Watch Facebook Live broadcasts of the bumble bee here.
Somewhere along the south branch of the Pike River in Kenosha County, a rare find had conservationists with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) practically jumping with joy Friday.
“We came running,” insect ecologist Elizabeth Braatz said. “We’ve been searching for a while.”
Braatz has spent the past six years working in pollinated conservation and in that time she was lucky to see even one queen. So when she heard about the nest in a Kenosha county backyard she had to see it for herself.
“We got to keep the location confidential for now because this is a federally endangered species,” she explained. “You're probably seeing more Rusty-patched bumble bee queens than I’ve ever seen in my life at one point in time.”
Braatz said that nest will mark only the fifth seen in Wisconsin over the past 20 years. This is because the species has been federally endangered since 2017 when 90 percent of the Rusty-patched bumble bee population declined.
While small, those pollinators play a pretty big role in just about everything from the food people eat to the clothes they wear, and are crucial to maintaining a healthy ecosystem.
It’s one of the reasons Kristi Heuser with the Root Pike Watershed Initiative Network said her group is working to return habitats to a more natural state and planting native species.
“The landowner was back here and clearing out invasive species, buck thorn, and happened to hear the bubble bees because the queens are so loud,” Heuser said.
“When we are paving over everything, putting turf grass down, switching in those non-native species—non-native plants, we start to see the insects that they attract start to shift or completely go away,” she explained.
Heuser said by alerting the DNR of this find, the group is hoping to help create more environments where queens, like those seen Friday, can thrive in.
"We need to find their nesting sites so we can learn more and so we can conserve their populations better,” she added.
Heuser also said if people want to do their part to help the bees and the environment, they can choose plants native to Wisconsin when planning and tending their gardens.
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