Bumblebees

Amid the uproar over mysterious disappearances of honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of native bees has been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity. Robbin Thorp of the University of California, Davis, a noted bumble bee authority and an emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis has watched local native bee populations steadily decrease over the last decades. In fact, 2006 was the last time he saw a Franklin's bumble bee Bombus franklini.

Buglife - the UK Invertebrate Conservation Trust - is fighting to protect a wildlife haven on the Isle of Grain in Kent from a huge National Grid warehouse development. This bug paradise is home to a variety of beautiful, rare and endangered insects including a large population of threatened bumblebee species. The Isle of Grain supports an exceptional area of Open Mosaic Habitat providing lots of pollen and nectar rich flowers, bare ground ideal for burrowing and basking insects and pools for aquatic beetles and bugs – a similar habitat to West Thurrock Marshes, a key wildlife site that Buglife fought to save in 2008.

"Eindeutig widersprechen wir der Fördergemeinschaft für nachhaltige Landwirtschaft (FNL), die allein der Bienenmilbe Varroa die Schuld an den Völkerverlusten gibt", unterstreicht NABU-Präsident Olaf Tschimpke. Das weltweite Bienensterben habe komplexe Ursachen, wie eine neue Studie der UN-Umweltorganisation UNEP belegt: Demnach schwächen der Verlust der Biodiversität, ausgeräumte Agrarlandschaften und der Einsatz von Pestiziden die Bestäuber ganz erheblich, und zwar sowohl Wildbienen und Hummeln als auch Honigbienen. "Statt auf seriöse Fakten zu bauen, missbraucht die industrienahe FNL das Deutsche Bienenmonitoring (DEBIMO) für ihre tendenziösen Botschaften", kritisiert Tschimpke.

For several years, Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Boulder, Colo., has been trying to check out his suspicions that a relatively new class of pesticides has been interfering with the normal breeding and development of his stock. The pesticides, based on the chemistry of nicotine, are generically called neonicotinoids. This week Mr. Theobald got reinforcements from two very different quarters. First, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey sent a letter to Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, that said in part: While large farming operations import managed honeybees for pollination, farmers with smaller, polyculture farms in New Jersey rely heavily on about 350 native species of bees. Alarmingly, several species of bumblebees are believed to have already vanished and next to nothing is known about the health of other native species of bees.

In North America there are more than 5,000 species of native bees of which 60 kinds of bumblebees occupy habitats ranging from the Arctic Circle to the Sonoran Desert. Bumblebees, like the beleaguered honeybees, are in trouble; their populations are crashing. A three year study, headed up by the University of Illinois has documented four species of U.S. bumblebees (Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus affinis and Bombus terricola) declining by up to 96 percent and that their geographic ranges have contracted from between 23 percent to 87 percent, some within just the past two decades.