#and they mowed just recently and there's some bare patches and she's like

[solarpunkani]

One of my grad school classmates: Paging pollinator expert Ani, have you ever used seed bombs?

Me: *kicks down door, casting a shadow upon the group chat* prepare for a ramble of epic proportions.

[yougoghkiddo-blog]

SAVE THE BUMBLEBEES!!

As some of you may know, the bombus terrestris, also known as the bumblebee, has recently been added the U.S. Endangered Species list. Without bumblebees, Earth would go to waste at an extremely quick pace. Bumblebees are a very, very important part on the world. 

Bumblebees are pollinators in the temperate regions of the world. In North America, us humans have been neglecting paying attention to the bees until only recently. In Europe, the rapid decline of honey bees has raised our awareness about the ecosystem services that the bees provide through pollination. Research has suggested that the native bees, not just honey bees, are crucial components in the agricultural system. Not only do bees provide us with fruits and veggies, the tiny pollinators have also managed to evolve with native flowers and plants. Through pollination, the bees have provided a lot of wild animals, such as bird and squirrels, with food to eat and shelter to live in. 

Bumblebees are in the genus called ‘bombus,’ in the family called ‘apidae,’ which means bees. This type of bee is different from other types of bees because bumblebees are large, fuzzy, and carry pollen in pouches called ‘pollen baskets’ on their back legs. There are approximately 250 kinds of bumblebees around the world, and around 50 of those are found in North America. Bumblebees feed on nothing but pollen and nectar, meaning that they are not the bees that bother you when you’re enjoying a nice picnic at your local park. Even though female bumblebees have a stinger, they are actually very docile and will only sting a someone or something if they feel like it is threatening their colony or if they get cornered and become scared. 

Bumblebees are what are called eusocial insects, which means that they show an advanced of social organization. A queen bumblebee will emerge in the spring time and forage around for a while before she will start to lay eggs in a nest, which is typically located underground. When a worker bee hatches from its egg, it’ll take over the foraging and start to take care of the nest so that the queen bee can focus solely on producing more eggs. When the colony cycle comes near an end, the colony starts to produce males and new queens which leave the colony and mate. The new queen, which has mated, will go into hibernation for the winter, while the males, workers and old queens die. There’s a few species of bumblebees which are known as ‘social parasites.’ This means that instead of producing workers, the queen goes back into the nest of another species and takes over the nest. In the nest that she took ever, the queen will produce males and queens of the next generation with the help of another queen bee’s workers. 

Bumblebees are extremely important foragers. Unlike honey bees, bumblebees are able to forage in cold, rainy and cloudy weather. This makes them excellent pollinators for native plants and a variety of crops. Some crops that bumblebees can pollinate are tomatoes, peppers, raspberries, blueberries, chives, cucumbers, apples, strawberries, blackberries, soybeans, sunflowers, different types of beans, cherries, eggplants, and cranberries. 

In the UK, two types of bumblebees have already gone extinct and the population of many more types is declining rapidly. The number of bumblebees has been decreasing because of many things. For example, there is climate change, invasive species, habitat destruction, pollution and pesticide, and most importantly, the spreading of disease and parasites throughout the bumblebee population. 

Scientists have struggled with finding the thing that has caused the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder, also known as CCD, that has been wiping out around 10 million beehive, which is worth around $2 billion, in the last 6 years alone. Some causes have been suspected to be pesticides, parasites with diseases, and even poor nutrition. But in an original study, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have found that a mix of pesticides and fungicides are contaminating the pollen that bees have been collecting for their hives. The study has broken new ground about why large numbers of bees are dying, since the whole hive dies at once. 

When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coat of the USA that have been pollinating cranberries, watermelon and other crops and fed it to perfectly healthy bumblebees, those bees showed significant decline in their ability to resist the infection by a parasite known as ‘Nosema Ceranae.’ The pollen was contaminated, on average, with nine different pesticides and fungicides, but scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in a single sample. Scientists have identified eight agricultural chemicals associated with the increased risk of infection by the Nosema Ceranae parasite. 

Most disturbing of it all, the bees that ate pollen that had been contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Fungicides have been widely used for years, and they were thought to be harmless to bees, since they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops such as apples. 

Since the bumblebee population has been declining, if they go completely extinct, us humans and the world will suffer from their loss greatly. 

In order to help the bumblebees survive, here is some things you can do: 

- Plant bee-friendly flowers and flowering plants in your garden and your yard.

- Buy local, organic foods from a farmer’s market. 

- Let clovers and dandelions grow. 

- Do NOT use chemicals or pesticides to treat your lawn.

- Know that bees are not not going to harm you as long as you leave them alone.

- If you like honey, buy it raw and from a local bee keeper or at the store from a reliable, all natural honey brand. 

- Share why bees are so important with others to educate them on why we need to protect the bees. 

- Put some stones in a bird bath filled with fresh water, so the bees can rest and get a drink easily. 

- Provide homes for the bees near your house. 

- If you have a lawn, always have a patch of closely mowed grass or even bare soil for the bees to nest in the ground. 

- Grow your own food that bees can pollinate. 

- Protect the habitats that the bees near you already have.