered species conservation biologist. Jenny is one of the project managers of the Bumble Bee Atlas, a community science project aimed at tracking and conserving bumble bees. She works with Atlas programs in Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. She is broadly interested in conservation biology, land management, and animal natural history. She earned her PhD at Tufts University, where she studied the nesting and overwintering ecology of bumble bees.

Rachel: Welcome to Bug Banter, Jenny! We're very happy to have you here with us.
Jenny: Thanks guys. I'm so glad to be here.

Matthew: Yeah, thanks for joining us. I know that most of our conversation today will be about nesting and overwintering of bumble bees, and it seems like you've got the perfect PhD for this subject. But before we head into nests, I'd like to start with a little background on bumble bees, sort of a scene-setting for our listeners. I mean, so first, how many bumble bee species are there in the U.S. and North America?

Jenny: So in temperate North America, there are about 50 different species of bumble bees.

Matthew: Okay. That's good. Because for some people, bees are like—there's only one type of bee, right? And so to discover there's like 50 types of just bumble bees can be quite shocking. Can they be found everywhere? I mean, if I'm in any state, could I step out the door and expect to find them?

Jenny: Yeah. So bumble bees can be found in every state in the U.S. But there are places where you'll find more bumble bees than others. So in arid places like the deserts, you may not encounter many—as many bumble bees as you would in a place like a tallgrass prairie in the Midwestern United States. You'll also find fewer types of bumble bees in some areas compared to others. So in the Mountain West, it's a super diverse place for bumble bees. The deep south—they're not as many species there as you would find in other places.

Matthew: I remember reading somewhere else that the, kind of the global diversity of bumble bees was in the Himalayan range. So again, high mountains. So I guess it makes sense that the mountain states—the Rockies—would have a good diversity here. I know we're gonna talk about nesting and overwintering, but before we get to that, I've been thinking about flowers. With our 50 species of bumble bees, do different species have preferences over the flowers they visit?

Jenny: Bumble bees are what we call foraging generalists. So they can forage on lots of different types of flowers. However, they do like certain flowers more than others, and there are some differences in between species in terms of their floral preferences. Some bumble bees have long tongues, some bumble bees have short tongues. And for bumble bees, what length of tongue matters when it comes to your floral preferences. Flowers come in all shapes and sizes, and so you need to have the right length tongue to get into the nectar of some different types of flowers. So that is one of the things that impacts which types of flowers a bumble bee will visit.

Rachel: Can you give us a general overview of bumble bee lifecycle? And then tell us a little bit more about their nesting and overwintering behavior.

Jenny: Sure. So bumble bees are social insects. They live in colonies. We can think of a bumble bee colony as being like a family. So I'm sure you guys have all heard about a queen bee, or a queen bumble bee. So the queen is like the mom, and she has two types of daughters. She has reproductive daughters that will go on to reproduce. She also has non-reproductive daughters. So those non-reproductive daughters, those are the workers. They help their mom, the queen, raise their brothers and sisters in the colony. So their brothers and sisters include other workers, and they also include those reproductive daughters I mentioned. So those reproductive daughters are gonna go on to become queens, themselves, later on. And then their brothers—the male reproductive individuals are called drones. So while bumble bees are social, they also have a solitary phase of their life cycle. So right now in the upper Midwest, where I'm based, summer is wrapping up, which means that lots of different bumble bee species are about to start—or have already started—that solitary phase of their lifecycle. So queen bumble bees are gonna leave their natal colony—so their family that they grew up with, where they were born—and find a place to overwinter all by themselves. Now we don't know a lot about where bumble bees spend the winter. But when researchers have found overwintering queens, they've typically found them under a few inches of soil, or leafy duff in a forest.

