Common Eastern Bumble Bee

Common Eastern Bumble Bee is one of Kingston's more-than-human neighbours. Every spring a queen wakes alone and prospects for an abandoned mouse burrow, a stump, or a clump of grass to start a new colony. Once fourteen bumble bee species were common in this place. Yellow-banded Bumble Bee are now rare, American Bumble Bee in dramatic decline, Rusty-patched Bumble Bee locally extirpated. These kin cards are an invitation to get to know them: who they live in relation with, their gifts, and what they're asking of us.

Common Eastern Bumble Bee kin card

Common Eastern Bumble Bee is the only pollinator who can open Turtlehead's sealed flowers. They grip the stamens and vibrate to loosen the pollen. Buzz pollination is their gift to tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. In April they rely on Red Maple, Pussy Willow, and Speckled Alder for early pollen. In fall, Goldenrod and Aster produce the pollen new queens need to build fat reserves for winter. Queens overwinter 2 to 15 cm below the soil surface, protected by leaf litter.

Common Eastern Bumble Bee at the planning table

What would it take for every community garden, park, and roadside in Kingston to support continuous bloom from April to October? For every planting plan to ask: who feeds here? Yellow-banded Bumble Bee are now rare, American Bumble Bee in dramatic decline, Rusty-patched Bumble Bee locally extirpated.

Get to know Common Eastern Bumble Bee. Return through the seasons. Record what you observe on iNaturalist.

Notice: A large, slow-flying bumble bee investigating the ground in late April is a queen prospecting for a nest site. Find a patch of flowers, sit for ten minutes, and watch who visits, how often, how long they stay. In 2020 an amateur photographer in Quebec found a bumble bee species not recorded in eastern Canada since 2008. You never know who you will find.

Act: Leave the leaves. Leave plants standing through winter. Queens overwinter at the base of dead plants. Create nesting habitat: logs, stumps, stones, compost piles, and brush piles. Plant trees. A single flowering Oak, Cherry, or Maple offers more pollen than an entire pollinator garden.

Kingston is drafting a Biodiversity Action Plan. Pin a place that matters to Common Eastern Bumble Bee.

Get involved: Little Forests Kingston is growing. We're looking for people who want to build relationships with the land and tend them over time. Forest Stewards, Neighbourhood Weavers, Community Scientists, Seed Keepers and more. You don't need to arrive knowing everything. Do any of these roles call to you?