Western Bumblebee Population Drops Up To 93% Over the Last 20 Years (timesunion.com) 76
The western bumblebee is one of around 30 bumblebee species in the western U.S. and Canada. Now a federal review "unveils an alarming trend for the western bumblebee population, which has seen its numbers dwindle by as much as 93% in the last two decades," reports the Associated Press:
The find by the U.S. Geological Survey will help inform a species status assessment to begin this fall by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which may ultimately add the insect to its endangered species list. Tabitha Graves, senior author of the study and a research ecologist with the survey, said the trend with the western bumblebee documented between 1998 and 2018 is troubling because of their important role as pollinators...
There are multiple factors at play that are contributing to the demise of the bumblebee, including pesticides, habitat fragmentation, a warming climate and pathogens, researchers say... "This bumblebee that was once very widespread and common is something that people started to see less frequently," said Diana Cox-Foster, research leader and location coordinator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Pollinating Insects Research Unit at Utah State University. "There are localized populations where it is still happy and healthy, but there have been declines in large parts of its previous distributions. ... Asking why these declines are happening is very important."
There are multiple factors at play that are contributing to the demise of the bumblebee, including pesticides, habitat fragmentation, a warming climate and pathogens, researchers say... "This bumblebee that was once very widespread and common is something that people started to see less frequently," said Diana Cox-Foster, research leader and location coordinator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Pollinating Insects Research Unit at Utah State University. "There are localized populations where it is still happy and healthy, but there have been declines in large parts of its previous distributions. ... Asking why these declines are happening is very important."
Obvious culprits (Score:5, Funny)
It is those damn Decepticons, who else?
Re:Obvious culprits (Score:5, Insightful)
The most likely culprit is neonicitinoid pesticides.
There is a pretty long running list of studies showing that bees are particularly vulnerable to them, but the agribiz folks act like you suggested fucking their mothers live on stage if you mention removing them from the market.
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Not sure if you're being snarky, but the drop was from 1998 to 2018. So, sounds about right.
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No, why be snarky?! I was simply commenting on the suggestion, saying it sounds about right.
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The most likely culprit is neonicitinoid pesticides.
There is a pretty long running list of studies showing that bees are particularly vulnerable to them, but the agribiz folks act like you suggested fucking their mothers live on stage if you mention removing them from the market.
The Disease of Greed will consume mankind eventually.
And we humans fucking deserve it because we're so damn addicted.
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Not all humans. Possibly most humans, degree being hard to measure.
But the humans signing off and cutting deals for the best quarter, they're the only ones who matter. You might say we deserve it for ignoring them. There are two things to scrutinize, then: How they got there, how they stay there.
The former has had some data suggesting sociopaths tend to be massaged upwards because (in a feedback loop) they tend to optimize for Profit At Any Cost (Except Money). The latter is simply the mass of capitalism ex
Re: Obvious culprits (Score:5, Informative)
That's the single biggest culprit, yes.
The next biggest is an eradication of pollinating plants of high value to bees.
The third killer is a massive fragmentation of areas available to feed.
The final killer is the loss of hedgerows and woodlands, limiting options for wild bee populations.
Bees can't nip down to the corner store for some sugar water, nor are there any realtors/estate agents offering bee condos. Deprive them of food and home, they're not going to do too well.
Throw in deadly toxins like neonicotinoids and they're likely doomed.
Re: Obvious culprits (Score:5, Interesting)
Roundup, is a broad spectrum herbicide, main ingredient being glyphosate which kills most plants. Neonicotinoids are a broad spectrum insecticide, kills most insects. Not sure about persistence, which is one problem with some insecticides. Bees are hit particularly hard by many insecticides due to them gathering it up when gathering and storing pollen.
Roundup has its problems, but much less then some herbicides such as alkanolamine salts, the isopropylester formulations being toxic to bees and the arsenicals, the dinitros, and the endothall which are highly toxic to bees. then herbicides like amitrole, atrazine and simazine are low toxicity unless sprayed on open flowers.
This list is from a 1981 pesticide application handbook and may be out of date.