Jenny: So the queens, they are going out on their own, and they're digging out these little areas to overwinter, and they're just spending the winter by themselves. So after the winter passes, in the spring, when things start to warm up, the queen is gonna emerge and start looking for a nest site—so her own place to start her own colony. Some bubble bee colonies can be pretty big, so hundreds to thousands of workers living in one spot. So they're gonna need a lot of space—at least for an insect. They can't build these places themselves, they need to use a cavity that already exists. So an abandoned rodent burrow underneath the ground is a really good place for bumble bees to nest. Most bumble bee nests are found below the ground, but bumble bees also use what we call surface nests, so nests resting on top of the soil. So abandoned vole nests are really good spots for bumble bees to nest on the surface of the ground. I don't know if you guys are familiar with vole nests, but they're sort of like these thatchy, little patches of grass—the bumble bees will use that to nest in. And they also use sites above the ground. So in a bird's nest in a tree hollow, or something like that.

Jenny: So in the spring, if you're looking, you might spot some queen bumble bees looking for nest sites. They fly around in this zig-zag pattern, sort of low to the ground, and that is them looking for abandoned rodent burrows, or different substrates where they can start their nest. So once she finds a place to nest, she can start her colony. She will go out and collect pollen and nectar, and once she has enough food, she will form it into a ball and then lay her eggs on that. So that first group of eggs is gonna develop and turn into the first cohort of workers. So that first cohort of workers is going to emerge sometime in the late spring, early summer—timing depends on the species. But that colony will grow, producing more and more workers, grow, and grow, and grow, and grow all through the summer. Until a certain point in the late summer, early fall—once again, timing depends on the species—that colony will switch from growth—making more workers—to reproduction—so making those reproductive siblings, the new queens and the drones. So once the new queens and drones emerge, they will mate, and then the new queens will find a place to spend the winter. So they'll leave their natal colonies, go off someplace else, and then everybody else will die. So in temperate regions, [a] queen bumble bee, if she's successful, will live a year. The colony is gonna last a summer, or a growing season. So bumble bees need a place to nest during that growing season, and then they need a place to overwinter during the cold season.

Rachel: Thank you for so thoroughly explaining that. Can you tell us how bumble bees life history is different from most of our native bee species?

Jenny: Yeah. So bumble bees are really special. Most of our native bee species are solitary, just one mama bee all on her own, raising her offspring. Only at 2% of our native bees are social, and that 2% includes our bumble bee species.

Matthew: I was partly thinking when you were describing the workers, the daughters who worked, and the daughters who truly were princesses, I'm like, “Oh, there's like sibling rivalry going on in there.” But also, this colony cycle that you describe it—not all these nests are exactly like happiness and domestic harmony, because some of these bees don't bother making their own nests, do they? And they're considered to be cuckoos.

Jenny: Yeah, so there are a few species of bumble bees that don't follow the rules, and cuckoos are the rule-breakers. So cuckoos are bumble bees with a parasitic lifestyle. So instead of establishing their own colonies, cuckoo bumble bees will find an already established colony of bumble bees, and they'll sneak in and then trick the workers of that colony to rear her brood. So instead of helping raise their siblings, those workers are helping to raise cuckoo bumble bee females and males. Now, I don't wanna throw cuckoo bumble bees completely under the bus here. Other bumble bee species will fight for nest sites, they'll try to take over already established colonies. But cuckoo bumble bees are obligate to do this. So they're obligate in their parasitic lifestyle. They don't have structures on their bodies to help them collect pollen. And they'll never produce workers. So you'll never see a cuckoo bumble bee worker, just females and males.

Matthew: I love stories like that because we all have this image of, “Oh, as busy as a bee,” and there are some bees that are not quite so busy. But, ah, you gotta love nature, haven't you? Endlessly fascinating. You've talked about the lifecycle of the bumble bees, but how do they choose where to nest? You mentioned that some are above ground, some are at the ground surface, many are underground—is that like different species have different preferences? And if I'm a queen flying around deciding where to nest, what might guide me to the choose one hole from another?

