(Radio Iowa) – Volunteers across Iowa with an interest in pollinator conservation are needed for a new program that will help researchers track and monitor the state’s at-risk bumble bees. Stephanie Shepherd, a wildlife diversity biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says the Iowa Bumble Bee Atlas will recruit and train community scientists to survey and identify the dozen-plus species of bumble bees that live in our state.

“Participants will adopt an area and will go out a couple of times during the summer,” Shepherd says. “They can come to field days where they’ll learn how to actually handle the bumble bees, and be able to look at them up-close, and how to identify them. It’ll give us a look at where all these bumble bees are how abundant they are.” There are between 300 and 400 types of bees living in Iowa, but she says this survey will only focus on the state’s 14 species of bumble bees.

“They’re fairly easy to distinguish from other bees. They’re larger, they’re fuzzier,” Shepherd says. “Other than honey bees, they’re one of the only species that has a modified leg to carry pollen. So there’s just some structures that you can pay attention to that help you to say, okay, this is definitely a bumble bee.” There are two free training sessions scheduled this month for potential volunteers. Shepherd says bumble bees play an essential role in sustaining the health of the environment, from pollinating native wildflowers to flowering crops in farm fields and backyard gardens. Several species native to Iowa have undergone alarming declines, she says, and they face an uncertain future.

“Iowa is home to the first federally-endangered bumble bee, the rusty patched bumble bee,” Shepherd says, “and then there’s a couple of other species in the state that are currently being considered that may need to be listed and have some protection. So we have some common species but we also have several species that are of concern, and this additional data will really help us move forward.”

The Iowa Bumble Bee Atlas is a collaboration between the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, Iowa State University, and the Iowa D-N-R. Bumble Bee Atlas projects are underway in 20 states. Last year alone, more than 900 people helped to document over 20,000 bumble bees, and some volunteers discovered species previously thought to have vanished from their states.