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I live quite away from any farms and there's still hardly any bumblebees around. When I first moved here, over 25 years back, the huckleberry bushes would each have a few bumblebees in them, now I see like one. At least this year the smaller wild bees seem to have sprung back after a couple of years of hardly any.
ha ha (Score:1)
n/t
Everything is fine (Score:4, Funny)
No need to worry about bees or the collapsing ecosystem; bees are so small they couldn't possibly have any real impact on anything. Now carry on with your daily mandated purchases, Citizen.
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Some people are allergic to bees, who cares if they die? Humans have rights too.
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Your inability to detect sarcasm doesn't entitle you to lash out with insults.
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Then we can also consider that what we have is a less diverse habitat in farming these days than we had some decades ago, now a farm is more or less specialized on a single type of production. Some decades ago a farm were much more diverse.
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Then we can also consider that what we have is a less diverse habitat in farming these days than we had some decades ago, now a farm is more or less specialized on a single type of production. Some decades ago a farm were much more diverse.
Not just a farm but whole areas of farms often specialize on one crop now. Not far from here it is now blueberries as they pay the best.
Re:Western climate not changed much in 20 years (Score:5, Informative)
The data that is there shows a roughly 1.5-2 degree increase between the 1990's and the 2000's. How is that "not that different"?
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There are over 4,000 bee species in North America. There are always some which are increasing and others which are declining. In different years, sometimes they are even the same species switching from one to the other. Bees compete with each other for habitat. That's just how it's worked for a very long time.
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"you'll find that man annual temperatures are not that different now than 20 years ago, and within range of historical norms. So other factors may be at work, climate is not one of them"
Your link says other wise:
Slide 19 seems to show a slow rise in yearly average temperatures from 1890 to about 2010.
And slide 41 shows a clear rise of at least 4.5 degrees of average winter temperatures (oct-apr) from 1890 to 2005.
Slide 50 also shows a clear rise in CO2 from 1980 to 2005.
Questions for you (Score:1)
Slide 19 seems to show a slow rise in yearly average temperatures from 1890 to about 2010.
Look at annual temperatures for the past 20 years [noaa.gov] It oscillates but the average remains about the same.
And slide 41 shows a clear rise of at least 4.5 degrees of average winter temperatures (oct-apr) from 1890 to 2005.
Why would that hurt bees?
Slide 50 also shows a clear rise in CO2 from 1980 to 2005.
Why would that hurt bees?
Re: Questions for you (Score:4, Informative)
Bees don't have lungs. Changes in atmospheric composition make a huge difference.
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Bees don't have lungs. Changes in atmospheric composition make a huge difference.
That should be easily tested (assuming that the goal is scientific and not political) by placing bees in a containers with carefully controlled atmosphere compositions and temperatures.
It seems unlikely that bees would be impacted by changes in *average* measurements, but easily testable. A more likely scenario, and equally testable, is that bees are impacted by outliers in either temperature or atmospheric composition. It should be fairly straightforward to do laboratory simulations of present day extremes
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So does the west have co2 and the east doesn't?
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Look at annual temperatures for the past 20 years [noaa.gov] It oscillates but the average remains about the same.
Why look when you could do a regression analysis which shows the average is increasing? I'd say to fit your narrative, but the reality is it's because on the topic of science you've displayed a long history of low intelligence.
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"Look at annual temperatures for the past 20 years [noaa.gov] It oscillates but the average remains about the same."
Look at past 100, there's a clear rise: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/... [noaa.gov]
"Why would that hurt bees?" (in response to a near 5 degree rise of winter temperatures from 1900 to 2005)
Why not, bees are part of a ecological system that is certainly affect by this, same for CO2
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Increasing erratic weather could also do it, unseasonable warm February followed by unseasonable cold March for example. It might average out but can still screw up both insects and plants.
Scientists don't know why, not well studied (Score:4, Interesting)
While at least some of that loss has happened from insecticide use, there could be other factors at play including habitat loss and almost certainly climate change. But I also wonder how the wide-spread cultivation of honey bees and leaf-cutter bees, which are not native to North America, have played a role in the decline of the bumble bee. Nearly all pollination in my area is done by leaf cutter and honey bees. In fact on our farm we use our own leaf cutter bees for several crops. I've often wondered what the impact on native pollinators is from having millions of these non-native species here on each field. I know there are diseases and parasites that accompany these non-native pollinators. How do they affect the bumble bee? From the scientists and researchers that I've heard from (we regularly have scientists present their findings at growers meetings), very little research has been done into native pollinators, including the humble bumble bee. All we know is they are in severe decline.
