Lots of bumble bees

I had another surprise while walking at lunch time. Previously, I'd mentioned that I'd seen a surprising number of butterflies on one of my lunch walks. Now, I'm seeing more bumble bees than I've ever seen before. This is good for two reasons:

1) It's good to see an animal doing well. All too often we hear about a species dying out (California Condors or frogs) or a species just taking over (like Zebra Mussels or Kudzu, the vine that engulfs everything). Here, we see a useful species doing well. It bodes well for our efforts to improve the environment.

2) With the loss of honey bees (Colony Collapse Disorder), we need all the help we can get with pollination. Sadly, there is really nothing that can replace the honey bees because they are domesticated and we can take them where we need them. Bumble bees (and all the other pollinators in nature) can't be moved to the areas where they are needed. Also, bumble bees are solitary and it's hard to get a group of them to do anything.

But it's good news none the less.

[Updated July 25, 2010: It seems that Bumble Bee is correctly written as two words so I edited this post.]