Declining Bumble Bees

The bumble bee population is declining and some species are teetering on the brink of extinction.

That's the gist behind why three conservation groups and bumble bee researcher Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, are asking the federal government to impose regulations on the movement and health of commercial bumble bees to protect the declining native/wild  bumble bee population.

A Jan. 12th press release issued by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is drawing worldwide attention. The latest coverage came from the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Take Franklin's bumble bee. That's a bumble bee found only in a small stretch of southern Oregon and northern California. Robbin Thorp, a member of the Xerces Society, hasn't seen it for several years and fears it may be extinct.

You'll want to read the article on "Bumble Bees in Decline" on the Xerces Society Web site and look at the photos of the bumble bees that could be nearing extinction.

Two recent studies provide a direct link between diseases in commercial bumble bees and the health of wild bumble bees:

--Otterstatter, M.C., and J.D. Thomson. 2008. Does Pathogen Spillover from Commercially Reared Bumble Bees Threaten Wild Pollinators? PLoS One. Available online at http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002771

--Colla, S.R., M.C. Otterstatter, R.J. Gegear, and J.D. Thomson. 2006. Plight of the Bumblebee: Pathogen Spillover from Commercial to Wild Populations. Biological Conservation 129: 461-467.

Otterstatter and Thomson note that wild bumble bees near greenhouses have higher pathogen loads (of Crithidia bombi and Nosema bombi) than bumble bees farther away from greenhouses.