Bumblebees Dying, Losing Ground Due to Climate Change

A new study has revealed that bumblebees are struggling to adapt to global warming which has put them in the danger of future extinction.

Rather than the moving to cooler climates to avoid climate change, the bumblebees are simply dying and this has further shrunk the geographic range for many species of bumblebees in Europe and North America.

Up until now, experts usually blamed the declining bee population on loss of habitat areas, pesticide use and due to the prevalence of diseases and parasites.

In a first report of its kind published in the journal Science, researchers are now blaming the effects of climate change for the bumble issue.

"Picture a vice. Now picture the bumblebee habitat in the middle of the vice," said lead author Jeremy Kerr, professor of macroecology and conservation at the University of Ottawa.

"As the climate warms, bumblebee species are being crushed as the 'climate vice' compresses their geographical ranges," he added.

"The result is widespread, rapid declines of pollinators across continents, effects that are not due to pesticide use or habitat loss."

Bumblebees are incredibly important for wildlife and the agriculture industry as they help to pollinate fruit trees, plants, flowers and also crops like blueberries and tomatoes.

During their research, scientists found that the bumblebees lost as much as 185 miles of the souther range in North America.

"This is a huge loss, and it has happened very quickly," said Kerr.

"We are looking at rates of loss of about nine kilometers per year from those southern areas," he told reporters.

On the other hand, bumblebees were found to be "generally failing" to move northwards. Instead they end up becoming locally extinct in some regions.

"They just aren't colonizing new areas and establishing new populations fast enough to track rapid human caused climate change," Kerr said.