Two long-missing bumblebees return to the valley in July

July 20, 2026

and turned up in the valley this week — confirmed in Hadley on July 14 and Colebrook on July 15 — working native wildflowers as they came into bloom. Both species were once among the most abundant bumblebees in the Northeast. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, their populations collapsed within just a few years, likely from a pathogen spread through commercial greenhouse pollination combined with mounting habitat loss.

and wild bergamot were at their peak when the bees appeared — the kind of phenological alignment that is easy to miss and genuinely hard to replace. Finding these two species foraging on valley-floor meadows and farm edges in mid-July is not a sign of recovery so much as evidence that the margin is thin and still present. These bees depend on a continuous thread of flowering plants from spring through fall, and the corridor of wild and semi-wild habitat running the length of this valley is one of the few places in the region where that thread still holds.

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More about Golden Northern Bumble Bees

Wild bergamot seeds and the goldfinch's summer feast

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More about Butterfly milkweed

Butterfly milkweed opens for the hairstreak

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