Honey bee and leaf cutter bees have been cultivated for many decades, but their use in recent years has expanded due to hybrid crop production requiring controlled pollination.
By the way we do have to use insecticides sometimes while the leaf-cutter and honey bees are in the field. Certain insecticides are used that are not residual, and we spray when the bees are inactive, mostly huddled in their shelters for the night. We don't know where bumble bees shelter at night. From what we can see, and what researchers verify, our cultivated bees seem to be doing just fine. So we can quantify the effects on honey bees and leaf cutters because they are well studied. How are bumble bees affected? No one knows. All anyone cared about for a long time was the honey bee, thanks in part to the lobbying of the hone bee folk.
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I am not an expert at all, but if climate change was almost certainly a big factor, wouldn't that show up quite obviously, with things like a movement further north or to different parts of the year?
Re:Scientists don't know why, not well studied (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Scientists don't know why, not well studied (Score:5, Insightful)
During an average year, the temperature in southern states swings by about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If temperature swings of 80 or 90 degrees doesn't harm the bees, it seems entirely implausible that a shift of the average by two degrees would devastate them, particularly in states like California, where the coastal temperature swings are far smaller on average, and where at least in coastal areas, the average temperature could increase by ten degrees without the peaks exceeding the temperature range that you see every year in Tennessee.
Nor could temperature changes realistically result in enough change in the location of vegetation to matter. Some bees are known to migrate seasonally by up to 125 miles, and bees typically forage 2+ miles from home (and sometimes as much as 4 miles) on a daily basis. So even if all plant life on Earth existed in a 5-mile-wide band that moved north by two miles per year, the bees could still easily move along with it.
Bees survive in a wide range of climates with a wide range of temperatures and a wide range of rainfall, and they store food (honey) to ensure that they can handle wild swings in flower density. So IMO, there is approximately zero chance that their die-off has anything to do with climate change, unless perhaps they have a common cause (e.g. higher CO2 levels causing bees to have trouble breathing somehow), and even that seems pretty unlikely.
Re:Scientists don't know why, not well studied (Score:4, Insightful)
You think you're telling me something I don't understand. You aren't. I'm well informed on the difference between climate and weather, and I know what habitat is. I just don't buy your claims, because they seem prima facie absurd and fly in the face of basic logic and reasoning.
Either bees can't handle temperature outside a given range or they can. If they can, then the temperature changes likely don't affect them at all. If they can't, then the temperature changes affect them, but only in areas where the temperature gets unexpectedly outside that range, and even then, you would expect a rebound in subsequent years unless that change is permanent, which it usually isn't.
Also, the particular bees we're talking about here are some of the most temperature-tolerant bees out there. These things actually have some internal temperature regulation, which lets them forage at below-freezing temperatures, even in inclement weather. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these pollinators from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. And they're also not very picky eaters, so changes in available flora are unlikely to cause a huge impact, short of a major drought causing plants not to flower at all, which AFAIK has not been the case in the territory that they used to occupy, but no longer do.
As for habitat, bees need two things: a place to put a hive and flowers. For 95% of the bees to have gone away would require that a large percentage of the flowers go away, or a large percentage of the possible hive locations go away, or both, over a large percentage of the United States. We're talking about insects that can live darn near anywhere that has plant life, from sea level to almost a mile in altitude, handling sub-freezing temperatures easily, handling brutally hot temperatures easily. Cities and other similar human activity might have destroyed a tiny percentage of that habitat in a few spots, but it can't explain a 95% drop, or even a 2% drop. Nor can air pollution's effect on bees' olfactory senses explain such a huge drop, because those levels of pollution are almost certainly nonexistent up in the mountains of Colorado.
One much more likely cause is the invasion of africanized bees from Mexico. They have been slowly spreading outwards from Brazil since the 1950s, and started hitting northern Arizona right about the same time as the population of these bumblebees began declining. Another possibility is that parasites may have been introduced by bees brought from Europe. A third possibility is that neonicotinoids have contributed greatly to bees' susceptibility to existing parasites. Any one of those explanations seems infinitely more likely to have caused such a huge drop in population than climate change.
