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GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Looking high and low, Robbin Thorp can no longer
find a species of bumblebee that just five years ago was plentiful in
northwestern California and southwestern Oregon.
Thorp,
an emeritus professor of entomology from the University of California
at Davis, found one solitary worker last year along a remote mountain
trail in the Siskiyou Mountains, but hasn't been able to locate any
this year.
He fears that the species _ Franklin's bumblebee _
has gone extinct before anyone could even propose it for the endangered
species list. To make matters worse, two other bumblebee species _ one
on the East coast, one on the West _ have gone from common to rare.
Amid
the uproar over global warming and mysterious disappearances of
honeybee colonies, concern over the plight of the lowly bumblebee has
been confined to scientists laboring in obscurity.
But if
bumblebees were to disappear, farmers and entomologists warn, the
consequences would be huge, especially coming on top of the problems
with honeybees, which are active at different times and on different
crop species.
Bumblebees are responsible
for pollinating an estimated 15 percent of all the crops grown in the
U.S., worth $3 billion, particularly those raised in greenhouses. Those
include tomatoes, peppers and strawberries.
Demand is growing as honeybees decline. In the wild, birds and bears depend on bumblebees for berries and fruits.
There
is no smoking gun yet, but a recent National Academy of Sciences report
on the status of pollinators around the world blames a combination of
habitat lost to housing developments and intensive agriculture,
pesticides, pollution and diseases spilling out of greenhouses using
commercial bumblebee hives.
"We have been naive," said Neal
Williams, assistant professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College in
Pennsylvania. "We haven't been diligent the way we need to be."
The
threat has bumblebee advocates lobbying Congress to allocate more money
for research and to create incentives for farmers to leave uncultivated
land for habitat. They also want farmers to grow more flowering plants
that native bees feed on.
"We are smart enough to deal with this," said Laurie Adams, executive director of the Pollinator Partnership. "There is hope."
Companies
in Europe, Israel and Canada adapted bumblebees to commercial use in
the early 1990s, and they are now standard in greenhouses raising
tomatoes and peppers.
Demand is growing as supplies of honeybees
decline, especially for field crops such as blueberries, cranberries,
watermelon, squash, and raspberries, said Holly Burroughs, general
manager for production for the U.S. branch of Koppert Biological
Systems Inc., a Netherlands company that sells most of the commercial
bumblebees in the U.S.
One new customer is Tony Davis of Quail
Run Farm in Grants Pass. He has long depended on volunteer bumblebees
to fertilize the squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplant he grows
outdoors for sale in growers' markets. When he started growing
strawberries in greenhouses this year to get a jump on the competition,
he bought commercial bumblebee hives to fertilize them.
"Without bumblebees, I would be out of business. I don't think I could hand-pollinate all these plants," he said.
Scientists
hoping to pinpoint the cause of the nation's honeybee decline recently
identified a previously unknown virus, but stress that parasitic mites,
pesticides and poor nutrition all remain suspects.
Unlike
honeybees, which came to North America with the European colonists of
the 17th century, bumblebees are natives. They collect pollen and
nectar to feed to their young, but make very little honey.
A
huge problem facing scientists is how "appallingly little we know about
our pollinating resources," said University of Illinois entomology
Prof. May Berenbaum, who headed the National Academy of Sciences report.
Scott
Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate
Conservation in Portland, worries that on top of pesticides and
narrowing habitats, disease could be the last straw for many of the bee
species.
"It definitely could all come crashing down," he said.
On the Net:
More on bumblebees: http://www.bumblebee.org
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
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