What Can You Do To Help?

While many of the causes of bee decline might seem out of your hands, if we all work together, we can work to reverse the trend! There are quite a few things you can do.

Garden!

Whether you already have a rich garden, or your backyard is full of dead looking grass, there are a number of easy things you can do, such as:

• Grow a wide variety of plants. Ideally, something should always be in flower, and your plants should offer a variety of resources, such as both pollen and nectar. Bees tend to love blue flowers, so if you plant species like lavender, rosemary, lupin, or forget-me-not, they'll come flocking! Xerces Society has a number of tips on this matter. 
• Provide a water source. While they are quite small, bees need to drink water as well. This becomes important during the hot months of the year, as they cannot regulate their body temperature easily. Make sure to replace the water regularly. 
• Reduce local disturbance. Some people with lawns tend to mow it every week. This is not necessary, and creates a very high level of disturbance that can be somewhat disagreeable if you want bumble bees to nest in your garden. While your neighbors might hate your for it, I believe you don't really ever have to mow your lawn. Leaving it unmowed provides a more complex series of micro-environments that is beneficial for all sorts of amazing insect life (see below). 
• Create habitat complexity. Have shady areas and exposed sunny areas; this will help bees regulate their temperatures throughout the year to maintain a high activity level. Having a variety of vertical complexity (forbs and grasses, shrubs, and trees) does the same as well, and makes your garden more ecologically complex and pretty! It promotes more niches for things to live in, and will help balance other species out. For example, I had quite an abundance of honey bees in my yard, and then this guy showed up...(see below). 

A camouflaged crab spider catches a honey bee
Photo Credit: Wolfgang Rahfeldt 

Get Outside!

While you might not have a yard to garden, simply getting outside can be an extremely rewarding experience. While outside, you can help track bumblebee distributions by using the citizen scientist tool iNaturalist. Take a picture and upload it as an observation; scientists will often mine this information to determine bee abundance and distribution. If you are unsure what a species is, upload it anyways and usually someone can identify it for you! And if you happen to see Bombus occidentalis, the bee on the background of this website (and below), contact xerces.org, because it is in rapid decline! You can identify it from its distinctive single white band on the rear of its abdomen. 

Because really, where else are you going to see this?
Photo Credit: Wolfgang Rahfeldt

Bombus occidentalis, our native bumble bee in rapid decline
Photo Credit: Wolfgang Rahfeldt

Get Involved with the Urban Pollination Project

The Urban Pollination Project is an ongoing research project based out of the University of Washington that is investigating the effects of bee pollination on fruit size and number in the city of Seattle. Consequently, they provide free tomatoes to people (particularly for community gardens or educators) that are willing to take regular observations about their tomatoes. And you get to eat your tomatoes too! Yum.

They are also currently researching the effects of land use and floral availability on bumble bee species composition and abundance in the community gardens of Seattle.