Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A couple armed with bug nets wading through roadside fireweed were searching for bumble bees in the Chilkat Valley last week as part of a research effort to see if the Western Bumble Bee’s range includes Alaska. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists are considering proposing that the species be added to the endangered species list.

“It’s disappeared over a big chunk of its former range which stretched from California out to some of the western states and all the way up into British Columbia at about fifty-five degrees north,” said Derek Sikes, a University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor of Entomology. “Haines and Skagway are the two Alaskan localities that are at the greatest chance of that occurring. We’re just outside of its range. We don’t know if we’re on the edge or not. If we find it here, then presumably we are on the edge.”

Scant bumble bee data from Haines exist. The most recent museum records are from about 20 years ago, which included 29 specimens collected by Ken Philip, a UAF butterfly specialist who built the world’s largest private collection of arctic Lepidoptera butterflies and moths—more than 120,000 of them.

The only other bumble bee records in Haines are eight specimens that date back to the 1950s when a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist based out of the Palmer research station traveled here to collect specimens.

“We have some records, but probably a very incomplete species list for bumble bees here,” Sikes said. "Certainly, a very sparse sampling over time.”

After collecting 136 specimens during their week in Haines, Sikes said he suspects he and his wife found most if not all the bumble bee species present in the Haines area. Melissa Sikes is a National Resource Education Specialist with the Fairbanks Soil and Water Conservation District. The specimens await microscopic identification but Sikes estimates the catch includes three common species and three to five less common species.

“There’s a lot of reasons why specimens are so important. They say a photo is worth a thousand words. A specimen is worth a million. There’s so much you can do with a specimen,” he said. “You can get the pollen off specimens that were collected hundreds of years ago and see what kinds of plants they were pollinating.”

While they didn’t find any Western Bumble Bees, Sikes and his wife found a number of McKay’s Bumble Bees in the valley, the sister species of the Western Bumble Bee. It was the second or third most common species found, he said. The find was good news for local McKay’s bees, given that they “don’t seem to be declining.” The McKay’s and Western Bumble Bees are closely related, and whatever is causing the decline in the latter likely isn’t affecting the McKay’s bee.

“There’s some sort of weird disposition of endangerment because of its genetics, their natural history,” Sikes said. “We don’t know what it is. There’s all sorts of ideas ranging from habitat alteration to temperatures. (There’s a) general pattern of bumble bees disappearing in the warmer parts of their range so their ranges are kind of getting smaller.”

Some researchers think the decline could be attributed to parasites that affect bees raised commercially as greenhouse pollinators. Similar to the increase of parasites found in farmed salmon, the close proximity of animals makes it easier for parasites to spread.

Most bees, but bumbles especially, are aggressive pollinators, Sikes said. While many pollinating insects spread pollen incidentally in their search for nectar, female bumble bees collect the powdery substance in pollen sacs to feed to their young.

“They pack the pollen on this pollen basket so you sometimes see bees that have a big, yellow balls on part of their leg,” Sikes said.

A decrease in bumble bee populations would likely decrease plant life and the animals that feed on those plants. According the UK’s National History Museum, bumble bee species diversity dropped by a third and three species have become extinct in that country.

“In England there’s some bees that have gone extinct and they’ve found some of the plants are having trouble as a result,” Sikes said. “Every species is part of this functioning ecosystem regardless of whether we understand its value to us. It seems prudent to not let them disappear. Aldo Leopold said only a fool, when taking apart an engine, would throw away seemingly useless parts.”

Although extinction is a part of nature, Sikes said, the rate of extinction found in the fossil record is far exceeded by the current rate of extinction for a broad swath of species.

“If you could fast forward a million years they’d go, ‘Oh yeah, (in) that time period, we lost half of the world’s species,’” Sikes said. “People don’t mourn the loss of the passenger pigeon or the dodo bird or all these other species that have gone extinct. Part of the problem is they’re not familiar with them.”

Sikes’ encouraged Haines residents to keep an eye out for Western Bumble Bees, which have a black abdomen and a whitish tip near their stingers. People can use apps like “inaturalist” to upload photos and identify species of plants and animals.

“Citizen science data like that can be very helpful,” he said.

A National Park Service field guide to Alaska bumble bees can be found at http://www.nps.gov/articles/000/upload/Bees-of-Alaska-2.pdf.