U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

The rusty-patched bumble bee was once an excellent pollinator of wildflowers, cranberries, and other important crops, including plum, apple, alfalfa and onion seed. The species occupied grasslands and tallgrass prairies of the Upper Midwest and Northeast, but as most grasslands and prairies have been lost, degraded, or fragmented by conversion to other uses it is now endangered throughout its range.