It could be something like what happens with honey bees in chimneys. Honey bees think they've found a great hollow tree home with it even smelling like a tree due to creosote, but creosote levels are so high that it makes sick bee colonies. With bumblebees it might be something where bees are naturally attracted to smell thinking it's a good thing without being able to recognize there can be too much of a good thing, so will make them sick.
many larger animals self medicate and apply external anti pest substances
I watch my horse roll and rub herself on bayberry
shrubs,of which there are many in her 10 acre paddock,the bay berry is very aromatic and the seeds are so wax covered asnto be a useable source
of candle wax.
The paddock is also full of many many kinds of bees wasps and hornets,which I watch closely to see what they eat and where they shelter,with the
idea to learn.how to create ideal habitat in areas
with struggling bee populations,got a few pointers
from watching,but the tid bit above is trurly facinating
It does, but I read an article that said it’s a natural insect repellent, and that it was important (especially for big cats, who also like it) that cats not be plagued by insects, while hunting, so the conjecture was that their desire to roll in it was an evolutionary advantage.
Kinda like enjoying sex, means we do it more often.
Before we consider this a problem we should be looking at the survival rate in contaminated vs uncontaminated soil. I wouldn't be at all surprised of the queens are making the right choice.
In one place I lived, there was some residue on the windows from stickers the previous tenants children had put on the windows.
There was a wasp nest on the roof and the wasps kept going for the part of the window where the stickers had been. Must have been something in there that attracted them.
They actually mention this as an alternative explanation other than missing fungi and parasites after rereading the article:
> Another possibility is that the queens could have developed an "acquired taste" for pesticides, as researchers put it, due to prior exposure in their environment.
the key might be that durring the torpor of hibernation the bees are less vulnerable to toxins
than there parasites
first question is do the parasites also hibernate
or do they continue to feed on the bees,while the bees have crawled into a chemical spill and put themselves into suspended animation for 3-4 months
and keep in mind that many insect species feed on toxic plants to deter preditors, monarch butterflys and milk weed is top of the list
I used to run in a stretch of road on the outskirts, grass fields on both sides, from a certain sunny week every year, you could see quite a number of dead bees on the sidewalk, like 1 or 2 every 2 metres for 400 metres. Something that never noticed anywhere else
That's where you are supposed to see them, kind of, no big surprise here. It may sound surprising to some, given that bees travel by air, but they aren't good at crossing roads. When returning home after collecting the nectar they fly low and get literally hit by cars. So, apparently that place where you were running had a colony of bees on one side of the road, and their preferred food on the other, so a lot of bees were commuting daily over that dangerous place.
and then the whole phenominon moves up the food chain to crows, specificaly young crows that discover that they can get easy pickings along
certain stretches of roads,only to become road kill themselves,see it each year about this time
anapolis valley to HRM
It could be something like what happens with honey bees in chimneys. Honey bees think they've found a great hollow tree home with it even smelling like a tree due to creosote, but creosote levels are so high that it makes sick bee colonies. With bumblebees it might be something where bees are naturally attracted to smell thinking it's a good thing without being able to recognize there can be too much of a good thing, so will make them sick.
Like humans and sugar.
Or like humans and beer.
Bees are plagued by mites and parasites. It could be that pesticides lead to fewer attackers for the bumblebees.
many larger animals self medicate and apply external anti pest substances I watch my horse roll and rub herself on bayberry shrubs,of which there are many in her 10 acre paddock,the bay berry is very aromatic and the seeds are so wax covered asnto be a useable source of candle wax. The paddock is also full of many many kinds of bees wasps and hornets,which I watch closely to see what they eat and where they shelter,with the idea to learn.how to create ideal habitat in areas with struggling bee populations,got a few pointers from watching,but the tid bit above is trurly facinating
> many larger animals self medicate and apply external anti pest substances
It seems like some birds use cigarettes butts to prevent parasites so it wouldn't be a first
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cigarette-butts-h...
I understand that's why cats like catnip.
I'm pretty sure they like catnip because it gets them high.
It does, but I read an article that said it’s a natural insect repellent, and that it was important (especially for big cats, who also like it) that cats not be plagued by insects, while hunting, so the conjecture was that their desire to roll in it was an evolutionary advantage.
Kinda like enjoying sex, means we do it more often.
The would be the evolution cause and effect
That was my first thought on reading the title.
Before we consider this a problem we should be looking at the survival rate in contaminated vs uncontaminated soil. I wouldn't be at all surprised of the queens are making the right choice.
Makes me wonder if it could be that some of the pesticides attract the bumblebees, but not because of the absence of parasites.
Presumably clean soil also has no mites or parasites in it.
In one place I lived, there was some residue on the windows from stickers the previous tenants children had put on the windows.
There was a wasp nest on the roof and the wasps kept going for the part of the window where the stickers had been. Must have been something in there that attracted them.
I don't think that's a safe assumption considering how many mites live on skin, or how many ticks live in pristine wilderness.
They actually mention this as an alternative explanation other than missing fungi and parasites after rereading the article:
> Another possibility is that the queens could have developed an "acquired taste" for pesticides, as researchers put it, due to prior exposure in their environment.
the key might be that durring the torpor of hibernation the bees are less vulnerable to toxins than there parasites first question is do the parasites also hibernate or do they continue to feed on the bees,while the bees have crawled into a chemical spill and put themselves into suspended animation for 3-4 months and keep in mind that many insect species feed on toxic plants to deter preditors, monarch butterflys and milk weed is top of the list
Sounds like it'd be an effective way to develop genetic tolerance for these pesticides after several generations of this behaviour.
With "several" probably doing some heavy lifting there. ;)
About a decade ago, TIME Magazine published A World Without Bees [1]
Since then, many people seem to think bees are on the edge of extinction.
In fact, there are more bees now than ever before [2]
[1] https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20130819,00.htm...
[2] https://www.marketplace.org/2024/05/16/honeybee-populations-...
I believe the problem was always with wild bees (versus honeybees that were grown for commercial purposes).
Wild Bumblebees are not commercial honey bees.
I used to run in a stretch of road on the outskirts, grass fields on both sides, from a certain sunny week every year, you could see quite a number of dead bees on the sidewalk, like 1 or 2 every 2 metres for 400 metres. Something that never noticed anywhere else
That's where you are supposed to see them, kind of, no big surprise here. It may sound surprising to some, given that bees travel by air, but they aren't good at crossing roads. When returning home after collecting the nectar they fly low and get literally hit by cars. So, apparently that place where you were running had a colony of bees on one side of the road, and their preferred food on the other, so a lot of bees were commuting daily over that dangerous place.
sadly, the bees where not able to work remotly to avoid commute induced stress
and then the whole phenominon moves up the food chain to crows, specificaly young crows that discover that they can get easy pickings along certain stretches of roads,only to become road kill themselves,see it each year about this time anapolis valley to HRM
Those error bars are pretty wide, so I wouldn't read too much into this.
If it's harmful to the bees, natural selection will weed out this behavior pretty quickly.