Jenny: Yeah. So I guess to back up a little bit, there's a lot that we don't know about bumble bee nesting. So most of the data that we have on nesting comes from accidental sightings of nests. Bumble bee nests are really hard to find. They're often under the ground, and the only way that you can find the nest is by, you know, looking for worker activity outside of the nest entrance. So bees coming back and forth as they're going out and foraging. Or if you're a researcher, some folks will go and like put a little radio tracker on a foraging bee and then follow them back to their nest site. But that's pretty expensive. And so our knowledge about bumble bee nesting is pretty limited.

Jenny: Most of the accidental sightings of nests that we have on record come from places like cities, or from yards, and gardens, and parks. You know, somebody finds a nest in a tractor seat, or a coat hanging in their shed. You know, it can be really hard to translate that information into what is the best preference of a specific species, because all we really have are what we know that they're using, right? From those patterns of what we'll call nesting habitat use, it does seem like some species prefer—I won't say prefer—but tend to use certain sites, whereas other species maybe won't use those sites. So the common eastern bumble bee is a species that we have a fair amount of data on in terms of their nesting habitats, and that is a species that is typically found to use sites underground. In contrast, the brown-belted bumble bee, which is another eastern species, will be found using some subterranean sites, but they'll also use surface nests. So they'll be using vole nests as places to nest, and that is different than what we see for the common eastern bumble bee.

Jenny: There are a few other things that we can take away from these incidental sightings of nests. So, as I mentioned, bumble bees need a shelter, they need a cavity to nest in. They also need some sort of insulating material so that they can insulate their brood. So you know that grassy thatch, or when a rodent builds a burrow, they often bring in insulating material to insulate their own young—so bumble bees will repurpose that. If they're using a more human-centric type of nesting habitat—say they are nesting in a wall, they will often nest in like the insulation in the wall, or they'll use a stuffing in a sofa that's been left outside, or something like that. So yeah, we know some bumble bees can use some pretty odd things to nest in, but whether or not the colonies in those nests are healthy is a question I don't think we have enough data on.

Matthew: I knew that there was some bumble bee species that we didn't know the nest of. In fact, I know with the research that you and your colleagues have been doing in summer here, it's like, “Wow, we've—for the first time ever—found a nest of western bumble bee,” you know? I realize that how little I know from the reading I've done, but a lot of times you're reading and people seem so confident in what they write. The other thing I was wondering: how do bees find their nest site? Once the colony is established and the workers are going out, or maybe in that very early stage when the queen is solitary rearing her first brood, how do they find the nest again after a trip out?

Jenny: Yeah. So actually, back up a little bit to what you said about the western work. I don't wanna take credit for that. That is all the folks in the Pacific Northwest, they're doing some amazing work on western species. So we do know some information about nesting for different bumble bee species. A lot of information that we have is for eastern species, as opposed to western species. We really need more data on western species, in particular. So shout outs to Rich and the whole team out there doing that work. It is super important to get more data on western species, in particular.

Jenny: So how do they find their nest after they've left? So bumble bees navigate back home in a way that I think is really similar to the way like a person would navigate back home—using landmarks. So when I am making my back way back home from the grocery store, I look for familiar sites—I look for my mailbox, for my neighbor's house. Bumble bees also look for landmarks when they're on their way home. So I don't know if you've ever accidentally mowed over a bumble bee nest, but you might notice in the hours after you mowed over the nest, bumble bee workers flying around in circles in the area where they generally think the nest is. And that's because the landmarks to point them into the direction of their front door are missing.

Matthew: Yeah, that makes sense. And so do they like, when they leave, like circle to make sure as a kind of reminder of what's there to help them reorient?

Jenny: I definitely see bumble bees sort of orient themselves in flight, you know, making a pass over, in a big circle. And I assume that that's them looking around, figuring out exactly where they are.

Matthew: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool.

Rachel: So we've talked about their life cycle, and once those reproductive females are born, they go out, they mate—everybody else, unfortunately dies—but they survive, and they overwinter. And we talked about nesting, but even a bigger mystery is where bumble bees overwinter. These bumble bee queens—why is it so hard to find them?

