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Equipped with insect nets, vials and a temperature-controlled cooler, Nature NB is searching across Fredericton this summer to document an important but not well understood neighbour: the native bumblebee.
The conservation group is carrying out its first season of field surveys to track bumblebee species in the capital.
The program, developed by the Mi’kmaq-led Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources in Cape Breton, is working to create a comprehensive map of bumblebee locations and habitats in New Brunswick and the rest of the Maritimes.
“No one has ever surveyed these sites on a consistent basis,” said Francie Morgan, a program co-ordinator for Nature NB leading this initiative. “So we don’t have any baseline data with which to compare the state of our bumblebees moving forward.
“What we’re really trying to do is create a basis for conservation work so that we can make informed choices around protecting habitat behaviour.”
As New Brunswick pushes to protect threatened bumblebee species, Nature NB’s field surveys show that saving local pollinators starts with baseline data.
One of her central efforts is to support landowners and municipal partners in making more educated decisions to protect pollinators.
Nature NB is part of a growing provincial mapping effort alongside the Amlamgog (Fort Folly) Habitat Recovery team, who first brought the survey to New Brunswick, as well as EOS Eco-Energy and the Pays de Cocagne Sustainable Development Group.
Survey efforts
Morgan and her team are surveying three sites in three neighbourhoods on Fredericton’s north side this summer.
They identify each species on-site by examining distinct colour patterns and shapes on the bee’s abdomen and thorax.
Although early in the season, Morgan documented six different species during the initial survey in June. According to the province, there are 18 different bumblebee species in New Brunswick.
Collected data is shared with the Unama’ki Institute, the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre, and iNaturalist, an open-source global database accessed by researchers worldwide.
“Somebody in Ontario could use that to inform the research and conservation efforts they’re making,” Morgan said.
“That’s particularly important for species that migrate, like monarchs, but equally as important for bumblebees, so that we know which areas of our city are succeeding in supporting pollinators.”
According to Morgan, when you protect one species, you protect another.
“When we protect habitat for bumblebees, we protect habitat for wasps and monarchs and hummingbirds, and in turn, we protect habitat for all of the creatures that use them as a food source,” she said.
“The choices that we make around protecting land have a ripple effect throughout the ecosystem.”
Nature NB’s program comes at a critical time. The New Brunswick government just released a draft recovery strategy for two threatened local bumblebee species: the Bohemian cuckoo bumblebee and the yellow-banded bumblebee.
The Bohemian cuckoo bumblebee had gone undetected and was presumed gone from 1980 to 2010 until it was located again in northern New Brunswick in 2021.
The strategy now calls for a standardized monitoring protocol across the province.
“To go from not thinking we had them at all in the province to now having some handful of observations, I think it’s pretty clear that we do not have a clear understanding of where [bumblebees] are in the province,” said Shaylyn Wallace, species at-risk manager at the Department of Natural Resources.
Collecting more information about bee locations will help with conservation, she said.
“We definitely need support from researchers [and] from not-for-profits to help us fill these gaps.”
Native bumblebees play a unique biological role in keeping surrounding ecosystems stable, resilient and balanced.
“Native bumblebees are really important for maintaining native plants, and that plant diversity is what creates resilience and a sustainable ecosystem in the face of things like climate change and extreme weather.”
For local residents looking to support wild pollinators, Morgan said, the most effective action starts right at home with letting yard space grow wild.
“If everybody in a neighbourhood chose to just not mow 50 square feet of their yard or even smaller, even if it was just five feet of their yard, those plants will work together in partnership with all of the other patches of native plants to be able to create foraging habitat for bumblebees.”
