Bumblebees are not honey bees, but they are among the most prolific pollinators.
Bumblebees being crushed by climate change
Blame Canada!Overall, they found that some bumblebees have retreated as many as 300 kilometers from the southern edge of their historic ranges since 1974. The rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), for instance, has disappeared from parts of the southeastern United States. Southern species are also retreating to higher elevations, shifting upward by an average of about 300 meters over the same time period. Meanwhile, few species have expanded their northern territories. And it turned out that climate change was the only factor that had a meaningful impact on the large-scale range shifts. (Data on pesticide use were available only in the United States, however, and the study did not examine whether populations were growing or shrinking.)
One clue to the importance of climate: Bumblebee ranges began shrinking “even before the neonicotinoid pesticides came into play in the 1980s,” says ecologist and coauthor Alana Pindar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph in Canada. She says the retreat from southern territories is “a huge loss for bumblebee distributions” and happened surprisingly quickly. The researchers believe the retreat—and the move to higher elevations—may reflect the fact that bumblebees evolved in cooler climates than many other insects that haven't yet lost ground, and so are especially sensitive to warming temperatures.
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Originally Posted by WØTKX
