Castlebar, Ireland
7°C
Mostly Cloudy
Humidity: 87%
Wind: S at 7 mph
Bumble Bee
BOMBUS. Whoever thought that one up? Yet when we take a look at our bumble bee friends, what other name would fit quite as well?
Having noticed that bees are somewhat conspicuous by their absence, I spent a couple of early mornings and subsequent evenings looking for these valuable insects in the vicinity of my home. I found a few, but I think there are not as many as I would like to see.
There are about less than 20 species to be found in Ireland. I met up with four, perhaps five.
There are the usual big fellows, along with a small variety of littler ones. I’m no expert, but I do believe I was able to recognise the White-tailed bumble bee, which has a distinctive white bottom (not that I want any of you to think that I spend my mornings gazing at bees bottoms), the Common carder - and could that be its close cousin the Large carder?
I would like to know more about them.
Our friends in the National Biodiversity Data Centre are trying to establish the status of bumblebees here. In the United States, the populations of four common species of bumblebee have declined by an alarming 96 per cent. Could something similar be happening here? And if it is, does it matter? If it does, what can we do about it?
Bumblebees are probably the most important pollinators of wild flowers that we have. They also make an important contribution to the pollination of vegetable and fruit crops. Without them, our diet would be severely curtailed. So our apple trees aren’t doing so very well this year; the fruit is small and sparse. Without the bees the fruit would not be there at all. Bees are good.
What can we do, as individuals rather than as a species? Initially, we could help with the Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme currently run by the National Biodiversity Data Centre.
All the information needed is present on their web page http://pollinators.biodiversityireland.ie/recording-schemes/bumblebee-monitoring-scheme/.
It might be useful to examine our lifestyle to see if there are things we do that adversely affect the bees. After all, it is our food supply that is at stake here. Of course we cannot all stop driving cars and lighting the stove. But do we need to spray toxic chemicals all over the things that the bees feed on and the places that they live?
Those who make their living from marketing weedkillers and pesticides will tell us that there are no harmful side effects from using their products. Perhaps that is so, but then again, something is causing our bee population to decline. Those same products carry warning labels outlining potential dangers to ourselves, don’t they?
Recent news items have identified another possible threat from an unexpected source.
Here I must borrow a quote from Michael Viney, who in turn borrowed it from the journal Current Science, May 2010: “Increase in the usage of electronic gadgets has led to electropollution of the environment. Honeybee behaviour and biology has been affected by electrosmog since these insects have magnetite in their bodies which helps them in navigation.”
What’s this? Electrosmog? Scientists in India left their mobile phones in bee hives and discovered that the activity of the bees was greatly disturbed by the magnetic field, so much so that by the end of the experiment ‘there was neither honey nor pollen in the colony’.
So we cannot possibly get by without our modern electronic gadgets or mobile phones, can we? How much less could we get by without food? Albert Einstein reckoned that a world without bees would last a mere four years. We need to learn more.
Country Diary
Comments
http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/bumblebees_id.htm Be careful what you get into - bumbles are completely addictive in my experience!
