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Bumble Bee Relocation Program
Bumble Bees are truly in decline. The main reason for this is habitat loss, meaning no places for them to forage and nest safely. They need places to thrive without them being under threat of destruction. Hundreds, if not thousands of Bumble Bee nests in Washington State are destroyed, due to the lack of education and the help for relocation services. The bees sometimes nest in awkward locations; such as under sheds, in bird houses, and in attics where humans come into contact with them and get stung. Therefore, the nest is destroyed. Most people don't want to have the bees killed, but their financial situation cannot afford someone to relocate them or they don't know such services even exist. So, they end up killing them out of need.
A plan is needed to prevent all these precious nests from being destroyed. You can help!
How It Works
The Process
The process is simple. Lets say you have a Bumble Bee nest in a place that is inconvenient, such as in an attic space, shed, pump house, etc. Each nest is relocated on a bee sanctuary (currently my property) for research and data collection. I weight the nest, measure it, number the workers, queens, and males. after which the data saved and recoded is compiled into a format usable for future projects to ascertain the health of a species. Currently, I am preforming all the data collection and relocations. I am learning everyday, and continually advance my techniques. Eventually, when we hit our goal, each nest acquired will be used where needed, such as farms and gardens. But only near the area they came from, so to keep pests and disease down.​​
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Why free?​
Because we want as many people as possible to not kill their bumble bee nests, so we offer it for free.
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How is it funded?​
We are working to getting grant funding. But for now, we get our funding through Donations and Product sales. The more funding we can get, the more we can expand our services.
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Who am I associated with?
Right now I am in collaboration with a Professor from Skagit Valley College named Bob Gillespie. He is a great and humble guy that loves nature and donates much of his time to helping with conservation efforts. He continually guides me through this process of data collection. Also, I am in collaboration with Steve Gomes. He is a Master Melittologist who occasionally works with Oregon State University to help relocate bumble bee nests as well. So, he is one of my main mentors in this program. Further, there is a wonderful company named Rouge Detections that is dedicated to training dogs to sniff out Bumble Bee nests for research.
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I am also in the midst of creating a Non-Profit called VARA. This organization is not in existence yet, but I am working towards the goal of it being so. Further, I am constantly networking with organizations and professors from around the country to get their input on ALL of my developing programs.
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Learn about me (Alex Wikstrom) and my plans in the "Our Mission" tab.