That said, I'll grant you that there is a possibility that climate change has compounded the parasite problem. These bees apparently seek out cold temperatures when infected by parasites, and stay out at night to cool themselves down, because it slows the parasite growth. To the extent that average temperatures have gotten warmer, that could slightly increase the impact of parasites. Even then, though, the parasites would be the main cause, with pesticides being a major secondary cause, and climate change being a relatively minor contributing factor.
Climate change has not happened ... YET (Score:2)
Climate change to date has been very small.
What is frightening is that it could be very large in the near future, and then it would be irreversible.
It is totally counter productive to blame everything on climate change today. People see that that is an exaggeration and assume that the disastrous climate change we will soon face is also not true.
Nobody listens to the boy who called Wolf!
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This. That said, I do understand why everybody jumps to suggest climate change as the cause for things like this. There's funding for climate change research. Nobody cares about funding research on whether pesticide is killing bees. :-)
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Basically, you don't understand ecology.
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While at least some of that loss has happened from insecticide use, there could be other factors at play including habitat loss and almost certainly climate change...
OK, I see your point, but let me stop you there. What pisses me off about these "studies" is NOT the fact that we're still sitting around watching Greed point fingers at Greed to find blame, but the fact that we already know the impact of entirely losing bees in our ecosystem.
What do you mean it's "not well studied"? If we thought something was quite literally threatening the human food supply, don't you fucking think we would be smart enough to prioritize that, and ensure it's "studied" enough?
Nevermind.
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It is threatening the bears food supply around here. Bumblebees are out pollinating very early in the season and are the main pollinators of natural crops like huckleberries and salmon berries.
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I mean literally, no one has studied them like honey bees have been studied by scientists. The last few years has seen a lot of research done with regards to the affect of neonics on honey bees, in large part because honey bee keepers have been crying fowl for some time over their colonies dying off. So a ton of research has gone into honey bees. Virtually no research has been done on bumble bees.
And yes, neonics are being studied very closely by scientists who study bees. There is a correlation between
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Some of the research I've looked at showed a fairly strong correlation between increased pollination using mobile hives, and native bee decline. The mobility of the hives spread varroa infections wider than would normally happen, entering native areas.
Plus the competition of the commercial pollination has affected the native species due to them making a big dent in available nectar.
Neonics (which have a small contributory impact) tend to be called as the main culprit, but overall, what I've read seems to p
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While at least some of that loss has happened from insecticide use, there could be other factors at play including habitat loss and almost certainly climate change. But I also wonder how the wide-spread cultivation of honey bees and leaf-cutter bees, which are not native to North America, have played a role in the decline of the bumble bee.
We have hundreds of species of native leaf-cutter bees, I photograph them in the park all the time. They're more common than honey bees on many native plants, even though there are urban beekeepers in the area, and lots of honey bees on specific plants.
One of the very common native bees I see, it is a shame this isn't the right type of place for photos, but one is the Red-footed Cuckoo-leaf-cutter Bee (Coelioxys rufitarsis) which parasitizes nests of other leaf-cutter bees, including the European Wool Carde
More people = less bumblebees (Score:2)
Round-up ready bumblebees (Score:2)
Why didn't Monsato scientists think of that?
It is not just bumblebees (Score:2)
I see far fewer insects of all sorts, eg: fewer house flies, wasps, butterflies, ladybirds & mosquitoes. Whatever has caused their decline probably has other nasty effects as well. I live in England, near London.
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Air quality has been marked as a strong indicator. Diesel (older engines) are a big culprit on that, sending nanoparticulates into the atmosphere. This has been correlated strongly with the decline in sparrows (which used to be a heavy population in London, but now are quite scarce), and the path for that is that Birds have very sensitive respiratory systems (air capillaries, rather than lungs), which respond adversely faster to pollution and disease.
The rise of the diesel engine in popularity (over the
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Loss of hedgerows, gardens, natural areas, and traditional (organic) farming.
Buy organic, save a wasp. Plant a garden, save a butterfly.
I have some giant house spiders that hunt at night, any house flies trying to live in here last one day. They can't even see it coming at night.
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Agreed - even out in the suburbs. Birds and spiders have a lot less to eat right now, which will presumably see a decline in their numbers too.
