American Bumblebees Have Disappeared From 8 States and Could Face Extinction (usatoday.com) 131
Long-time Slashdot reader phalse phace quotes USA Today:
The dwindling populations of the American bumblebee and their complete disappearance from eight states has led to a call for the bee to be placed under the Endangered Species Act before they face extinction.
Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon each have zero or close to zero American bumblebees left, according to a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity and Bombus Pollinators Association of Law Students...
Over the last two decades, the American bumblebee population has decreased by 89% across the U.S. New York had a decline of 99% and they disappeared from the northern part of Illinois that has seen a 74% decrease in population since 2004, the petition said.
Climate change, pesticides, disease, habitat loss and competition from honey bees are listed as driving the bee to extinction... The loss of the insect could cause serious repercussions to the environment and crop production due to them being essential pollinators in agriculture. If the American bumblebee is added to the endangered species list, it will join the rusty-patched bumblebee, and If granted federal protection, anyone found to have killed or harmed the bee could face up to $13,000 in fines.
Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon each have zero or close to zero American bumblebees left, according to a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity and Bombus Pollinators Association of Law Students...
Over the last two decades, the American bumblebee population has decreased by 89% across the U.S. New York had a decline of 99% and they disappeared from the northern part of Illinois that has seen a 74% decrease in population since 2004, the petition said.
Climate change, pesticides, disease, habitat loss and competition from honey bees are listed as driving the bee to extinction... The loss of the insect could cause serious repercussions to the environment and crop production due to them being essential pollinators in agriculture. If the American bumblebee is added to the endangered species list, it will join the rusty-patched bumblebee, and If granted federal protection, anyone found to have killed or harmed the bee could face up to $13,000 in fines.
AY! No me gusta! (Score:2, Funny)
Quien van a defenderme?
YO! El Chapulín Colorado!
Translation (Score:2, Informative)
Quien van a defenderme?
YO! El Chapulín Colorado!
For those who only speak esperanto poorly, this means "first post".
American bumblebee found in RI after more decade. (Score:3)
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No contaban con mi astucia!
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Are you mistaking an unstable jetstream (caused by global warming) that causes the polar vortex to veer south more often as "global cooling?"
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Yeah, a lot of people can't grasp a rather simple concept:
Local weather != Global climate
Well... (Score:1)
...shit.
OK, So This Is Fun (Score:4, Informative)
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What the fuck the article is trying to say.
That we'll have to learn to milk murder hornets.
Re:OK, So This Is Fun (Score:5, Informative)
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Just last year when our mint was in bloom I counted four species of bumble bee, honeybees, two butterflies, and a beetle all at the same time. This year I saw one type of bumble bee, honeybees, and one butterfly the whole month.
Re:OK, So This Is Fun (Score:4, Informative)
Article.
"The species has completely vanished from eight states, including Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon."
Wikipedia
Bombus pensylvanicus, the American bumblebee, is a threatened species of bumblebee native to North America. It occurs in eastern Canada, throughout much of the Eastern United States, and much of Mexico.[1]
The map shows it never occurred in Idaho or Oregon or North Dakota. So unless it was introduced ( to pollinate red clover?) and then died out, the fine article is wrong.
There were plenty of bumblebees, although not that kind, in my garden this year. I'm in Washington, but grew up in Wisconsin, I can tell them apart.
Re:OK, So This Is Fun (Score:5, Informative)
It's lazy reporting; sometimes it gets the message right but the details wrong. The range map in the Wikipedia article shows both the current and former range of B. pennsylvanicus, and you can see it's lost nearly half its range. You can get a more precise picture here [natureserve.org]; note that in most places the conservation status of this species is "not assessed"; this is typical in real world data. People assume that scientists somehow know precisely what's going on, but if you've ever worked with this this kind data you'd know that solid and comprehensive field observations are very hard to come by. It's not like there are armies of trained observers doing field surveys, although there are people trying to change this [bumblebeewatch.org].
