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The Plight of the Bumblebee

From Mike Hally | Part of the Wildlife Nature and Environment around the World series | 27:59

An investigation into the declining numbers of bumblebees in the United Kingdom and the efforts being made by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to protect the rarest species and to reintroduce at least one that has become extinct.

Bumblebee240_small Honeybees have hogged the news recently and surely everyone now knows they are essential to our agriculture but are dying in large numbers due to the mysterious “colony collapse disease”. What’s much less well known is that bumblebees are arguably just as important – indeed they pollinate many crops and flowers that honeybees don’t touch – and they too are in serious decline.

This programme looks at efforts across the United Kingdom to find reasons for the plight of the bumblebee, to conserve the most threatened species and even reverse the most recent extinction. The programme also features the world’s first working bumblebee sniffer dog, trained to find their elusive nests, a vital part of the research.

Bumblebees are much less abundant than honeybees, but they pollinate the countryside out of all proportion to their numbers. Because they are round and furry, unlike the slim, smooth honeybee, bumblebees get to work early in the year, in the rain and the cold, while their better-known cousins shelter in their hives. Many bumblebee species also have long tongues that mean they can get into flowers that honeybees can’t pollinate. Among the most important beneficiaries are soft fruits like strawberries and blueberries, so much so that Scottish fruit growers are importing bumblebee nests from Holland to make up for the decline in local bumblebees. It’s a policy that greatly worries some bumblebee experts who fear that could import disease as well, and argue that in any case our efforts should be going into boosting native species.

The programme roams from one end of the UK to the other. It visits Orkney in the far north where the endangered Great Yellow Bumblebee is showing signs of comeback thanks to the efforts of conservationists, sympathetic farmers and even a campaigning seed merchant. It goes also to Dungeness in the south-east, where a project is underway to re-introduce the Short-Haired Bumblebee. Over a century ago British settlers took that bee to New Zealand with them to pollinate red clover for their cattle. Now extinct in the UK for over 20 years, the plan is to bring some of those expatriate bees home to re-populate the UK.

Louise Batchelor, until recently BBC Scotland’s long-standing environment Correspondent, presents the programme, which is recorded entirely on location and largely in the open air. Contributors include Professor David Goulson and other members of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust at Stirling University.