[Pollinator] Bumble Bee Crash Reports from Kansas

[Ladadams at aol.com]

Thanks to Chip Taylor for sending this:
 
Bumble Bee Crash. Bumble bees appear to have crashed in a number  of
locations on the west coast, in some places in the east and here  in
Lawrence, Kansas. I'm a long time bumble bee watcher and I haven't
seen  a queen yet this year nor has one of my colleagues, Rudolf
Jander, who has a  large garden devoted to attracting pollinators.
Those of you visiting  prairies might look for bumble bees as they are
important, and sometime the  exclusive, pollinators of many prairie
plants. To identify bumble bees to  species please consult
http://bumbleboosters.unl.edu/. We only have three  common bumble bees
in this area, Bombus  fraternus
(http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=Bombus+fraternus),  B.
impatiens  (http://pick5.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?search=Bombus+impatiens),
and B.  pennsylvanicus (http://www.bumblebee.org/NorthAmerica.htm).

The local  bumble bee decline may be related to a series of warm
winters with little  snow cover. Under these conditions predation by
skunks and opossums of  overwintering queens, that tend to winter in
abandoned mouse nests, appears  to be higher than in cold winters. The
local decline may be due in part to  the 4-10 April freeze in the
spring of 2007. The extreme conditions during  this cold period and
the lack of flowers for the following month may have  eliminated many
of bumble nests initiated in 2007. For more on the spring  freeze of
2007, please  see
http://monarchwatch.org/blog/2008/04/11/how-does-your-garden-grow-part-2/.

Chip
 
Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Pollinator  Partnership 
423 Washington Street, 5th floor
San Francisco, CA  94111
415-362-1137

_www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 

_www.nappc.org_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2008. 
Beecome  involved at _www.pollinator.org_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 



**************Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with 
Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.      
(http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20080521/712b8cdd/attachment.html