Taxonomists are notorious hair splitters, drawing fine distinctions where there is little practical difference, so to get an idea for the size of a problem you need to look at what's happening in closely related species. It turns out many formerly widespread species in the genus Bombus are threatened or extinct in much of their former range, including some formerly very common bees: the yellow-banded bumblebee [natureserve.org], the rusty-patched bumblebee [natureserve.org], and the western bumblebee [natureserve.org]. A number of species in the same subgenus (Fervidobombus) as B. pennsylvanicus are vulnerable to extinct in their former range, although healthy populations continue to exist in some locations.
The big picture is not Hollywood-blockbuster-apocalyptic yet, but it looks like there may be widespread survival pressure on an economically and ecologically important clade of pollinators. It's certainly worth looking into.
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The point is when the breathless article claims doom because a particular bee is not found in state x, when that bee has never been found in state x it casts doubt on the rest of the article. Anything else the breathless article claims now has to be individually verified because I've already caught them in one error.
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Extrapolate just a little bit, and now you know why some folks, myself included, find it hard to trust the mass media in general.
To the point where if they said the sky is blue/grey, and sh*t is brown, I would immediately get my eyes checked.
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It's true that the subject bee isn't endemic to our area, but many others are- and they're all in dramatic decline.
This year, unlike the last 4 or 5, I did actually see a plant that they normally love covered again, which was awesome... but I don't think that single data point indicates they're on an upswing.
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If you haven't noticed the bumble bee decline (I've been remarking on it for a decade now) you haven't been paying attention.
Or maybe, they pay a lot more attention!
You've been blathering about it forever. Other people actually get out into the field and make observations.
You were saying it 10 years ago, and yet, people who actually observe bumblebees are still observing them! Maybe you were full of shit every year?
https://www.inaturalist.org/ob... [inaturalist.org]
East [Re:OK, So This Is Fun] (Score:4, Informative)
The bee, American Bumble Bee, Bombus pensylvanicus, (Do your own research, I tire of dressing this shit up for the community id) probably wouldn't be found in Oregon or Idaho at least in very small numbers on the best of years..
OK, that criticism seems accurate. This site: https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/... [rcinet.ca] shows the range as pretty much Illinois and east (a tiny bit of Iowa and Minnesota, but mostly east of that).
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interresting (Score:3)
For the first time that we are aware of, the American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) was observed in the state of Idaho. The clos
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Here in Oregon people have noticed the loss of the Western Bumblebee, but it is generally misreported as a "loss of bumblebees" or even a "loss of pollinators."
One of my big hobbies is native bee photography. I photographed dozens of species of bees this year, including numerous bumblebees.
The Western Bumblebee used to be one of our most common species. It has fallen serious victim to pests that specifically target that species. It is now locally absent, I don't see it at all. And yet, the number of bumbleb
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In the Seattle area the native bee and wasp population crashed this year. Populations were lower than normal this spring, but then after the heat wave several species seem to have disappeared completely from our area. We spend a lot of time in our garden and it was upsetting to see.
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One of the photographers I'm friends with is based in the Seattle area, she photographed the same amount as last year. Posting pictures every day.
Perhaps your neighbors are using a lot of chemicals?
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It was pretty clearly the heat wave. Over the course of that week they just disappeared. I'm sure there are a few of each type still around, but it's going to take a couple of years for them to grow their numbers back. One of them was the most common type of native bee in our neighborhood, a pretty medium sized bee with a rusty patch.
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And yet, the number of bumblebees in general has not changed.
This is a falsehood. All species of bumblebee are in decline.
It's been getting more obvious every year, starting at least 2 decades ago [usda.gov].
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Absolutely not, B. californicus has gone from rare to common north of California, and B. vosnesenskii rapidly increased in numbers to replace B. occidentalis (Western Bumble Bee) as that species succumbed to parasites.
From your link: "Establishing baseline survey data in the NCCN will provide novel information on bumble bee community composition and genetic diversity, two indicators of pollinator health and conservation status."
It also includes some hand-wavy doom and gloom, to increase interest, but that q
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Feel free to give us yours.
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You didn't read and understand your link, it doesn't support your claims
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Let's review:
My claim:
It's been getting more obvious every year, starting at least 2 decades ago
FTA:
Within the past 20 years, reports of bumble bee decline have
accumulated on a global scale. Contemporary surveys of
North American bumble bee fauna documented up to 94%
decline in relative abundance of wild bumble bee populations.
