Counting Bumble Bees in the Peace Garden: Local expert surveys
declining bumble bee populations By: Marsha Trainer, Southwest
Minneapolis Patch August 16, 2011 Elaine Evans got stung three
times on Sunday, but didn’t complain a bit. A bumble bee
researcher, it’s all in a day’s work as she visited Lyndale Park
to monitor the bee population in and around the Peace Garden.
She was drawn to the park after a citizen snapped a photo of a
bumble bee there and sent it to The Xerces Society as part of an
effort to document declining bee species in the area. “I’ve been
looking at different parks, trying to survey for this particular
bee, the rusty-patched bumble bee. And, I hadn’t seen in it in
any of these other places around the Twin Cities, so I was
really excited that someone found them pretty close to home,”
she said. Evans, a conservation consultant with The Xerces
Society and a University of Minnesota graduate student, has been
studying declining Bombus (or bumble bee) species all over the
metro region. She’s be