Bumble bees are important pollinators in natural and agro-ecosystems worldwide. The decline of many bumble bee species has been well documented in recent years with habitat loss and urbanization being large contributors. Mitigation of habitat loss is needed in and around agricultural land where bumble bees persist but may not be well provisioned. The Farm Bill in 2018 directed money towards programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), which incentivize landowners to convert agricultural land into native pollinator habitat. A primary goal of these programs is to provide a diversity of native flowering resources at all periods of the growing season to bolster pollinator richness and abundance but studies documenting the resulting flower communities and bumble bee presence over the growing season are rarely done. Using 19 EQIP/CSP plantings we investigated how the flower communities and bumble bee-flower associations changed throughout two growing seasons. We found that the 6 most visited flower species reached peak flower abundance at unique times of the year and co-occurring bumble bees showed differences in flower associations. These results suggest that incentivized plantings have the capacity to provide adequate flower resources to a diversity of bumble bee species across the entire growing season in accordance with their goals.
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