Jenny: Yeah. So I mentioned that bumble bee nests are hard to find. It's even harder to find overwintering queens. Because overwintering queens are gonna be in the soil, you would need to find the bee digging its overwintering site, or you would need to come across the bee when you're digging, and accidentally dig up the bee yourself. So it's a very difficult task to determine where these bees are spending the winter. I will mention that there is one species of bumble bee that overwinters colonially. The common eastern bumble bee queens can be found overwintering just a few feet from their natal nest site. So they leave home, but they just, I guess, go next door to spend the winter. So if you happen across a nest of common eastern bumble bee, you might spot some overwintering sites nearby. Which I don't know of any other bumble bee species that does that, but I don't think we know enough about their overwintering behaviors to really say how common that is.

Rachel: That's very interesting. I didn't know that. There's something sort of sweet about them not going too far from where they were born.

Jenny: Not ready yet.

Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Little bee homebodies. So you said that they could be found under the soil. If someone's working in their garden and finds an overwintering queen, is there anyone they can report this to? Are researchers gathering this kind of information?

Jenny: Yeah, if you find an overwintering queen, I would definitely recommend reporting it to Queen Quest, which is a platform where you can submit any accidental sightings of overwintering queens. Queen Quest is an effort to learn more about queen overwintering. You know, you just need to fill out a form and tell us what you found. But definitely check out the website—it's queenquest.org.

Rachel: The overwintering queens, are they like in torpor, or hibernating like a bear? Like, are they gonna wake up and fly away? Are they gonna be sleeping? And what should people do when they find one? Just put it back into the soil?

Jenny: Yeah, so they are gonna be pretty sleepy. If they're still alive, they may twitch a little bit, or move around a bit, but they're not going to wake up right away. Especially because if you accidentally dig one up, it's probably gonna be pretty cold outside, and they might not have—it might just not be warm enough for them to warm up and fly away. So if you do accidentally find a queen, if you are, say, digging in your garden, I would just put her back in the position where you find her, and rebury her in the soil. And then try not to step on that area for the rest of the winter, because it's gonna be pretty loose and pretty soft. And you might squish her because she's probably just a few inches underneath the soil. So even if you unbury a queen, she might still survive. I wouldn't move her, or put her into the fridge or, anything because she could get wet and maybe get moldy in the fridge. So just leave her where she is. That's gonna be your best bet for ensuring that she survives.

Matthew: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned, try not to tread on it. Because I was just, as you were describing that, I was like, “So, well one, does it matter which way up the queen goes? Does the queen sleep on her back, or does she sleep…?” Anyway, but also, it's like by the time you disturb the soil, then you've changed the consistency and density of what's around her, so I don't—. Could you then just like pat it down a little bit? I guess it's another one of those many things that we don't know about bumble bees, huh?

Jenny: I did dig up some overwintering queens for some research that I did. And we would just kind of try to stick them back in the exact same position, so facing the same way that they were when we dug them up. And they were still alive at the end of the winter, so they made it. But I don't know—. I checked on them and then I let them go. I don't know if they would've dug themselves back out again if—with the soil disturbance. So that is a good question. But I think the best chance for them to survive would be to just pop them back where they were.

Matthew: I think that's great advice. I have to say, I've only once—that I can remember—having encountered an overwintering queen. And when I was walking in a local nature park, in a forested area, and there was this funny buzzing noise coming from around the base of a Douglas fir, and I was like, “Well, what's that?” I go over and look, and there's this bumble bee just kind of coming out of the duff at the base of the tree there. So I was like, “I guess she survived!” And then she was off on her way, so, which was great.

Jenny: That's so exciting.

Matthew: And this was well before Queen Quest, so I never reported it, so. Haha.

Jenny: Haha.

Rachel: Matthew, that's so cool that you—like timing. It was meant to be.

