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Earth Science

Bumblebees Being Crushed By Climate Change 225

Posted by Soulskill from the latest-buzz dept.
sciencehabit writes: As the climate changes, plants and animals are on the move. So far, many are redistributing in a similar pattern: As habitat that was once too cold warms up, species are expanding their ranges toward the poles, whereas boundaries closer to the equator have remained more static. Bumblebees, however, appear to be a disturbing exception, according to a new study (abstract) . A comprehensive look at dozens of species finds that many North American and European bumblebees are failing to "track" warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. Simultaneously, they are disappearing from the southern portions of their range.
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Bumblebees Being Crushed By Climate Change More

Bumblebees Being Crushed By Climate Change

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  • Colonization patterns (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday July 10, 2015 @10:58AM (#50082357)

    ...many North American and European bumblebees are failing to "track" warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. ...

    Maybe bumblebees select habitats to colonize based more upon the daylight patterns than temperatures, and that is why they are not following the warmth as it moves towards the poles?

    • Maybe bumblebees select habitats to colonize based more upon the daylight patterns than temperatures, and that is why they are not following the warmth as it moves towards the poles?

      Sounds like something whose name starts with "bumble" would do. ;-)

  • More mysterious is their failure to push north. “What we can infer is that temperature in the northern latitudes is not what's limiting their spread,” says Ignasi Bartomeus, a researcher at Spain's Estación Biológica de Doñana in Seville

    Wish I could read the actual paper, but it's pay-walled.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 10, 2015 @11:11AM (#50082455)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Fuck those insidious things. Taking out a hornets/wasps' nest up in the eaves with a 12ga loaded with birdshot (the smaller the shotsize, the better)...? Priceless. Watching bits of wasp rain gently down for 30sec afterwards only adds to the fun!

  • Bring in the undomesticated bee strains as pollinators.

    The European /North American bees have been bread for docility for centuries to the point where we transport hives on trucks to pollinate where needed, is it any wonder that they are not migrating "naturally" they are for all intents and purposes domesticated, it's like expecting cows to migrate on their own.

    I would expect that so called "killer" bees would be adapting better to climate change.

    • The article is about bumblebees (which are not domesticated), not honeybees.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kcurrie ( 4116 )

      The Africanized bees ARE adapting fairly well and are have further crossbred with (now) indigenous honeybees and as a result are able to handle the cold much better than they have in recent years. As a result of this they are moving further and further north each year. I saw a documentary recently that stated that some scientists thought they would eventually make it up to through Canada and to the southern parts of Alaska eventually! IMHO that may be a little overstated (although I'm no scientist), how

  • If carpenter bees are considered a type of bumble bee I hope they do extinct ASAP. Not only do they drill holes in any wooden structure they can find, but after they've built a nest the woodpeckers tear it apart and make an even bigger hole.

    • If carpenter bees are considered a type of bumble bee I hope they do extinct ASAP. Not only do they drill holes in any wooden structure they can find, but after they've built a nest the woodpeckers tear it apart and make an even bigger hole.

      Those suckers are nasty! I had one on my deck a few years back. It started boring a hole in one of the posts to make a nest. You could actually hear it chewing through the wood! I tried to swat it away, but it would keep coming after me, and I didn't want to get stung, so I decided to wait. It dug about half an inch into the wood in about 15 minutes. I figured it was safe at that point, so I took the hand spade I had been using in my garden and chopped it in half at the abdomen. Had to pull the head out by

      • Once I went to a zoo with my GF-at-the-time. We were in a gift shop mucking around with the various doodads, next thing I know, I see flakes falling from above. I look up at the wood beams running along the ceiling, and watched as a carpenter bee dug through the wood, crawled out of the hole and then flew away. Those suckers dig fast.

    • No. Bumble bees are the vast, furry, bees which, well, kinda bumble around. Despite being vast they don't sting anything like as badly as honey bees. Primarily this is because honeybees have suicide sting designed to inflict the maximum damage without regard to the bee's life. Bumblebees don't hive in the same way so they have some sort of self preservation. They nest in old wood. People make artificial nests using stacks of old bamboo.

      Seeing a bumblebee pootling round is just one of those wonderful thin

  • This news is particularly sad to me on a personal level, as bumblebees are one of the few insects that both tolerate you petting them lightly, and are fuzzy enough to make it rewarding (moths are the other, but they're quite fragile). Unlike honeybees and wasps, they rarely sting, and their slowness cuts the danger even further to making it essentially nil. I've never been stung by a bumblebee. The slow flight also makes it pretty easy to pet them while they're busy feeding on nectar and pollinating, and if

  • ...the only exercise Liberals aspire to? The fact that bumblebees are not colonizing new areas "opened up by global warming" - especially in the face of the fact that no warming has been seen for twenty years except by people who expect to make money from it - is clear evidence that their decline has some other cause. It's not like the damned bees are refusing to use the new territory. What? Are they offended about warming and doing a racial suicide to make us feel guilty?

    Come on, if you want to keep up the

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