In the Pacific Northwest, Bombus occidentalis has not been
detected for more than a decade.
This claim:
B. californicus has gone from rare to common north of California, and B. vosnesenskii rapidly increased in numbers to replace B. occidentalis (Western Bumble Bee) as that species succumbed to parasites.
Is entirely unsupported by fact. It has weak support via some circumstantial evidence.
B. Californicus was the most common Bumblebee in California up until the 90s, at which point it has been steadily declining.
Northern CA is their last refuge in that state.
As a bee photographer who spends hundreds of hours a year identifying bees and reviewing sightings and distribution data, I already know that there are species whose populations are increasing, in addition to species whose population is decreasing.
Maybe you suck at your hobby. Kind of like the way you suck at chemistry, or knowledge of conductive metals.
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I live in Boise, have for 39 years. The area I grew up in has become significantly more suburban, but we spent a lot of hours walking empty fields and the like. There used to be bumblebees, like enough that if a person wanted to compare a wasp to a bumblebee, both could be easily found.
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Bumble Bees on the west coast (where I live) are in a dramatic decline... but that's not a species that is endemic to this area.
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>If one (already rare) pollinator goes extinct but other pollinators are filling the niche
Also, the less kinds of pollinators there are, the more those who depend on them become prone to negative effects when the pollinators that are left numbers drop, for whatever reasons temporary or not.
When Nature starts over ... (Score:2)
I guess Dr. Stephen Falken will be wrong, it won't be the Bees.
Glycogen (Score:2, Insightful)
See "Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment" by Dr Stephanie Seneff.
https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-L... [amazon.com]
"What do scientists find when they examine glyphosate’s effects on bees? Nothing good. When adult worker honeybees are exposed to sublethal doses of glyphosate, it decreases their short-term memory retention and disrupts the associative learning necessary for effective foraging...
"Glyphosate also disrupts the honeybee biome".
Sold as a weedkiller, glypho
Re: Glycogen (Score:2)
If glyphosate worries you you really wont like what's in sheep dip.
Re:Glycogen (Score:4, Informative)
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Glyphosate is a herbicide, it is not toxic to bees.
Bullets are designed to kill enemy soldiers. They won't harm you.
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Glyphosate is a herbicide,
True, as far as it is sold as that.
it is not toxic to bees.
It is.
Next?
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Glyphosate is a herbicide, it is not toxic to bees.
Says who? The sales literature?
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Glyphosate is a herbicide, it is not toxic to bees.
Christ, and to think you were a chemist.
neonicotinoids
are insecticides. I invite you to drink some.
Glyphosate has a well-established LD50 for bees. It isn't what one would call "highly toxic" (It's definitely not an effective pesticide) however, its effects are quantifiable at 1% of LD50.
Read up, retired chemist. [nature.com]
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There's been at least one reported death from deliberate ingestion of weedkiller container glyphosate.
So technically, at least something in one formulation of weedkiller containing glyphosate can kill humans.
On the other hand, when I looked into it years ago, I ended up picking a glyphosate-based herbicide to kill some stumps in an awkward spot. It seemed
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One thing about glyphosate based herbicides (and likely most) is that they don't have to say what they use for surfactants. Could be simple soap, but they'd likely brag about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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My understanding is that only the active ingredients are listed and tested with the argument that some of the inactive ingredients are trade secrets.
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Dr Stephanie Seneff
A doctor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, with a BS in Biophysics and a MS and a EE in Electrical Engineering.
Also, a well known quack [mcgill.ca].
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"Newly released emails reveal how Monsanto conspired to discredit its critics"
https://thecounter.org/monsant... [thecounter.org]
"Monsanto-allied researcher: “Beat the shit out of” moms worried about Roundup".
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She's still a quack who finds glyphosate to be the cause of pretty much everything.
Seneff Claims GMOs Cause Concussions [acsh.org]
Dissecting MIT computer scientist Stephanie Seneff’s claim that glyphosate herbicide causes autism [geneticlit...roject.org]
MIT Screwball Blames Glyphosate For COVID, And Everything Else [acsh.org]
I have no idea how credible of a source she might be on matters related to computer science and electrical engineering, but on medical issues, on glyphosate specifically? Not credible.
