[Pollinator] Plight Of The Bumblebee

[Scott Black]

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Plight Of The Bumblebee
GRANTS PASS, Ore., Oct. 8, 2007

(AP) Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer find a species 
of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in northwestern 
California and southwestern Oregon.

Thorp, an emeritus professor of entomology from the University of 
California at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a 
remote mountain trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able 
to locate any this year.

He fears that the species - Franklin's bumblebee - has gone extinct 
before anyone could even propose it for the endangered species list. 
To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species - one on the East 
coast, one on the West - have gone from common to rare.

Amid the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of 
honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has 
been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity.

But if bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, 
the consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the 
problems with honeybees, which are active at different times and on 
different crop species.

Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of 
all the crops grown in the U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those 
raised in greenhouses. Those include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.

Demand is growing as honeybees decline. In the wild, birds and bears 
depend on bumblebees for berries and fruits.

There is no smoking gun yet, but a recent U.S. National Academy of 
Sciences report on the status of pollinators around the world blames 
a combination of habitat lost to housing developments and intensive 
agriculture, pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of 
greenhouses using commercial bumblebee hives.

"We have been naive," said Neal Williams, assistant professor of 
biology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. "We haven't been 
diligent the way we need to be."

The threat has bumblebee advocates lobbying Congress to allocate more 
money for research and to create incentives for farmers to leave 
uncultivated land for habitat. They also want farmers to grow more 
flowering plants that native bees feed on.

"We are smart enough to deal with this," said Laurie Adams, executive 
director of the Pollinator Partnership. "There is hope."

Companies in Europe, Israel and Canada adapted bumblebees to 
commercial use in the early 1990s, and they are now standard in 
greenhouses raising tomatoes and peppers.

Demand is growing as supplies of honeybees decline, especially for 
field crops such as blueberries, cranberries, watermelon, squash, and 
raspberries, said Holly Burroughs, general manager for production for 
the U.S. branch of Koppert Biological Systems Inc., a Netherlands 
company that sells most of the commercial bumblebees in the U.S.

One new customer is Tony Davis of Quail Run Farm in Grants Pass. He 
has long depended on bumblebees to fertilize the squash, cucumbers, 
tomatoes and eggplant he grows outdoors for sale in growers' markets. 
When he started growing strawberries in greenhouses this year to get 
a jump on the competition, he bought commercial bumblebee hives to 
fertilize them.

"Without bumblebees, I would be out of business. I don't think I 
could hand-pollinate all these plants," he said.

Scientists hoping to pinpoint the cause of the nation's honeybee 
decline recently identified a previously unknown virus, but stress 
that parasitic mites, pesticides and poor nutrition all remain suspects.

Unlike honeybees, which came to North America with the European 
colonists of the 17th century, bumblebees are natives. They collect 
pollen and nectar to feed to their young, but make very little honey.

A huge problem facing scientists is how "appallingly little we know 
about our pollinating resources," said University of Illinois 
entomology Prof. May Berenbaum, who headed the National Academy of 
Sciences report.

Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for 
Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, worries that on top of 
pesticides and narrowing habitats, disease could be the last straw 
for many of the bee species.

"It definitely could all come crashing down," he said.




*************************
Scott Hoffman Black
Ecologist/Entomologist
Executive Director
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
4828 SE Hawthorne
Portland, OR 97215
Direct line (503) 449-3792
sblack at xerces.org

The Xerces Society is an international nonprofit organization that
protects the diversity of life through invertebrate conservation.

To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work,
please visit <http://www.xerces.org/>www.xerces.org.


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