Matthew: I was like, “What's that noise?” We've talked a lot about the, kind of the biology, the natural history of bumble bees, nesting, overwintering, and so on. We always end up talking about kind of the doom and gloom on this podcast because there's always conservation, and threats are part of our conversations. So what kind of threats do bumble bees face when we're thinking about nesting and overwintering habitat? And some of the—are there things we can do to mitigate those risks?

Jenny: I think that that’s a really tough question. As I've mentioned previously, because nests are so hard to find, we don't have a lot of data to help us get at those really big picture questions. But I do think it's common sense to recognize that human activities can destroy the places that bumble bees use to nest or overwinter. So for other animals, urban development and agricultural intensification are important drivers of habitat loss, and I think we really need to pay more attention to how these potential stressors could be impacting bumble bees during nesting and overwintering. So, when you are developing a suburban or an urban space, or you're building a development, you are disrupting and compacting soil, which is what bumble bees are using to nest in over winter. You are also changing the vegetative community. Instead of a tallgrass prairie or rangeland, you now have suburban lawn, you have impermeable surfaces with agricultural intensification, we have changes in land use.

Jenny: We also have increases in the use of chemical pesticides. And we don't have a lot of information about how pesticide exposure might be impacting the quality of nesting and overwintering habitat for bumble bees, but it's something that could be a potential cause for concern. A lot of pesticide research, it uses honey bees as a study system, which are primarily gonna be exposed to pesticides when they're out foraging, when they're visiting flowers. But pesticides can also accumulate in the soil. Because bumble bees overwinter and nest in the soil, they could be exposed at higher levels than they would be if they're just exposed to flowers.

Jenny: I guess sort of big picture as a researcher, one question that I'm particularly interested in is how to manage habitat for nesting and overwintering bumble bees. Like how do we manage habitat for bees during these cryptic stages of life cycle where we can't see them, but we know that they need certain resources? In the midwest where I am based, there is a ton of agricultural land—agricultural land everywhere. The remaining prairies and forests that we have are really fragmented. So I think it's really important to try to take care of these places that we still have as resources for our bees to nest and overwinter in.

Jenny: I also think that we can make changes in suburban areas and agricultural areas to make things better for bubble bees. When I was in grad school, I did a study on nesting bumble bees, looking at the number of nests that we found in different places on a conservation farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts. So we looked for bumble bee nests in hay fields. We looked for them in grasslands that were mowed periodically. We also looked for nest in forests. We found nests in all these places. We didn't find that many nests in the hay fields, but we did find a couple of them. And the hay fields where we found nests, were all mowed using conservation strategy to preserve grassland birds. So they were all mowed later in the season, past July. And I think that speaks to the fact that suburban areas and agricultural areas can be multi-use. They can be places for people, and they can be places for wildlife, as well.

Matthew: Yeah, most definitely. I was going to follow up with a question about how can people promote nesting or overwintering sites? Are there specific steps they can take? Or is it more don't disturb what you've got?

Jenny: Yeah. So I think whether or not you're somebody with a small yard, or you're managing a large nature reserve, it's important to think about how you can make your space an area where other animals can live. So animals like birds, animals like chipmunks, animals like voles. A forest might not be the first thing that you think about when you think about pollinator habitat, but a forest can offer places for bumble bees to nest, and places for them to overwinter. So while there is no one, I would say specific, thing that's going to really improve the quality of your nesting and overwintering site, I think thinking about your land holistically, and just making a really biodiverse place is gonna be your best bet for improving nesting and overwintering habitat.

Matthew: And I guess if someone's done all of this, and they actually come across a nesting site, is there anything that in particular they could do to protect it?

Jenny: Yeah, I would say the best thing is to do nothing. Haha. So just leave the nest, if you can. If you're in your yard, it's a little bit, I think, scary at first to realize you have a bumble bee nest in your backyard. But if you try to do something like move the nest, the bot workers might get lost, and they may not be able to make it back to the nest. Or if you're hanging out by the nest too much, you may attract predators to that area. So things like skunks and bears might dig up the bumble bee nest. And so I would say just leave it be. They can probably handle themselves. And then they chose that spot. Just letting them do their thing is great.

