We Need to Bee Careful With Pollinators

We Need to Bee Careful With Pollinators

Series note: The region’s collection of native species is under threat on several fronts, most notably from humanity’s shortsightedness. Humans aren’t giving the natural world the space it needs and deserves. We’re crowding out non-human life, which, in turn, makes nature less productive and us less healthy. Wild New England examines the animals and insects most at risk.

Native insects and native plants are the foundation of a healthy environment. The natural world and the free ecological services it provides, however, are breaking down. Humans should be more concerned.

Pollinators, especially bees, play a vital role in maintaining the function and diversity of ecosystems through their unique relationships with native flowering plants. Insects are also a food source for amphibians, birds, fish, reptiles, and some humans.

But the ongoing degradation of green space, coupled with the continued loss of insect biodiversity, pose a significant threat to human health and well-being.


“A significant majority of pollination is actually done by bees, especially native wild bees,” said Mike Nelson, an invertebrate zoologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife’s Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program. “It’s not just the honeybees, it’s all of those other bees who are doing most of the pollination.”

He noted Massachusetts has about 400 species of native bees.

A decade ago, Robert Gegear, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, launched the Beecology Project to learn more about the ecology of native pollinators — the initial focus was on bees, specifically bumblebees — to better understand why some species are doing so poorly while others are thriving, or at least holding steady.

“Wild pollinators have declined in abundance, diversity, and geographic distribution at an alarming rate over recent years,” according to the opening paragraph on the Beecology Project website. “These declines pose a significant threat to ecosystem health and biodiversity.”

Gegear told ecoRI News two years ago that certain pollinators are heading toward extinction, such as the rusty patched bumblebee. Once common across the Northeast and Midwest, this species now survives mostly in isolated populations in the upper Midwest. All of the species’ populations are threatened by habitat loss, pesticides, parasites, and disease, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

There are 49 different species of bumblebee in the United States and about a quarter are facing some degree of extinction risk. Two species have been placed on the U.S. Endangered Species List: the southern plains bumblebee and the Franklin’s bumblebee. The latter hasn’t been observed by scientists since 2006.

Although still not listed as federally endangered, the American bumblebee has disappeared from eight states, including Maine and New Hampshire.

Other bee species, however, such as the eastern bumblebee, are increasing in numbers.

Gegear said it’s about diversity — not how many individuals there are but how many species there are, because each species has a connection with a flowering plant that has a connection to other species.
To attract a diversity of native insect pollinators, it is important to choose native flowers of different colors, shapes, sizes, and bloom times. At least three different flower species should be blooming at any one time from spring until fall to support both early- and late-emerging insect species. These are some New England native plants to consider. (DEM)

For example, native bees have vastly different flower preferences than honeybees, which were imported from Europe. Gegear said the survival of native pollinators has a cascading effect on many other species, both the wild plants they pollinate and the other wildlife using those plants for food, shelter, and nesting.

He noted these relationships support ecosystem health, “but as we start to remove pollinators, we start to affect all these other species.”

For instance, as species of bumblebees that were once common in southern New England fade, such the yellow-banded bumblebee, the yellow bumblebee, the half-black bumblebee, and the aforementioned rusty patched bumblebee, the impact doesn’t end with their disappearance. The plants they bonded with over centuries also are impacted.

There are an estimated 250 species of bee in Rhode Island, according to the Rhode Island Wild Bee Survey, a Rhode Island Pollinator Atlas project led and developed by Katie Burns.

“Historically, there were 11 species of bumblebee in Rhode Island,” Burns, a Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management entomologist, told ecoRI News in 2023. “But currently, we can only find six.”

A combination of factors are to blame: the climate crisis; habitat loss; and a lack of food sources.

“Bees we see disappearing are closely co-evolved with a flower species,” Burns said. “Their relationship is like that of puzzle pieces. And because they have such a specific niche, loss of resources can really affect them.”

Insect pollinators get most of their nutrients from flowers. Pollen provides protein and fats, nectar provides carbohydrates, and both provide trace amounts of vitamins and minerals.

But our persistent assault on native pollination systems — by industrial farming, the overuse of chemicals, development, the burning of fossil fuels, and a proliferation of lawns — poses a significant threat to human and ecosystem health.

Total insect mass is decreasing by 2.5% annually, according to a 2019 study. About 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, with butterflies and moths among the worst hit, according to the 2019 peer-reviewed scientific paper published in the journal Biological Conservation. The study noted that intensive agriculture is the main driver of insect decline, particularly the overuse of pesticides.

“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” the study’s authors wrote. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”

Of all flowering plants, 85% require an animal — mostly insects, but also vertebrates such as birds and bats — to transfer pollen. Pollinators also account for the fertilization of some 35% of crop production worldwide.

The part of the pollinator/plant/animal biodiversity decline that goes largely unnoticed, however, is the impact on ecosystem services. Interactions between native species, which have co-evolved for millenniums, support the sequestration of carbon, soil decomposition, and water purification.

