Bumblebees Are Dying Out Because They’re Too Fat to Mate

Before the 1990s, the rusty-patched bumblebee could be found in 28 states throughout the Midwest and the New England region. Then, it vanished mysteriously. Within a few decades, 90 percent of rusty-patched bumblebees were gone in an ecological poof . Even more troubling, several other closely related bumblebee species also died-off. Now it’s almost unheard of to see the rusty-patched bumblebee. Last month it became the first bee in the continental U.S. listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Pesticides, climate change, habitat destruction, stress from competition, or a combination of these might all be to blame. Most recently, however, entomologist have been investigating a parasitic fungus found on the bumblebee called Nosema bombi, and the more they learn the more they’ve become concerned.

Some of the most insightful research into the parasite is done in northern Utah, in the lab of James Strange, a research entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Lately, Strange has studied a close relative of the rusty-patched bumblebee, the Western bumblebee, rearing colonies in his lab, exhausting himself to get them healthy, then infecting them with a parasite that bloats male bees until