Jenny: And also if you do happen to find a nest, you can submit it to Bumble Bee Watch, which is our online platform for submitting photos of bumble bees across the United States and Canada. You can submit a sighting of a nest, if you'd like. You just need to take some photos of the nest, and hopefully catching some of the bees leaving or exiting the nest so that we can tell which species is using it. But definitely let us know if you find a nest, because it's pretty cool and really exciting.

Matthew: Thinking again about nest provision. I know these days you can buy nesting boxes in stores alongside chickadee nest houses, and hummingbird feeders, and I also know that people have been experimenting with and trying to build artificial bumble bee nest sites for years. And I'm thinking there of like some of the classic work done more than a century ago by Frederick Sladen in Britain, where he was like a burying a teapot in the ground with the spout out of the top, and putting a bit of dry moss in it, and he was like, “Oh, it worked.” Obviously, these artificial nest work to some extent, but are they a really good thing to add to your landscape?

Jenny: Yeah, so I've put out a fair number of nest boxes for bumble bees, and in my experience, it did not really work for creating habitat—. Or at least, only one bumble bee colony ended up using one of my nest boxes out of the many, many, many that I hung up in trees, and put on the ground. I did get a ton of mice using the nest boxes. So when I went to go collect them, they were all just full of little mice families. So I would not recommend using a nest box. If you do decide to put one out, I would recommend not putting it out in the sun, because you don't want the bees to overheat. And if they are right in the sun, you know, they're gonna be undergoing a lot of temperature fluctuation. So put them in the shade, is my recommendation, or you could just not put them out, as well.

Matthew: Yeah. It seems like just creating wonderful natural conditions is the better way to go.

Rachel: So we've talked a lot about habitat and how people can create spaces and places that are safe for bumble bees, but if someone wanted to get involved with bumble bee conservation, are there other suggestions you have of how they can get involved?

Jenny: Yeah, so there are two things that I recommend. You know, we've talked a lot about creating habitat. You can plant native flowers, you can create nest sites by creating habitat for birds and mammals, planting prairie, planting trees. You can also do things to help make sure that you're not disturbing the insects that are using your property by participating in efforts like Leave the Leaves. So instead of raking your leaves, leaving them where they are because those leaves might be an important insulator for any overwintering queens in your garden. Avoiding tilling when overwintering queens might be in the soil. Those things are gonna help you not disturb anybody who's using your garden, or your land to overwinter or nest.

Jenny: The second thing I recommend doing is getting involved with community science efforts like the Bumble Bee Atlas. So Rachel, you mentioned that I'm one of the coordinators of the Bumble Bee Atlas. It's a community science program focused on tracking bumble bees. So our participants formally go out and survey for bumble bees. It's a program in more than 20 states. So if you are in a state with a Bumble Bee Atlas program, and you are interested in participating in research, I encourage you to check us out.

Jenny: If folks don't wanna take the leap into doing any formal surveys for bumble bees, you can always submit accidental sightings to platforms like Bumble Bee Watch or iNaturalist. So if you just see a bee out in your garden, you can take a picture of it, and then submit it, and upload it. And that is a record of that bee in that location. And for some species, those incidental sightings are super important and super valuable sources of information about where that species is still present.

Jenny: So for the rusty-patched bumble bee, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses all of that data that people collect to help them understand where rusty-patched bumble bee is still present. It's a huge, very important source of data for us. So any way that you can contribute, whether or not you're going out and doing a big survey, or you're just taking a photo of a bee that you think could be a rusty-patched out in your backyard, you're still contributing to science and to research.

Rachel: I think that's great. I recommend Bumble Bee Watch to a lot of families, specifically because it's great just to get out in nature and make observations. You just have to take some photos, and they help you help identify the bumble bee, which is a fun process to go through, and then they verify it. There's lots of different ways that people can get involved.

