Bumblebee populations are down, in a trend resembling the decline of the honeybee.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist is trying to learn what is causing the decline in bumblebee populations and also is searching for a species that can serve as the next generation of greenhouse pollinators.
Bumblebees, like honeybees, are important pollinators of native plants and are used to pollinate greenhouse crops like peppers and tomatoes. But colonies of Bombus occidentalis used for greenhouse pollination began to suffer from disease problems in the late 1990s and companies stopped rearing them. Populations of other bumblebee species also are believed to be in decline.
Entomologist James Strange is searching for solutions at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Pollinating Insects – Biology, Management and Systematics Research Unit in Logan, Utah. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of improving agricultural sustainability.
Many greenhouse growers now use commercially produced Bombus impatiens, a generalist pollinator native to the Midwest and Eastern United States and Canada. But scientists are concerned about using a bee outside its native range, and some western states restrict the import and use of non-native bees. If B. impatiens were to escape and form wild colonies in the western United States, they could compete with native bees for food and resources and expose native bumblebees to pathogens they are ill equipped to combat.
Strange has been studying a pretty, orange-striped generalist named Bombus huntii, native to the western half of the country, that could be used in greenhouses in the western United States. He is determining how to best rear B. huntii in a laboratory setting, a vital step in commercializing it.
To understand the decline of B. occidentalis, Strange and his colleagues also have been tracking its habitat range and population trends. Evidence gathered so far shows that the range and populations of B. occidentalis have declined, that it is not as genetically diverse as it used to be, and that it has higher pathogen prevalence than other bee species with stable populations. The results were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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What I have found that what our western bumble bee needs is sheltered nesting material. Old cotton upholstery padding is their favorite but they rejected man made fibers. I currently have a very healthy population on my farm.
Shouldn't be a mystery what's going on - people use POISON to try to control everything - weeds, rats, insects....which also poisons the BEES. Stop poisoning everything else, the bee populations will come back.
I heard on Science Friday that the EMF wave frequencies associated with cell phones match the bees navigating signals and confuses the bees. They get lost and don't make it back to the hive.
And they never see the very raising of these creatures for commercial puposes as part of the problem? That's the trouble with big ag doing these studies. Pity the new strains they're looking at breeding. Perhaps they can help wipe them out too. Herbicides and pesticides on croplands, transporting insects which were never meant to travel that way, breeding them in artificial conditions. We don't own nature and we keep paying for such commercialization of animals and insects for our own convenience and profit.