[travis_brooks]

The article says one of the states the bumblebee has vanished from is Oregon, I'm not sure about that. I definitely saw something that looked very bumblebee like in downtown Portland multiple times this past summer. Bees in general are rare downtown, but if you're outside enough you'll see them in parks and along the Willamette river. A few miles out to the suburbs or undeveloped areas and bees (bumble and otherwise) appeared abundant in Oregon the last time I traveled that way (a few months ago).

[orforforof]

In the Willamette valley where I live, we had plenty of bumblebees this year, along with the usual honeybees and some wasps. I don't know which particular species of bumblebees. What struck me as unusual this year was during the heat waves the bumblebees seemed to really struggle, with many of them found dead or dying on the ground. Maybe this is an annual occurrence that I've just never noticed before. We like having insects around so keep them provided with water and flowers, but it just seemed like the bumblebees were having a bad year. If anyone knows more about their life cycle I'd be interested to hear.