Why Bumble Bees Are the Fuzzy Heroes We Need

[A yellow-and-black striped bumble bee lands atop a flowering plant.]

JESSICA WARE (Curator, Division of Invertebrate Zoology): In 2022, California decided this was a fish… kinda. 

[Ware talks to camera in a botanical garden. She stands in front of a pollinator hotel—a structure about 4 feet by 4 feet that’s built somewhat like a dollhouse. Four openings contain jumbled stacks of bamboo and wood that provide shelter for overwintering insects. The foliage indicates it’s fall or winter. ]

WARE: Conservation advocates were trying to protect bumble bee species with the California Endangered Species Act. 

[A graphic shows some of the text from the law. It reads, ‘Ca. Fish and Game Code 2062. “Endangered species” means a native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant, which is in serious danger of becoming extinct throughout all, or a significant portion, of its range due to one or more causes, including loss of habitat, change in habitat, overexploitation, predation, competition, or disease. Any species determined by the commission as “endangered” on or before January 1, 1985, is an “endangered species.”]

[Various shots of vertebrates and plants considered endangered species in California, including the sage grouse, a seal, and a tortoise.]

WARE: But that 1984 law only covers native “bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant” species under threat. 

[A butterfly visits a wildflower.]

WARE: So, it seemed like insects and other invertebrates weren’t eligible…

[A graphic shows text from California’s Fish and Game Code: “45. “Fish” means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals. Ca. Fish and Game Code 45.”]

[Footage of fish, snails, bees, and amphibians.]

WARE: But, under California’s Fish & Game Code, “fish” means “wild fish, mollusks, crustaceans, invertebrates, or amphibians.” Which is casting a pretty wide net. 

[FROG CROAKS]

[Extreme close-up of a frog’s face.]

[Footage of bees, fish, and the facade of the California Supreme Court.]

WARE: So bumble bee lovers argued that bees could be considered fish… and the state court agreed!

[Graphic showing four species of bumble bees now considered as candidates for endangered species status. Text reads: B. suckleyi | Suckley’s cuckoo bumble bee; B. crotchii | Crotch’s bumble bee; B. occidentalis | western bumble bee; B. franklin | Franklin’s bumble bee.]

WARE: As of 2024 four bumble bee species are candidates for protection under California law. This means they get pre-emptive safeguards and helps conserve their habitats.

[Ware speaks to camera in the botanical garden.]

WARE: It can be hard to drum up support for insects. And in general, as humans, we tend to suffer from, like, taxonomic bias.  We tend to love things that are warm or cuddly, that remind us of mammals or remind us of ourselves. 

[Extreme close-ups of large, fuzzy bumble bees foraging in a flower.]

WARE: But we need these critical pollinators, and they—along with insects around the world—are plummeting in numbers. We’re still trying to understand why, but we do know that bumble bees face some unique threats. Maybe you could help figure out what’s going on…

[BUZZING]

[Title animation: Insectarium]

[On-screen text: American Museum of Natural History]

[Ware stands in the midst of an oversized model of a honeycomb. Monitors embedded in the honeycomb show footage inside a honeybee hive.]

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: Jessica, when I think about risks to bees, I feel like I’ve heard of this thing called Colony Collapse Disorder. What is that?

[On-screen text: Jessica Ware, Ph.D. | Curator, American Museum of Natural History]

WARE: So, Colony Collapse Disorder is when a beehive kind of dies off. 

[Archival footage shows a beekeeper inspecting honeybee boxes.]

WARE: And in the late 2000s, this happened to a bunch of hives. 

[Ware talks to camera.]

WARE: And so, the name was kind of coined to describe this new phenomenon that was happening. 

[A beekeeper’s gloved hand opens to display dozens of dead honeybees. Dying bees are scattered in a hive.]

WARE: Colony Collapse Disorder is when a large proportion of the workers die off.  

[Ware speaks to camera amidst the honeycomb model.]

[On-screen text: Susan and Peter J. Solomon Family Insectarium | American Museum of Natural History]

WARE: So even if queens are left alive or the babies, if the workers aren’t there to do the jobs, then the colony itself collapses. In the beginning, it was a mystery what was causing Colony Collapse Disorder. 

