Rare, endangered bee gets habitat protection across 6 states: Here’s where

(NEXSTAR) — The rusty patched bumble bee was once found in roughly half the U.S., from Maine down south to Georgia and as far west as the Dakotas. Today, only about a dozen states have recorded sightings of the bee.

A new effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service aims to help the bee recover further.

The rusty patched bumble bee, or Bombus affinis, looks like many other bees. They’re mostly yellow, with black bottoms and a spot or band between their wings. Workers and males have an all-yellow first abdominal segment, the FWS explains, while queens are entirely yellow on their first segments, and the rest are black.

What makes them stand out, however, is the rusty-colored patch that appears in their middle section, near the wings. This is only present in males and workers.

An endangered rusty patched bumblebee forages on a stem of anise hyssop  in Amanda Nugent’s parkway garden on Aug. 25, 2025, in Wilmette, Illinois. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

HALLOWELL, ME – JANUARY 10: A Rusty Patched bumblebee is seen Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017 at the Maine State Museum Archives in Hallowell, Maine. (Staff Photo by Joel Page/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

Since 2000, only 13 states have had confirmed sightings of the rusty patched bumble bee: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota (which declared it its state bee), North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin (plus Ontario, Canada). In 2017, it became the first bee species to be federally listed as endangered.

On Friday, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that roughly 1.5 million acres of land across five of those states – Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Virginia, and Wisconsin, plus West Virginia – had been designated as critical habitat for the rusty patched bumble bee.

The ownership of these areas is not impacted by the dedication.........

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