The preference of pollinators varies by species, but, in general, native insects prefer native plants. That relationship, though, is much more complicated than that simple premise. It can take a variety of plants to support one pollinator species, as many insects require a host plant, plus sources for nectar and pollen.

Those needs aren’t typically provided by a single plant species. The needs within a species can also be varied. For instance, short-tongued bees are attracted to cup-shaped flowers, while long-tongued bees prefer tubular ones. The preference of medium-tongued bees falls somewhere in between.Pollinators, such as bees, provide a vital ecosystem service for free. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News)

The following is a look at the bees in southern New England listed as a species of concern, threatened or endangered:


American bumblebee: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. Like all bumblebees, this species is active throughout the growing season. The queen overwinters, emerging in the spring to start a new colony. Workers become increasingly abundant through late summer, and then begin to decline as males emerge in late summer and early fall.

Five decades ago this native bee could be found in the Connecticut River valley in Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties; in Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties; and in the southeastern part of the state in Plymouth County, on Cape Cod, the Elizabeth Islands, and Martha’s Vineyard. It has since declined dramatically, and now is found only in Franklin and Hampshire counties, where it is rare.

This species is long-tongued and dependent on plants with long, tubular flowers for nectar. It can be found in grasslands, fields, pastures, suburban yards, parks, and gardens. However, habitat must provide a diversity of flowers blooming throughout the growing season. Within such habitat, this species typically nests on the ground surface in tufts of long grass or piles of cut grass or hay.

Threats potentially affecting this species in Massachusetts include: pathogens introduced via commercially propagated bumblebees; habitat loss or degradation, including loss of native floral diversity to adverse landscaping practice, agricultural intensification, succession and afforestation, or excessive deer browse; and pesticide use where habitat overlaps or interfaces with agricultural or landscaped areas.


Macropis cuckoo bee: Listed as threatened in Massachusetts. It flies in June and July, and has been recorded nectaring on species of dogbane, beetleweed, bluets, and brambles. It prefers open, sparsely vegetated areas.

The species’ range is Michigan to New England and south to Georgia.


Parnassia miner: Listed as threatened in Massachusetts. A medium-large mining bee with abundant dark hairs. Few other species of mining bee are active in the fall away from goldenrod.


Walsh’s Anthophora: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. This species is threatened by habitat loss and fire suppression. Fire maintains open habitat, promotes growth of yellow wild indigo, and provides nest sites by reducing organic matter at the soil surface. Other potential threats include introduced pathogens, aerial insecticide spraying, non-target herbiciding, excessive deer browse of larval host plants, and off-road vehicles.

Like other Anthophora species, this bee is a solitary (non-social) ground nester. Nesting has been documented in Massachusetts in sparsely vegetated, sandy soils in or near stands of yellow wild indigo.

Throughout its geographic range, this species has most often been collected while foraging on flowers of plants belonging to the pea family, such as sensitive pea, wild senna, bush clover, and various plants in the mint family.


Yellow-banded bumblebee: Listed as threatened in Massachusetts. Fifty years ago this bee occurred throughout the state. It has since declined dramatically, now largely restricted to northern Berkshire County, with a few scattered records in southern Berkshire County and southeastern Massachusetts.

This bee is a northern species, in the East ranging from Newfoundland south to Pennsylvania, and further south at elevation in the Appalachian Mountains. It ranges west through North Dakota and the Canadian Great Plains, to the tundra of Canada and the Mountain West, especially in British Columbia. Massachusetts is near the southern edge of this species’ range in the East, except for populations extending south at elevation in the Appalachian Mountains.

This bee is a short-tongued species that can nevertheless take nectar from plants with long, tubular flowers by chewing holes at the base of the flowers. It is usually found in open areas within or near woodlands and wetlands, including suburban yards, parks, and gardens. However, habitat must provide a diversity of flowers blooming throughout the growing season.

The following are things, courtesy of Gegear and the National Audubon Society, that you can do to protect pollinators and the native species they have evolved with:

Select nectar and pollen plants so there are blooms in every season (March-May) (June-July) (August-September).

Select native New England flowering plants and bushes. Use pollen-producing plants in planters and on apartment balconies. (While eastern bumblebees are attracted to nonnative plants, other bumblebees don’t like foreign varieties.)

Spring floral resources are important for at-risk pollinators, so give them a high priority.

Select plants that target as many species of pollinators as possible, as a good habitat will support species at risk over the entire season.

Leave some soil bare for ground-nesting bees.

Go natural with your lawn. Allow flowers such as clover and dandelions to grow.

Refrain from clearing leaf litter and cutting old plant stalks as insects lay their eggs in these and use them for overwintering shelter.

Leave dead trees on your property, as many pollinators use decaying trees to lay their eggs and pupate into adults.