The Plight of the Bumblebee

Dr Nikki Gammans FRES, Project Manager, Short-haired bumblebee introduction
This PowerPoint presentation was presented on Zoom. 26 members logged on. Dr Gammans was one of the writers of “Bumblebees – an Introduction.”
There are 278 species of bees in UK of which 250 are solitary bees, one species is the non-native honey bee and 27 species of bumblebees (although 3 are thought to be extinct).
Bumblebees (which include cuckoo bees) have 50-400 workers with only the queen surviving the winter. They forage for shorter distances than honeybees and with a long tongue they can pollinate a wide range of flowers.
Nikki has worked on The Short-haired Bumblebee Project since its start in 2009. The last recorded sighting had been at Dungeness in Kent in 1988. In 2016 204 queens were brought to Kent from Sweden. On-going monitoring is still taking place.
Ways to help bumblebees: go to bumblebeeconservation.org to see their list “Flower Finder” which suggests plants that flower at different times throughout the year; provide a south-facing bee-hotel for solitary bees; join Bumblebee Conservation’s monitoring programme “Bee Walk” to ID and record on a transect between March and October.