As for Monsanto's response to claims like
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Yes but farmers don't use glyphosate during pollination season. The plants have long metabolized it by the time of flowering. glyphosate, like most herbicides, is a spring or fall chemical, not typically used widely in the summer. I happen to grow glyphosate-tolerant canola and also run some of my own bees to do the pollination. That includes honey bees which are doing rather well here (good honey too), despite limited use of neonic seed coatings and at-night, in-crop insecticide spraying during the flo
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Bumblebees fly out early in the spring, not in the summer.
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Yes but farmers don't use glyphosate during pollination season. The plants have long metabolized it by the time of flowering..
"How quickly does glyphosate actually degrade in natural soils? Slowly. In one experiment, radiolabeled glyphosate was added to undisturbed sand and clay. They found that after 748 days, 59 percent of the glyphosate was still present... ...glyphosate disrupts the cells of even the most primitive life forms in complex ways, causing them to abnormally increase production of some proteins and decrease production of others".
- Seneff, "Toxic Legacy"
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In the first place, apologies for writing "Glycogen" instead of "Glyphosate". I think I was already mentally writing my post, but that's no excuse.Maybe senility...
If you read Dr Seneff's book - or the relevant literature, which she summarises - you will find that glyphosate likes to replace glycine in any amino acids where the relevant glycine has a little elbow room for a bulkier molecule that fits the same "lock".
Try to imagine the variety and seriousness of harms caused by that.
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Kills parts of our microbiome, with which we are symbiotic.
It should not be allowed to be in the food supply, at least, not without labeling.
Placing it on the list won't change anything (Score:1)
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Placing the American Bumblebee on some sort of a government endangered species list won't change a thing, will it?
In most Western nations it would. It means if you are taking various actions like planning you have to take effects on them into account. Also it can affect the chemical available for use. Not that it necessarily results in saving a species, but some that have made their way onto such lists in Europe have later bounced back. Maybe it doesn't make a difference in the USA. If climate change is the root cause, then no it won't help.
stiff penalty (Score:5, Insightful)
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Uhhh... (Score:4, Informative)
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That was my first thought when the article lead off with climate change as possible causes, the variance of the climate in the bumble bees natural range far exceeds any variation caused by climate change. I know in my gardens in mid-thumb Michigan, I saw generous populations bumble bees all over our ornamental alliums, thistles and the clover in my "lawn". We had a surprising number of feral honeybees foraging this year too.
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We may be an exception
Indeed. And the story does not need to align with every observation in every place of the US, either. Ecology is more complex that that. When a species is in the process of disappearing, that doesn't mean there couldn't be some places left where it's actually increasing in numbers. It also could still be a temporary anomaly even for such a place.
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And you know exactly which species of bees those are? There's 250 species of Bombus as well as quite a few other types of bee.
Personally, where I am, it seems I don't see Bumblebees anymore, just various types of honey bee and a few others that I'm not sure what they are.
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Central NH here.
I had hundreds of bumble bees on my azaleas this year, but not this one, to my knowledge.
The abdomen is quite long.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.or... [wikimedia.org]
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Well there's a bee I've never seen, which isn't surprising as I don't live in their range, but I'd guess most of the commenters who say there are lots are talking about a different species.
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Exactly, I'm in MN and there is (AFAIK) no issue here.
Note the 8 states mentioned, I'm curious how a) plentiful and b) native American bumblebees were in those places in the first place.
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Are those Bombus pensylvanicus or another species of Bombus? Or even a whole different type of bee.
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Colorado here. We had bumblebees living and working in the front yard 20 years ago. I haven't seen one in over five years.
plenty means nothing (Score:2)
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Well, as an aside, I keep having to shovel more and more "global warming" each and every winter.
