http://www.foxnews.com/printer_frie...,299982,00.htmlFollowing Honeybee Disappearance, Bumblebees Begin Vanishing Act
Monday , October 08, 2007
AP
GRANTS PASS, Ore.
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 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 volunteer 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. |
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