However, for bumblebees particularly, they seem to go crazy for the lavender we have at the front of our house. If the number we've got buzzing around right now is only 7% of the normal quantity, then that's probably a good thing, or else we wouldn't be able to open the front door. I suspect our local population isn't as impacted as elsewhere.
Incidentally, lavender i
Anecdotal evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
This is purely anecdotal, but we recently moved from a town in the prime agricultural area of Switzerland up to a mountain village. The difference in the number of insects is staggering . In the mountain village, there are many, many more creeping, hopping, flying insects - I wouldn't be surprised if it is an order of magnitude more.
I can only suppose that this is due to widespread pesticide use by farmers down in the valley. This needs to stop. Insects are a critical part of the biosphere.
"Western?" (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with these claims is that there is no ongoing, continuous, high quality, regional population monitoring of bees.
So claims like this, we know the data is awful, but we don't know how awful, so we can't really calibrate an understanding of it.
Here in Oregon, which might be presumed to be included in the "Western" region, there has never been a state-wide counting of native bee species. The Oregon Bee Almanac project was supposed to change that this year, but we'll see how good the results are; the lockdown started right before training.
I live in the city, and macro photography is a hobby of mine. Insects are my main subjects. The city parks are still full of mostly-native bees, including numerous bumblebee species. They vastly outnumber introduced bees on most plants, even though there are beekeepers less than a mile away.
When I'm in the forest, there are always bumblebees.
These sorts of observational studies can't really be compared in this way, by just doing a survey of all the results. All these results will actually lead to is additional, higher quality study.
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Here in Oregon, which might be presumed to be included in the "Western" region, there has never been a state-wide counting of native bee species.
Not even people want to move to Oregon, why would bees!
On a serious note though "Western" does not describe the region, it is a colloquial name for the Bombus occidentalis, a bee species whose range currently only includes a tiny portion of the state.
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Splendid, thanks.
B. occidentalis is region-wide. Don't believe the hype. I've seen them recently.
people are scum (Score:2)
how did we do this?
we KNOW that insecticides are part of the problem, but eff that, we want our monoculture.
in Europe, at least, they are trying to address the problem.
but here...
we're scum.
Hornets? (Score:2)
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Murder hornets [wikipedia.org]. Yet another scourge from Asia. Thanks, guys.
Re: Hornets? (Score:1)
And I saw this in REAL LIFE, that hornets eat bees and wasps too, but in negligible amounts. As do birds. An they have been for million of years.
What you watched is really just the TV equivalent of clickbait.
I've got wild bees, livestock bees, wasps, hornets and bumblebees of various kinds, from tiny and black like a small ant to huge like your big toe, swarming all around me, the whole day thwice a week.
(They are almost completely harmless to humans, by the way. Just damn curious. So the art is to stay cal
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We know the cause -- Global Warming. (Score:2)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/c... [cbsnews.com]
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Scientists have found the reason.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/c... [cbsnews.com]
For political reasons, that cannot be true! (Damn Science, always coming up with inconvenient facts. Best just ignore it.)
Re: We know the cause -- Global Warming. (Score:1)
You misspelled "humans" there!
Both global warming and neonicotinoids are just symptoms of our pathogenic existence
Surely, we do not need them (Score:2)
Right? Right?
Why ask why (Score:1)
Bee Song (Score:1)
My garden is suffering (Score:2)
caltrans kills bees (Score:1)
California transportation department has planted a very drought resistant and poisonous plant down the median of interstate highways and likely using federal tax dollars to do it.
The plant is oleander. Could that be killing the bees?
Who cares? (Score:2)
iNat (Score:2)
Browsing iNaturalist citizen-scientist data for Alabama, Bombus spp. are clearly in decline (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/52775-Bombus, click on History tab).
Normalizing by eye to Insecta or Animalia results in even starker declines, as this helps account for increasing use of iNat over time.
Other eastern states I looked at were less obvious, however insects are declining generally, normalized to observations.
I have not seen a bumble bee in two years in Chatham Co., NC. I am out in nature nearly every d
And this is why I support the Coronavirus. (Score:1)
Anything thst acts as a chemo for this planetary pathogen called "humans".
Don't like it? Use contraception! Reduce humanity to 500k people. Then I'll stop calling you a pathogen.
(Yes, sadly, I am a human too. But I will do my deed, by not making any more.)