But a weakening jet stream could be responsible. I'm willing to be open to that possibility. I'm just not necessarily willing to condemn billions of people to permanent poverty based on an unprovable assertion that human activity is causing that. I'd much rather just keep shoveling, and let them and everyone else live meaningful and increasingly prosperous (and therefore over time less polluting) lives instead
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A specif species of Bumblebee. I'm not an expert but it seems there are a lot of species of Bumblebee, about 250 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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Should be specific, not specif
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Just chiming in that Iâ(TM)ve seen them as well in a relatively urban area too. The problem is the sampling, conventional sampling with tons of undergrads combing the fields has become way too expensive, instead we are relying on unproven technology and statistical methods by a thinning group of lazier students
Actually, often the technique is to crowd source it, including to people in their backyards. So it would be pretty unlikely, provided they have a number of backyard participants, that they could miss all bees in backyards. This is done in the UK to count butterflies, for example (a recent example which reported a couple of weeks ago), although I am not sure if it has been used to count bees. Other examples in the UK include birds and hedgehogs.
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Notwithstanding that I might agree with your conclusion, I'm not sure how much I like the idea of lawyers, much less law students, getting to influence policy with no input from actual scientists and other experts.
I'm not sure I'd like the opposite idea either: people who are or claim to be "experts" demanding that we in effect change our entire legal system, which is supposed to be consensus-based, in order to implement policies they might recommend, but which cannot be applied without robbing people of l
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Neonicotinoids, which I understand are partly banned in the EU, are likely much more harmful to bee populations.
But I'll be pretty happy to see glyphosate phased out as well, at least in the food supply, or anyplace else that might result in it being consumed by people or bees or pretty much anything else. There's no longer much question that it is harmful to humans, via being harmful to our microbiome. It's also coming to light that a LOT of the chronic problems unique to modern times are likely related
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It's also coming to light that a LOT of the chronic problems unique to modern times are likely related to the health of the microbiome. Generally, what hurts it, hurts us.
Perfectly true, chronicle inflammations or obesity comes to mind.
Honey bees are not native to North America. (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun fact:
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-... [usgs.gov]
Are honey bees native to North America?
Honey bees are not native to North America. They were originally imported from Europe in the 17th century. Honey bees now help pollinate many U.S. crops like fruits and nuts.
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Honey bees now help pollinate many U.S. crops like fruits and nuts.
But what else do they do for us?
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Sting us.
Re:Honey bees are not native to North America. (Score:5, Informative)
European honey bees, even those living in the wild, have to be really annoyed at a human before they sting. Gently brushing them away from you, or even brushing them off a flower you need to handle for some reason, will not get them that annoyed.
Yellow wasps on the other hand are really nasty little things that will sting with extreme pain on the least provocation, which build nests in fun places like the ground under your lawn, and whose venom most people seem to react to exponentially more strongly with each sting.
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Honey bees (raised by beekeepers) are a different species than the wild American Bumblebees under discussion in TFA.
Re: Honey bees are not native to North America. (Score:2)
Funner fact: zomg the crops are gonna die and the wild plants will go extinct is panic porn.
Decepticons (Score:2)
Got to hand it to that Megatron, he finally succeeded.
Goodbye mosquito treatments (Score:2)
Around these parts, they spray pyrethroids from trucks and airplanes in the summer months to keep the encephalitis skeeter numbers down.
A lot of people also have their properties treated too, and products like Thermacell are popular for people to run around dusk on their patios and decks.
That's a lot of 13k fines...
people are confused about bee species (Score:2)
There are 20,000 different species of bee in the world, and 4,000 species in North America.
There are 46 different species of bumblebee in North America.
This article is about one of those species: Bombus pensylvanicus.
Never the ones you want (Score:2)
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Maybe not naturally, but using CRISPR to create sterile offspring [slashdot.org] is a thing.
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Well, there's this, the mosquito killing laser.
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
RIP Bumble Bees (Score:2)
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We live in the Seattle area, and have seen native bee and wasp populations dropping over the last several years. This spring there were still plenty of bees and wasps, but after the heat wave hit the population of both collapsed and didn't recover. Generally in July the spider population explodes, and then in August the yellow jacket population booms and pretty much clean the spiders out. We're still walking through spider webs in October this year.
ND Resident - Have plenty here (Score:2)
I find your lack of bees disturbing (Score:2)
Story needed Funny.
Didn't get it.
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Re: nope (Score:2)
Admit it. You're a bee racist. If they were black with yellow stripes instead of yellow with black stripes you would've totally demanded to see their papers.