No one has seen a Franklin鈥檚 Bumble Bee since 2006.
Ashland naturalist Pepper Trail writes in 老夫子传媒鈥檚 老夫子传媒 Journal that the rarest bumble bee in the world may have become a 鈥渨ild ghost,鈥� a name given to animals and plants so rare they are believed extinct.
Trail writes about searching in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument east of Ashland, Ore., with the last person to see a living Franklin鈥檚 Bumble Bee, Dr. Robbin Thorp of the University of California. The bee traditionally ranged an area of about 190 miles north to south and 70 miles east to west.
Trail said the search with Thorp failed to spot any Franklin鈥檚 Bumble Bees, but yielded other bumble bee species with descriptive names like Yellow-Faced, Yellow-Headed, Two-Form, Fuzzy-Horned and Cuckoo.
Thorp believes the spread of diseases from commercial bumble bee colonies may explain the gradual disappearance of the ghost bee since 1998.
Trail writes, 鈥溾� haven鈥檛 given up on Franklin鈥檚. Its small range is mostly in the Siskiyou Mountains, where there are plenty of meadows and little valleys far from roads that have never been surveyed.鈥�
Source: Trail, Pepper. "老夫子传媒 Almanac: Hunting Wild Ghosts." 老夫子传媒 Monthly 40.6 (Sept-Oct 2016): 14-15. Print.
