The gaily coloured harbinger of summer on which we rely for many crops is under threat from global warming as the queens emerge prematurely from hibernation into winter chill.
INDUSTRIOUS AND affable, the humble bumblebee heralds the arrival of springtime and is a harbinger of long, hot summers. But they have been spotted earlier than ever before this year, prompting fears that climate change could be the last nail in the coffin for the endangered insect.
Intensive farming and habitat destruction have already caused populations to crash. Now experts fear that global warming could finish off the bumblebee. Usually queens awake from hibernation in April, but an uncharacteristically mild February has encouraged them to emerge and start trying to build new colonies.
Without food, and facing the prospect of harsh frosts and bitter cold, many of them will not survive.
Dave Goulson, director of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, based at Stirling University, warned that the changing weather could be the "final straw" for endangered bees and predicted disastrous consequences for rural ecosystems and economies, as bees play a crucial role in pollinating flowers, crops and fruit.
He said: "Climate change will hit the bumblebee hard, with potentially devastating consequences. You could paint quite a bleak picture if you wanted to. If we were to lose a proportion of our bumblebees, a lot of wild flowers would simply not set seed - which means they would then disappear - and then all the herbivores that feed upon those plants would disappear, and so on up the food chain."
Britain has 10% of the world's 250 species of bumblebee, a massive proportion. But three of these species have become extinct over the past century and a further seven are now on the endangered list, including the Great Yellow Bee, which can only be found in Scotland. It is so adapted to the cold, wet weather of Scotland that even a tiny fluctuation in temperature could be catastrophic.
Honey bees have also been decimated, by a mysterious disease called Colony Collapse Disorder, but this does not affect bumblebees. Modern farming methods, which have covered the countryside in pesticides and destroyed wild flower beds, are almost entirely to blame for their plight.
Read more...
|