[Extreme close-up of a mite under a microscope. Hundreds of dead honeybees.]

WARE: A parasitic mite was an early candidate. Then there were ideas about other parasites, diseases, or insecticides. Now what we think is, it’s an additive effect. It’s not just one thing, it’s death by a thousand cuts, causing the colony to collapse.

[Ware speaks to camera in the Insectarium’s honeycomb model.]

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: I like honey-

WARE: Who doesn’t?

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: …but why did Colony Collapse Disorder make headlines?

WARE: You can actually quantify the impact of the loss of bees. Cold, hard cash can actually get people to start talking about, you know, conservation and direct action. 

[Archival footage labeled WhiteHouse.gov shows workers unloading a beehive onto the White House lawn.]

WARE: So the Obama administration launched this presidential task force that was looking at pollination. 

[A graphic shows an excerpt from a White House press release. Text reads: June 20, 2014. Fact Sheet: The Economic Challenge Posed by Declining Pollinator Populations. Pollinators contribute more than 24 billion dollars to the United States economy, of which honey bees account for more than 15 billion dollars through their vital role in keeping fruits, nuts, and vegetables in our diets.]

WARE: And the numbers suggested that maybe a loss of these honeybees would be a loss of about $15 billion. 

[Ware speaks to camera in the Insectarium’s honeycomb model.]

WARE: So I think this was a wakeup call, maybe, to humans, right? 

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: So, are honey bees the most important pollinators we have?

WARE: No. So, the irony is, of course, Colony Collapse Disorder, the kind of genesis that sparked this educational campaign, was something that was only happening to Apis mellifera, which is the European honey bee. It’s actually not native to North America.

[Various shots of honey bees. A honey bee pushes a much larger bumble bee off of a flower that both are foraging on.]

WARE: And as an introduced species, honeybees can have negative effects on native species. They can outcompete other bees and even threaten the long-term health of native plants.    

[Ware speaks to camera in the Insectarium’s honeycomb model.]

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: Wait- honeybees are competing with native species? What kinds of bees are native here? What do we have?

WARE: We have a lot of species of bees. There are actually thousands of species of bees. 

[Shots of various native bee species living in a variety of habitats.]

WARE: Like more than 4,000 bee species native to North America—tiny, little ground-nesting bees all the way up to chunky carpenter bees. And the majority are loners—solitary bees that build their own nests and don’t live in a colony. In fact, the only truly social bees native to the U.S. are the amazing bees in the genus Bombus! 

[An extreme close-up of a foraging bumble bee.]

[On-screen text: Bombus | bumble bees]

[Researcher Hillary Sardiñas speaks to camera in front of scrubby flowering shrubs.]

[On-screen text: Hillary Sardiñas, Ph.D. | Pollinator Coordinator, California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife]

HILLARY SARDIÑAS (Pollinator Coordinator, California Department of Fish and Wildlife): They’re big, they’re fuzzy, they’re really charismatic. 

[Extreme close-ups of bumble bee specimens showing the thick “fuzz” on their bodies.]

SARDIÑAS: What’s also neat about bumble bees is because they’re hairy and big, they are able to withstand cold temperatures. 

[Sardiñas speaks to camera in front of the flowering shrubs.]

SARDIÑAS: They’re also generalists, and so they will visit a whole bunch of different flower species. They’re not going to go specialize on one- Oh my gosh, I see one!

[Sardiñas is distracted by a passing bumble bee and looks around to follow it.]

[Sardiñas carries a net and walks along rocky trails surrounded by manzanita shrubs, flowering in small, pink blossoms.]

[On-screen text: Mount Diablo State Park | Contra Costa County, California]

WARE: Dr. Hillary Sardiñas studies bumble bees in her role as pollinator coordinator for California’s Fish and Wildlife Department. 

[Close-up of a bumble bee foraging on a manzanita flower.]

WARE: It’s early in the year, but California has some uniquely early risers… 

[Sardiñas speaks to camera.]

SARDIÑAS: We’re out here in January. It’s not really a time when you think about being able to find a lot of pollinators, but it’s when queen bumblebees tend to come out from hibernation and pollinate some of these plants that are blooming really early in the year.

