Knowledge is not always power when it comes to bumblebees

March 31, 2017 

Research from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway has found that being smart does not necessarily mean you are bringing home the most bacon, if you are a bumble bee at least. 

Scientists at Royal Holloway, Plant & Food Research, and the University of Guelph have been studying how the learning ability of bumblebees influences their foraging performance and contribution to the colony.

What they found was that fast-learning bumble bees had a much shorter foraging lifespan than their slow-learning co-workers.

They also found that the fast-learning bumblebees collected food at rates similar rates to the slower-learning bees.

Explaining the unexpected

"Our results are surprising, because we typically associate enhanced learning performance and cognitive ability with improved fitness, because it is considered beneficial to the survival of an individual or group," says Royal Holloway graduate and Plant & Food Research scientist Dr Lisa Evans.

"This study provides the first evidence of a learning-associated cost in the wild."

The researchers evaluated the visual learning performance of 85 individual foraging bumble bees across five different colonies – subjecting them to an ecologically realistic colour and reward association task in the laboratory and then monitoring their performance in the wild using radio frequency identification tagging technology.

Observers were also on hand to monitor the quantity of nectar and pollen brought back to the nests.

The results reveal that slower learning bumble bees collected more resources for the colony over the course of their foraging career.

"This is particularly interesting because we know that learning is really important for bees. They learn which flowers provide the most rewards, when and where to find them – often in habitats containing dozens of flower species," says Professor Nigel Raine, Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway.

Read more at:

Bumblebee genomes create a buzz in the field of pollination

Date:

April 24, 2015

Source:

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

Summary:

Bees play a key role in our ecosystem and in the world’s food supply. Thanks to a large collaborative effort, the genomes of two important pollinating bumblebees have been sequenced and compared with those of other bees, laying the foundations for the identification of biological factors essential for their conservation.

Continued ...

Bumblebees make false memories, too

Date:

February 26, 2015

Source:

Cell Press

Summary:

It's well known that our human memory can fail us. People can be forgetful, and they can sometimes also 'remember' things incorrectly, with devastating consequences in the classroom, courtroom, and other areas of life. Now, researchers show for the first time that bumblebees can be unreliable witnesses too.

Read on ...

Bye bye big bee: In South America, the world's largest bumblebee is at risk from imported rivals

It is believed to be the largest in the world – with queens likened to "flying mice". But a bumblebee once common in South America is heading for extinction, scientists fear, as European invaders mass on the doorstep of its last known stronghold.

Bombus dahlbomii – described by British scientist Dave Goulson as "a monstrous fluffy ginger beast" in his best-selling book A Sting in the Tale – has almost disappeared since a buff-tailed bumblebee was imported into Chile in the mid-1990s.

Experts believe it is likely the buff-tails brought diseases to which dahlbomii has no resistance, in a grim echo of what happened when European humans first arrived in the Americas and infection killed millions of the indigenous inhabitants.

Continued

Bumblebee watchers urged to help map UK species

Budding bumblebee enthusiasts are being encouraged to submit photographs to aid attempts to stem the decline in the species throughout the UK.

BeeWatch is an online project, led by the University of Aberdeen, that has already had more than 9,000 photographs submitted by members of the public.

A new online training tool allows them to identify the bees.

The project is aimed at creating a clearer picture of the distribution of bees around the country.

Such "crowdsourcing" presently accounts for only 5% of bumblebee submissions and project leaders hope this could be increased to almost half.

Dr Advaith Siddharthan, from the university's school of computing science, said: "To have crowdsourcing as an operational part of a monitoring programme is a world first.

"BeeWatch is, we think, unique in terms of having a statistical model for putting together IDs by different members of the public and estimating the likelihood of their consensus being correct."

Continued

Parasites fail to halt European bumblebee invasion of the UK

Date:

June 3, 2014

Source:

University of Royal Holloway London

Summary:

A species of bee from Europe that has stronger resistance to parasite infections than native bumblebees has spread across the UK, according to new research. The study shows that tree bumblebees have rapidly spread despite them carrying high levels of an infection that normally prevents queen bees from producing colonies. The species arrived in the UK from continental Europe 13 years ago and has successfully spread at an average rate of nearly 4,500 square miles -- about half the size of Wales -- every year.

Continued

Bumblebee cleverer than previously thought

March 2014: Despite their tiny brains, bumblebees are capable of learning by themselves and from each other, if there is a tasty reward at the end, scientists have found.

The researchers, Prof. Peter Kevan and PhD student Hamida Mirwan from the University of Guelph presented bees with a series of artificial flowers that required challenging strategies, such as moving objects aside or upwards, to gain a sugar syrup reward.

It was found that bees with experience of problem solving found it far easier to solve than those with no experience.

“Bees with experience are able to solve new problems that they encounter, while bees with no experience just give up,” said Mirwan.

She considers the results to be an example of scaffold learning, a concept normally restricted to human psychology in which learners move through increasingly complex steps.

Continued

What’s the buzz? The bumblebee is back!

Bumblebees teetering on the verge of extinction in the UK have stunned conservationists by staging a sudden revival.

A project that began as an attempt to reintroduce an extinct bumblebee to Britain has sparked a comeback by five other species whose numbers have dwindled alarmingly in recent decades.

Conservationists say the speed of their recovery suggests that the bees can cope with some pesticide use by farmers, if they have wild flowers to feed on and a place to live.

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Peaceful Bumblebee Becomes Invasive

Dec. 9, 2013 — Bumblebees look cute. They have a thick fur, fly somewhat clumsily and are less aggressive than honeybees or wasps. They are very much appreciated by farmers as keen pollen collectors. Particularly in the context of the crisis-stricken honeybee populations, the buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, is being bred on an industrial scale for the pollination of fruit and vegetable crops both inside and outside greenhouses.

It was hoped that these insects would take over these important services when they were first introduced into central Chile, in southern South America, in 1998 as pollinators in a few greenhouses, with the backing and approval of the state authorities. But in the greenhouse, they did not stay. Some individuals escaped and very soon they established colonies in the wild. But that was not all. The buff-tailed bumblebee turned out to be an extremely invasive insect that embarked on an unparalleled victory tour that took it as far as Patagonia. As an aside, the first European bumblebee species, Bombus ruderatus, was introduced back in 1982 but it turned out to be relatively harmless in comparison.

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Bumblebee, extinct in UK, breeding again after reintroduction

Experts celebrate as extinct bumblebee show first signs of comeback

September 2013. A bumblebee species driven to extinction in the UK has nested for the first time in a quarter of a century. The short-haired bumblebee disappeared from our shores in the 1980s and a mission to reintroduce it was launched at the RSPB Dungeness reserve in Kent. After two releases of queen bees at the site experts have now recorded offspring worker bees for the first time.

Milestone

Dr Nikki Gammans, who leads the project, said: "This is a milestone for the project and a real victory for conservation. We now have proof that this bumblebee has nested and hatched young and we hope it is on the way to becoming a self-supporting wild species in the UK once again.

"It's been a long journey to get here, from creating the right habitat for them, collecting queens in the Swedish countryside, scanning them for diseases and then eventually releasing them at Dungeness. Seeing worker bees for the first time is a fantastic reward for all that hard work, but we still have a way to go to ensure this population is safe and viable.

25 UK species of bumble bee

"Bumblebees are among the most threatened wildlife in the UK - we have 25 species, seven are declining and two have been declared extinct. The State of Nature report launched in May highlighted the short-haired bumblebee project as a beacon of hope for nature so we're very proud to have recorded the first signs of success."

Continued