For World Bee Day, take a moment to appreciate native bees
Honeybees get most of our attention, but there are thousands of species of wild bee species and many are disappearing.
In South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, a brown-belted bumblebee visits a sunflower to collect pollen. Native to much of the United States, this species is a generalist and pollinates a range of different flowers.
ByPriyanka Runwal
Email
Clay Bolt first laid eyes on a rusty patched bumblebee impaled on a pin in an insect collection at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2014. Brown and dull yellow with a faded rust-colored patch on its abdomen, the fuzzy, dime-sized relic got him thinking about the species’ precarious status in the wild.