[Bumble bees buzz around spring, summer, and fall-blooming plants.]

WARE: One reason bumble bees are so critical to our ecosystems is because they’re usually the first bees buzzing around in late winter and the last to make the rounds in fall. 

[Close-up of a bumble bee absolutely covered in pollen grains. Shots of other bumble bees busily foraging on flowers.]

WARE: Their stocky bodies can carry about twice as much pollen as honey bees, and they work faster and longer—pollinating flowers 50-200% more quickly, and working 50% more hours in a day than honey bees. And they can do something honey bees can’t…

[FAST, LOUD BUZZING]

[Close-up of a bumble bee buzzing in the middle of a flower.]

SARDIÑAS: Bumblebees buzz pollinate. 

[Sardiñas speaks to camera in front of flowering manzanita shrubs.]

SARDIÑAS: So, we’re standing in front of some manzanita plants. 

[Close-up of teardrop-shaped manzanita flowers. A graphic shows an inset of a manzanita flower illustration, with the petals cut away to reveal the anthers—bulbous structures on top of a stalk. On-screen text indicates these “poricidal anthers.”]

SARDIÑAS: And they actually have these things called poricidal anthers. And so, the pollen is trapped inside of them.

[Slow motion research footage shows a bumble bee clamped down on a flower and vibrating its body. A line and text indicate the part of the flower the bee is holding as the “anther cone.”]

[LOUD BUZZING]

WARE: Bumble bees bite down on those anthers and sonicate—they vibrate muscles in their thorax, making this characteristic buzz. The anthers pop open and shoot their pollen onto the bee… 

[Slow motion shots of bumble bees buzz pollinating blueberry and tomato plants.]

WARE: …which then flies off to its next stop, transferring the pollen and fertilizing some of our favorite plants, like berries. Tomatoes and peppers also rely on buzz pollination, and growers will actually check their tomato plants for bumble bee bite marks to make sure flowers have been visited!

[BUZZING]

[Slow motion footage of bumble bees buzz pollinating food crops.]

WARE: So, we need bumble bees for the foods we love. Unfortunately, like for many insects, bumble bee population numbers are crashing.

[Sardiñas speaks to camera.]

SARDIÑAS: About a quarter of all bumble bee species are threatened or endangered. And that’s true here in California. There’s about eight species that we think are not doing as well as we would hope, and four of those have actually been petitioned for listing under the California Endangered Species Act.

[Close-ups of various bumble bee species foraging on flowers.]

WARE: Things don’t look good for bumble bees across North America and we’re seeing patterns of dramatic decline. The American bumble bee used to be found in 47 of the lower 48 states. 

[A graphic shows a map of the American bumble bee’s status in U.S. states. States in the northeast, upper midwest, and Pacific northwest are labeled “Critically Endangered.” Several states in the upper midwest, the east coast, and the south are labeled “Endangered.” New Mexico and several states in the midwest and south are labeled “Vulnerable.” Several southern and western states, and Montana are labeled, “Least Concern.” The state of Washington is grayed out, as there is no reported population of American bumble bees there.]

WARE: But its population has dropped by nearly 90% since 2000, and it’s completely disappeared from eight states.

[Eight states are grayed out—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.]

[Sardiñas speaks to camera.]

SARDIÑAS: There’s not one clear-cut factor. 

[Shots illustrating various threats to bumble bee populations, including a soil churning machine, pesticide sprays, etc.]

SARDIÑAS: It’s this suite of interacting factors from climate change to habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, disease, right, exposure to chemicals like pesticides that are causing the decline.

[Ware speaks to camera in the botanical garden.]

WARE: We know that insects are decreasing at a rate that we’ve never seen before, but in addition, bumble bees face some unique threats. 

[A colony of bumble bees—about a dozen bees can be seen working in their nest.]

WARE: While bumble bees are social, they roll with a smaller crew. A bumble bee nest only has around 50 to 500 bees, while a honey bee hive can buzz with tens of thousands.

[At the entrance to a honeybee hive, hundreds of bees cluster together.]