Matthew: And what you were saying there, Jenny, about random observations made me think that just recently, I was reading that rusty-patched bumble bee—there was an observation from Michigan—but it was a dead one that someone found, took a photograph and submitted it. I don't know more than that, but it's like, was like the first record in the state in, I don’t know how many years. So is it truly that there's a colony there? Or is it, someone like had a pocket for of dead bumble bees they were throwing out? I don't know.

Jenny: Haha. Did it fly across the lake and just not make it?

Matthew: Yeah. Who knows? Yeah. I don’t know. But it's just this idea that that was a one random observation that just sparked such scientific interest.

Jenny: Totally. Yeah, I also saw that. It's a big deal. And I think people are really excited to look around that area to see if they find more.

Matthew: Yeah. And probably no one would've been looking or thinking of looking there until that happened, so it's great.

Matthew: Thank you so much Jenny. I learned so much about bumble bees, and their nesting. And also about how much we don't know, and how many more answers there are out there. And the contributions that anybody can make towards helping to fill in some of these knowledge gaps through community science and some of these other programs. We always finish our episodes with a couple of pretty standard questions for our guests that we just love asking. So what inspired you to pursue a career in insect conservation?

Jenny: Yeah! So I always loved animals, when I was little. I love, love, loved them. Which I think is really relatable—a lot of people really like animals, especially in our field. But when I was little, I also really loved counting. Haha. Which I feel maybe isn't as relatable. When I would go on road trips with my family—we lived close to Yellowstone, like maybe an hour away—and I would count all of the different ungulates I would see. So how many bison did I see on this trip and how many elk? And then I would like write it down in a notebook, and I would like put it in my pocket, and yeah, just like a total weirdo. So I ended up in the perfect career, which is counting animals. I don't count ungulates anymore, but bumble bees—they're similar. Haha. And yeah, and I love really love insects, especially. I kind of fell into insects by accident, but I just really enjoy working with them, you know. And it's also a plus that I get to do field work when it's just the nicest outside. You never go out when it's too hot, you never go out when it's too cold. It's always the perfect weather for bumble bees. They like temperatures between 60 and 90, and they're not gonna be out when it's super rainy. In the winter, they're overwintering, so, you know, it just is so—such a wonderful way to spend time outside looking at insects.

Rachel: I think it's so cute that as a child you had a notebook and you counted animals that you saw in Yellowstone. That is very heartwarming. I don't think it's weird at all. And it's really—to the bumble bees of the world—their benefit, because now you're helping them by counting them. Haha.

Jenny: Haha.

Rachel: I think it's wonderful. Alright, our last question: if you could see any bug in the wild—bug being a very loose term, and wild being anything outside of captivity—what would it be?

Jenny: Yeah, so I would have to say the variable cuckoo bumble bee, just because it would make my career and my life. So this is a cuckoo bumble bee species that hasn't been seen in a really long time anywhere in the United States, or anywhere in the world. It's been, I think a couple decades now. I would just, yeah, love to see it. I think that is a little bit of a reach. So another bumble bee species that I would really like to see, that I think is a little bit more realistic would be Bombus dahlbomii, which is an endangered species of bumble bee in South America. It's really huge! It's gigantic, and it's really fuzzy, and really tawny, and it just looks like a teddy bear, and I think it'd be so cute to see in real life.

Matthew: Yeah, makes perfect sense. I think that's a species that many bumble bee scientists dream of seeing.

Rachel: It is the cutest bumble bee, and it's so orange. And fluffy. It's very cool. Well, thank you so much, Jenny, for being with us today, and for answering our questions, and helping us explore more about bumble bees and their habitat. It was very interesting and it's just been a real pleasure to have you on Bug Banter with us. Thank you for all the work that you do.

Jenny: Thank you for having me. It was really lovely to chat with you for a bit.

Matthew: Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks.

Rachel: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-based nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates—the life that sustains us.

Rachel: If you are already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast or for show notes, go to xerces.org/bugbanter.