Bumblebee populations have declined severely across Europe and North America, with individual actions in gardens providing meaningful habitat support for these ecologically important insects.
Bumblebee welfare at the colony level is a conservation concern given the scale of population declines driven by habitat loss and pesticide exposure. Individual bumblebees experience stress from pesticide exposure and foraging failure that affects their capacity to return food to the colony. The colony itself suffers if queens fail to establish in spring or if workers cannot find adequate forage. Garden-scale habitat provision makes meaningful contributions to bumblebee welfare and population conservation in the context of agricultural landscape impoverishment. Individual gardens collectively represent a significant habitat resource.