By Helen Briggs BBC News
15 March 2017
At this time of year, bumblebee
queens are a familiar sight foraging on spring flowers.
After spending the winter
hibernating, they need to build up vital energy stores before laying their
eggs.
According to the largest study of
its kind, access to flower-rich habitats from spring through to summer is key
to the survival of successive generations of the bees.
Scientists have discovered that
bumblebees need flowers within a short distance (1km) of their colony.
Bumblebees are among the most
important insect pollinators, yet they are in decline globally.
Until now, aspects of the
lifecycle of bumblebees have remained a mystery, said ecologist, Dr Claire
Carvell.
"Our research was looking to
unravel some of these mysteries - and in particular to try and look at how the
structure of habitats across a landscape, or the availability of flowers for
the bees, affected this one key aspect of their life cycle, which was the survival
of their families between years," she told BBC News.
Image copyright Lucy Hulmes Image
caption The study tracked hundreds of mother, daughter and sister bumblebees
across an area of farmland
The study, which took place in
rural Buckinghamshire, is the first to track the effects of the surrounding
landscape on wild bumblebees, from one generation to the next.
Researchers at the UK's Centre
for Ecology and Hydrology sampled DNA from bumblebees of three different
species. They reconstructed the family tree of hundreds of families of wild
bumble bees across a large area of farmland.
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