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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><a
href="http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14460103">http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14460103</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color="#cc0033" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#CC0033;font-weight:bold'>The
short-haired bumblebee</span></font></b> <br>
<br>
<b><font size=4 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Verdana;
font-weight:bold'>Bzzzt, it's back</span></font></b><font size=1 color="#999999"
face=Verdana><span style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#999999'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=1 color="#999999" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#999999'>Sep 17th 2009 <br>
>From The Economist print edition<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><br>
<br>
</span></font><b><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;font-weight:bold'>A black-and-yellow-striped émigré returns
home after a century</span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
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size=1 color="#999999" face=Arial><span style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:
Arial;color:#999999'>BBCT</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
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width=200 height=288 id="_x0000_i1025"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CA434B.D50408A0" alt=BBCT><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p style='mso-element:frame'><b><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:bold'>Coming home</span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'><!--back-->MORE
than 100 years ago, labourers clearing ditches in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region> were paid a bounty for each
bumblebee they found. New Zealanders wanted the long-tongued types to pollinate
the red clover they used for sheep pasture, so that they would not have to
import and re-sow the clover each year. In December 1884, 282 bumblebee queens
left <st1:City w:st="on">London</st1:City> for <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Wellington</st1:place></st1:City> on the “Tongariro”,
one of the first steamships with a refrigeration unit, in which they could
safely hibernate. Forty-eight survived the journey, and their offspring are
flourishing on <st1:place w:st="on">South Island</st1:place> today.</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>One
of the deported species, the short-haired bumblebee, has died out in <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. But
descendants of its émigré cousins may soon be making the long trek home.
Reintroduction has been mooted before, but bees are prone to lethal jet-lag and
long-tongued bumblebees are hard to breed in captivity. Now the Bumblebee
Conservation Trust thinks it has worked out how to do it. </span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>The
key, according to recent work by Jaromir Cizek, a Czech bumblebee enthusiast,
is to feed the queens a high-quality mix of nectar and pollen freshly collected
by bumblebees, not the low-grade stuff tolerated by their close relatives, the
domesticated honeybee. That, his experiments suggest, will persuade the fussy
eaters to lay eggs. A new generation can then be kept in sterile conditions, to
minimise the chance that nasty foreign diseases are brought back to <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> on the
return journey. If the plan works, the second generation of queens will be
fertilised, chilled to induce hibernation and stored inside old-fashioned hair
rollers sealed at both ends with corks. Thus protected, they will be flown to <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region> and released in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City
w:st="on">Dungeness</st1:City>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Kent</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
near where the species was last spotted in 2000. Farmers have been planting
masses of red clover to welcome them.</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'><cf_floatingcontent></cf_floatingcontent>The
return of the short-haired bumblebee would be a small piece of good news amid
much bee-related gloom. Honeybees are under threat from new and strange
diseases; meanwhile intensive farming means that there are fewer of the
wildflowers bumblebees sip nectar from, and fewer hedgerows in which they can
build their nests. Two species have died out, and of the 24 remaining ones
seven are threatened and only six are thriving. That is a problem for
agriculture: some commercial crops, such as apples, tomatoes and strawberries,
need bumblebees to pollinate them. </span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=2 face=Verdana><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>As
novel species out-compete native ones (American grey squirrels in Europe; European
and Asian knapweed in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>),
globalisation often threatens biodiversity. But “abroad”, it seems,
is a good place to back up cherished locals too.</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
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12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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