While many scientists are focused on the decline of honey bees, relatively few study bumble bees.
While many scientists are focused on the decline of honey bees, relatively few study bumble bees. The good news is that a new study provides an estimate on bumble bee population and distributions across Michigan in the past century. The bad news is that these results are dramatically low, and they mirror what’s happening across the Americas, Europe and Asia, too.
Michigan State University led the study, which compared current distributions of bumble bee species across the state to the information gleaned from museum specimens collected as far back as the 1880s. The research, published in the current issue of Ecology, shows that half of the bumble bee species studied have declined by more than 50%.
“Bumble bees are important pollinators of plants across natural habitats, where they help support the seeds and berries that birds and other animals depend on,” said Thomas Wood, MSU entomology postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. “They also are effective pollinators of many fruits and vegetables that are important for healthy human diets.”
Read more at Michigan State University
Image: Thomas Wood, MSU entomologist, shows that half of the bumble bee species have declined by more than 50%. Courtesy of MSU
