Bumble Bees are getting active!
Spring has arrived and all kinds of plants are in bloom! That means that the bumble bees are out and about. This early in the season, many of the bees will be queens, so be mindful of pesticides in and around your flowers! In addition, several of us (me included) are learning about bumble bee ID. There are several excellent guides online including bumble bee watch (https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/) and the forest service guides to eastern and western bumble bees (https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/documents/BumbleBeeGuideEast2011.pdf and https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/documents/BumbleBeeGuideWestern2012.pdf). I would like caution people just learning that Bumble Bee ID can be really tricky. For South Dakota, Brown-belted, Common Eastern, Hunt's, Two-spotted seem to be the most frequently encountered. Three of the species are very similar, brown-belted, common eastern, and two spotted are all similar size and shape. With the right angle, brown-belted and two-spotted are easy to ID by patterns on the abdomen, however those patterns are not always present. Likewise, we are seeing a lot of Hunt's bumble bees this spring, but they are easily confused with Tri-colored bumble bees. The casual difference being a the pattern on back of the thorax, a bar on the Hunt's and a thumbtack outline on the Tri-colored. With really good photos of the face, Hunt's have a long face, hair on the head will be yellow and long while Tri-coloreds will have a face that is nearly as wide as it is long and the hair on the head maybe yellow, but it will appear shorter. So a shaggy vs. a more clean cut look. One really cool result is the number of Hunt's bumble bees seen in the central SD. According the range maps, they are not supposed to be here, but several photos fit the Hunt's description better than the tri-colored (should be state wide). If you make a species id, PLEASE note the reasons for that ID. We are all learning, and we all want to improve our ID skills. Hopefully more of the iNaturalist bee experts take a look at the photos and support our current findings. Keep posting those photos, and hopefully we can expand the SD species list and help guide future range maps!
Dan
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I am really loving this project! I am learning so much from fellow bee watchers. I've always had a soft spot for bumblebees, even though one stung me 3 times in the tush when I was young (thanks, older brother, for swatting at it until it got mad enough to sting)!
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