Bumblebees Are Declining

A team of ecologists did a large survey of bumblebees and found that half of the once-common species they looked for were gone.  A parasite may be causing the declines. 

"We've lost a lot of bees. There are whole regions where we can't find them any more," says entomologist Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Cameron and her team picked eight of the nearly 50 bumblebee species in the United States. All eight had been historically common, but four had appeared to decline in recent decades.

First, the researchers figured out the geographic ranges and relative abundance of the species over the past century by creating a database of collection records from 47 museums and other institutions, which covered nearly 78,000 bees in all. Then the researchers hit the road, caught 16,788 bumblebees in 40 states, and brought them back to the lab.