BLOOMINGTON - Bella Rubietta has devoted dozens of hours to helping a bug so uncommon she has yet to see it.
The 14-year-old Prior Lake resident wrote a children's book and brochures on the topic, held presentations for a Girl Scout troop and her school and developed a guide to earning certain Girl Scout badges - all of it in support of the endangered rusty patched bumblebee.
Bella capped the project with a midday educational event Saturday at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, bringing experts from the University of Minnesota to speak to a few dozen attendees.
The bee is often seen between Chicago and the Twin Cities in ground-level colonies typically of a handful of individuals, not the hundreds or thousands that were typical a few decades ago, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Yet they're still a precious piece in a mosaic of pollinating animals that keep crops, trees and other plants flourishing, Bella and others said at the event.
"There's power in knowing what this bee is," Bella said.
Bella is a member of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America and hopes her project earns her the organization's Gold Award, its highest recognition and a counterpart to the Eagle Scout rank for Boy Scouts. The award goes to girls who take concrete action to address an issue while educating and inspiring others, according to the Girl Scouts website.
"If you want someone to learn about something, the best way to do it is in a fun way," said Bella, who's on track to earn her high school diploma from Minnesota Connections Academy, a public online school, in the summer.
She's also adding her voice to a growing call to help thousands of species of hummingbirds, mammals, butterflies and bees in Minnesota and beyond. By carrying pollen grains from flower to flower during their daily lives, these animals ensure that flowering plants of all kinds can keep producing food and seeds.
"Bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects are critical to protecting the health of our natural resources, unique ecosystems and our way of life," Gov. Mark Dayton wrote in the 2017 Minnesota State Agency Pollinator Report. The document is part of a state program that coordinates multiple agencies to provide habitat for and awareness of pollinators.
Rusty patched bumblebees, named for a signature tuft of reddish fuzz on their backs, aren't unique in their pollination abilities, but bumblebees as a group are ideal pollinators, said Michelle Boone, a graduate student in the university's entomology department who spoke at Saturday's event. They're big and strong enough to push into flowers other bugs can't access and can literally buzz the pollen out of a blossom, for example.
And as with all species, the rusty patches' extinction could ripple throughout their ecosystem and threaten a multiplying array of organisms, said Elaine Evans, an assistant extension professor at the university specializing in bee diversity and conservation. She pointed to another type of bee, once found from the Northeast to Alaska, that relies on rusty patched bumblebees' presence to survive. It hasn't been seen for a decade as rusty patches' numbers have plummeted, she said.
"We really need to keep all of those pieces together," Evans said.
Disease, pesticides, changing climate and other factors all seem to have driven down numbers of multiple pollinators, she added. Rusty patches' life cycle leaves them vulnerable as well, since most individuals die in the fall. Solitary queen bees each spring must completely restart their colonies.
The bees once ranged throughout the Midwest and northeast but have been seen on just a fraction of that territory in recent years, according to the wildlife service.
The overarching theme of Bella's project is everyone's ability to help. Gardeners can plant native flowers that bloom from April to October - rusty patched bumblebees are among the first pollinators to arrive in spring and the last to disappear in autumn, needing food sources all the while. People can let parts of their yards run a little wild, which is better for nesting. And they can use less pesticides in general.
Such steps would benefit every kind of pollinator, Evans said.
Minnesota residents can also take part in bee surveys to see how well they're doing. Evans organizes a Minnesota Bumble Bee Survey for participants of all ages each year through a Facebook page of the same name, for instance, while bumblebeewatch.org accepts people's findings from around the country.
Rusty patched bumblebees have been spotted throughout the metro area, including near Savage and Chaska, according to the website. The bee's presence in a Minnetonka park sparked some opposition to a mountain bike trail's construction there this year.
Bella said she hopes her work inspires others, including kids her age and younger. She wrote a children's book about a bee named Beatrice, or Bea for short, who encourages readers to build a garden for her to visit; Bella's uncle provided the illustrations. She can't make money from the venture, so proceeds will go to the wildlife refuge, said Tracy Rubietta, Bella's mother.
Bella also developed a curriculum for several Girl Scout badges that meets the badge requirements while also helping the bumblebee, such as by planting flowers.
She's worked on the project while also studying calculus, English and science at Connections Academy, which counts more than 2,500 students from kindergarten to grade 12 around the state, according to its website. She's set to graduate shortly after her 15th birthday, just as her older brother, Grant, did in 2017. He's now studying biology at the university.
She didn't deliberately match her brother's pace, Bella said; she's just always burned through classes at quickly. She plans to go to college to study science but doesn't yet know where or what subject in particular. She also wants to see a rusty patched bee at some point.
Tracy Rubietta afterward said her daughter is also already thinking about a second book, maybe about monarch butterflies.
"What they can do is limitless," Tracy Rubietta said of her kids in particular and of all children. She said she's only tried to encourage their own motivation and interests. "You have to keep raising the bar for them."
Bella's project to spread the word about the rusty patched bumblebee has already worked on at least a few people. Several attendees at the refuge said they didn't know about Bella or her event beforehand. Dan Forrest, who spoke at the event on gardening tips, said he'd long cared about pollinators as a whole, particularly monarchs, but hadn't known about this particular bee.
"Maybe bumblebees will be my next pet interest," he said.