[A bumble bee colony, with a comparatively small number of individuals. A male bumble bee mates with a queen.]

WARE: A small colony inherently has less genetic diversity—fewer bees, fewer genes. And mating with your parents, siblings, or close cousins is, ah, not a good idea. 

[Ware speaks to camera in the botanical garden.]

WARE: Inbreeding tends to have you accumulate negative, deleterious, “bad” mutations. And that can spread quickly through a population. 

[Several bumble bees fly around the ground entrance to a colony. Slides of microscopic bee parasites and infected bees. A dying bumble bee.]

WARE: Without a healthy amount of diversity in its gene pool, a colony is less able to develop resistance to disease and parasites, and less adaptable to things like pollutants and climate change.   

[Ware speaks to camera in the botanical garden.]

WARE: So, if you imagine that you have a lot of inbreeding already, if we further fragment the habitat, that actually reduces the amount of area in which you can have bumble bees existing. 

[A bumble bee forages in flowers in a patch of urban greenspace. Buildings and a street can be seen in the background.]

WARE: And without connecting paths between patches of bumble bee territory, queens are more likely to pair off with close relatives.

[The rocky landscape of Mount Diablo, covered in flowering manzanita shrubs. Sardiñas looks for bumble bees with her net.]

WARE: So, when it comes to helping bumble bees, we need efforts targeting small-colony species. Protecting habitat is vital. But first, we have to better understand where bumble bees are now. And this is where you can get involved, because we need community scientists to help us figure that out.

[Sardiñas carries a bumble bee in her net, and walks towards the camera to give a closer look.]

[BEE BUZZING IN NET]

WARE: One effort that Hillary helps coordinate is the California Bumble Bee Atlas.

[Sardiñas speaks to camera in front of manzanita bushes. Still images show off volunteer atlas training—an instructor demonstrates net technique to a group of trainees.]

SARDIÑAS: Obviously, as the only pollinator coordinator in California, which is a huge state, I can’t cover it. So, we really rely on these impassioned community members to go out and help us collect this valuable data. 

[Sardñas looks for bumble bees around a manzanita plant at Mount Diablo.]

SARDIÑAS: Oh, I see one. 

WARE: Hillary and atlas volunteers are trained to net bumblebees.

[Sardiñas swings her net… and catches a bee. She displays it in a clear plastic vial.]

SARDIÑAS: I got it! So, this is a yellow-faced bumblebee. This is our most common bumble bee in California, also known as Bombus vosnesenskii. It’s a queen, I think, given how big she is and the time of year.

[Sardiñas puts the vial containing the queen bee in a portable cooler.]

WARE: Once she catches a bee, she’ll put it on ice for a few minutes.

SARDIÑAS: Kind of stick it in. And this is gonna chill her back out so that we can take close-up photos of her. 

[Close-up of chilled bee, now out of the vial, and placed next to a grid that helps gauge the bee’s size for photos. Sardiñas takes a picture of the queen bee with her phone.]

WARE: Hillary and other atlas-ers take pictures for the record… 

SARDIÑAS: You try and get their abdomen, their underside...

WARE:…and then let the bees warm up and buzz off.

[The queen bumble bee wiggles a bit as she warms, then takes flight.]

[Sardiñas speaks to camera in front of manzanita bushes.]

SARDIÑAS: We’re hoping we can get a census of the population—how are they doing now—so that we can see how they’re doing into the future. So, are all of the species declining? Is there a specific threat that’s impacting one of them?

[Ware speaks to camera in the botanical garden.]

WARE: There are bumble bee atlases in many states, but you can also contribute the observations that you make through iNaturalist or through BumbleBeeWatch.org. 

[Screen capture of someone navigating through the iNaturalist website. The user clicks one of many dots that indicate a record of a bee in the genus Bombus. A small window pops up with a user-submitted image of the bee, its species (Bombus huntii), and the date and location where it was sighted.]

[Screen capture of someone navigating through the BumbleBeeWatch.org website. The user scrolls through a gallery of user-submitted images of bumble bees that list the date, location, and user name.]

[Ware speaks to camera in the botanical garden.]

