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Nest Quest Highlights
Nest Quest Highlights
Thank you for making Phase 1 of Nest Quest a success!
Thank you for making Phase 1 of Nest Quest a success!
We are so grateful for all the time and effort you all committed to surveying for bumble bee nests in 2024 and 2025.
We had two goals for Phase 1 of Nest Quest:
Compare efficiency of visual surveys and radio tracking to find nests
Characterize habitat near and surrounding nests
To help achieve Goal #1, we recruited all of you wonderful Nest Quest volunteers to increase the amount of survey effort.
Bee Lab staff on a Nest Quest. Photo credit: Elise Bernstein
Survey Sites
Survey Sites
Our surveys took place at Lebanon Hills Regional Park, Lake Elmo Park Reserve, Hyland Lake Park Reserve, and Crow Hassan Park Reserve. Each park had three 1.5 hectare plots where volunteers were nest searching.
Our staff team did additional nest searching at the Arden Hills Army Training site, the site we selected to test out the radio tracking equipment.
Survey Results
Survey Results
We found a total of 18 nests during Nest Quest visual surveys in 2024 and 2025!
6 nests in 2024:
5 Bombus impatiens (common eastern bumble bee)
1 Bombus griseocollis (brown belted bumble bee)
12 nests in 2025:
7 Bombus impatiens
2 Bombus rufocinctus (red belted bumble bee)
1 Bombus griseocollis
1 Bombus auricomus (black and gold bumble bee)
1 Bombus fervidus (golden northern bumble bee)
Top: B. impatiens nest at Crow Hassan. Photo credit: Sami Dolan. Bottom: B. rufocinctus nest at Arden Hills. Photo credit: Elaine Evans.
The Bombus fervidus nest was a particularly exciting find! This is a species of conservation concern that has very little information documented about their nests. Our Bee Lab technicians found this nest in early September, 2025, making for an exciting end-of-season discovery.
B. fervidus emerging from her nest at Lake Elmo. Photo credit: Elise Bernstein
Survey Effort
Survey Effort
We had help from 35 volunteers who spent 120 hours searching for bumble bee nests. We had a team of 11 staff members that searched for an additional 125 hours - making for a total of 245 survey hours.
We aimed to conduct a minimum of 5 Nest Quests at each of our survey sites. All but one site had at least 5 quests, and some of our sites had over 15 quests.
One thing we observed was that sites with more surveys did not necessarily have more nests found.
Bar chart showing total surveys per plot (represented by 1 bar) conducted by staff and volunteers in 2024 and 2025. Orange = Staff, Blue = Volunteer, !! = 1+ nest found in plot
Nest Locations
Nest Locations
Nest locations at Crow Hassan and Hyland Park Reserves.
Nest locations at Arden Hills, Lake Elmo, and Lebanon Hills.
Radio tracking
Radio tracking
The second part of our first goal is to compare visual survey efforts to radio tracking methods. We used ultralight radio transmitters from Cellular Tracking Technologies. The tags were both solar and battery powered, weighing less than 0.5 grams.
We tagged 6 bumble bees, representing B. auricomus, B. impatiens, and B. griseocollis.
We used yagi antennas to detect the tags that connected to our phones so we could follow the signal on a map.
However, no nests were detected using the radio telemetry. We faced many challenges using this technology, from bees being unwilling to fly after having a transmitter attached to losing the signal after only 3 seconds.
Left: Common eastern bumble bee having a transmitter glued to her thorax. Right: Common eastern bumble bee with solar powered transmitter attached to her thorax.
Nest Excavations
Nest Excavations
We monitored many of these bumble bee nests throughout the season. Once they had completed their life cycles (i.e. no more bees entering or exiting the nest site), we excavated underground nests when possible.
Jayden Peterson next to an excavated Bombus impatiens nest at Crow Hassan Riverbend Group Camp. Photo credit: Elise Bernstein.
Dissecting the Bombus impatiens nest from Crow Hassan Riverbend Group Camp in the lab. Photo credit: Rebecca Zerlin
When Nest Quest team members Jayden and Clara went to excavate a nest at our Crow Hassan 1 site in 2025, they discovered a 16 foot long tunnel that the bees were using to enter and exit their nest!
This is a unique and exciting natural history documentation.
Habitat assessments
Habitat assessments
In order to get at our second research goal to characterize habitat surrounding each of these nests, we conducted habitat assessments at each site. We measured the grass cover, forb cover, and bare ground at 1 meter, 10 meters, and 50 meters from the nest in each cardinal direction (N, E, S, W). We also collected soil samples and took measures of soil density.
This data has not yet been analyzed.
What’s next for Nest Quest?
What’s next for Nest Quest?
Soon, Nest Quest staff researchers will analyze our habitat and survey effort data to make conclusions about bumble bee nesting habitat and nest finding methods.
Nest Quest is expanding statewide in 2026! We are still deciding our methods and models for participating, but we hope to see you again in 2026 to help us document bumble bee nests of even more species.
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