Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:
In response to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed today to a deadline of December 2024 to determine whether Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebees warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The species has already declined by more than 90%. Over the past two decades, a few scattered individuals have been spotted in California, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
”This is great news for these critically imperiled bees,” said Jess Tyler, a staff scientist at the Center and author of the 2020 petition that sought federal protection for the species. “Protecting pollinators like the Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebee is vital in the face of our current insect apocalypse.”
Suckley’s cuckoo bumblebees have a fascinating story — although their specific methods remain unknown, females must fight or sneak into a colony of western bumblebees, then kill or subdue the host colony’s queen. The cuckoo bee then lays her own eggs and gains control of the host colony’s worker bees, who continue collecting pollen and nectar to feed the cuckoo bee’s offspring.
The parasitic cuckoo bumblebees play important regulatory roles in maintaining the health of bumblebee communities and the diversity of ecosystems.
Suckley’s cuckoos are generalist pollinators and feed on flowers in the aster family, as well as many other wildflower meadow species. They were once common in prairies, meadows and grasslands across the western United States but have now been lost across more than 50% of their historic range.