[On-screen text: Discovery Garden | Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York]

WARE: And there are other ways to help these fuzzy flower-lovers live their best life. It can be really great if you could plant a pollinator garden. So, when you say pollinator garden, sometimes you might think, “Well, I don’t have a garden. I don’t have a yard.” That’s okay. It actually doesn’t really matter the size. 

[Examples of small-sized bumble bee habitats like a hanging planter and a flowering plant in a patio container.]

WARE: You could have a small window box, and that’s still providing important habitat for bumble bees.

[Ware speaks to camera at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.]

WARE: There’s lots of plants that bumble bees will visit, but they actually prefer native plants. 

[A bumble bee forages on a wildflower with clusters of small, white flowers.]

WARE: Because, of course, bees have evolved over, you know, millions of years with native plants. 

[Bumble bees buzz around purple flowers.]

WARE: They like blue and purple flowers, so those ones are good ones to use. 

[Ware speaks to camera at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.]

WARE: They tend not to be able to see red, so planting red is really just for you. That’s just a you thing. 

[A variety of different wildflowers bloom in a field. Extreme close-up showing a bumble bee using its long tongue to drink nectar.]

WARE: They like to have a variety of sizes of flowers because bumble bees have different sized tongues, and they have to actually be able to drink the nectar. 

[Various shots of bumble bees on different species of flowers that bloom at different times during the year.]

WARE: It’s also good to have flowers that kind of are blooming throughout the year, because bees—bumble bees, especially—they need to be able to eat across the seasons.

[Close ups of  the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s  “pollinator hotel,” the dollhouse-like structure that provides habitat for insects, including close-ups of different “rooms” that are filled with different sizes of sticks and sheltering material.]

WARE: The other important thing you can do for bees is make sure that they have the habitat to overwinter in. They need to have holes and bits of twigs and leaves that they can nest in.

[Ware speaks to camera in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.]

WARE: So, you remember how we talked about taxonomic bias? Well, if there’s one insect that can kind of break through this threshold, it’s the bumble bee. 

[A fuzzy bumble bee is curled in the middle of a rose.]

WARE: They’re hard-working, cuddly, warm, fuzzy, curl-up-after-a-long-day, the insect that it really reminds us of ourselves. An insect that we can love. 

[Ware speaks to camera in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.]

WARE: And if we can save the bumble bee, we can save the world! 

[A bumble bee forages at the center of a large, vibrant flower.]

WARE: Before I reveal our amazing extra credit bee fact… 

[Ware speaks to camera amidst the Insectarium’s honeycomb model.]

WARE: Have you heard the buzzzzz? It's Earth Month, everybody! All this month PBS is dropping episodes about our amazing planet, like the new Eons video exploring what Future Earth might look like. Links to that video, and the full PBS Digital Studios Earth Month playlist, in the description!

[Credits roll]

[A bumble bee forages on a coneflower.]

WARE: So, bumble bees are one of the few insects that have shown what we like to call “culture”—

[Two bumble bees stand facing one another and moving their antennae.]

WARE: …where an individual learns something new and passes it on to others. 

[In research footage, labeled “Trained Demonstrator B-8,” a single bumble bee uses the weight of its body to move aside a small barrier, and then push a rotating plate forward. Then, in another shot of the same set-up, one bee goes through the same motions, while an accompanying bumble bee follows closely behind.] 

WARE: In one  experiment, “demonstrator” bees learned how to  open a complex puzzle box and then showed others how to do the same. 

[A bumble bee’s butt, covered in pollen, pokes out of a large flower. It backs out and flies off.]

WARE: And just to make them extra adorable, bumble bees have been observed doing something like play. 

[Research footage shows a bumble bee in a lab setting. It’s surrounded by plastic balls of various colors and moves from one to another, clinging onto them, and rolling them around the enclosure.]

WARE: So, if you give bumble bees, especially kind of younger bumble bees, little tiny balls, they actually do a behavior that’s not work—it’s not contributing to their immediate survival, there’s no reward, it’s a different kind of behavior from something they would do if they were looking for food or a mate, and they repeat it (but not obsessively). Forget about “busy as a bee,” these guys are out there having a blast!