Photo taken on AESSEAL's Tree Walk in Rotherham, UK
As a nation we are fond of the bumblebee, but we don’t appear to be quite so keen to make the sacrifices that will halt the climate change that is hitting numbers.
There are 24 native species of bumblebee in the UK, but monitoring projects indicate that numbers have dropped significantly, with overall populations recently declining by almost a quarter.
The Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BCT) warns that we could see a sharp drop in the numbers of UK bumblebees as heatwaves become more frequent and intense.
The record-breaking heat of 2022 saw numbers of three of the country's most common species - red-tailed, buff-tailed and common carder bumblebees - drop by 20 per cent, 25 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.
Why does this matter? Basically, bees help flowers by spreading their pollen and pollinating crops used for animal feed. Pollination supports other insects, birds, bats, and mammals, so without bees there would be a significant impact on the food chain.
Sadly, rising global temperatures have put the UK on course for more frequent and intense heatwaves, which could make the “without” part of the previous sentence an eventual reality.
UK species are suited to a cooler climate, with their fat, furry bodies designed to hold heat and powerful flight muscles that warm them as they fly. In a heatwave their muscles generate more heat, and it’s harder to cool down which means they can struggle to fly without overheating.
If they cannot fly, they also cannot forage for food, and colonies depend on worker bees bringing back a steady supply of nectar and pollen during the summer - but if flowering plants dry up due to less rainfall there is less food to bring back.
As well as developing more slowly, colonies can become weaker and there may be fewer new queen bees produced for the following year.
Conservationists say the best way to help is by planting more flowers to make it easier for bumblebees to find food, even as the climate becomes more extreme. This is what we have done near the beehives at AESSEAL’s Mill Close headquarters, and across the site.
Betterworld.Solutions member the British Rototherm Group has done the same at its Betterworld RotoPark in Port Talbot, which was inspired by AESSEAL’s own Tree Walk. The company transformed land next to its factory into a hive of nature, planting evergreen hedging round the site, and enabling multiple areas to thrive as wildlife meadows.
The Bee Conservation Trust says: “Bumblebees lumber through the sky from flower to flower powered by the flapping of huge wing muscles, and that generates a lot of heat internally – just like human muscles do when you run. Bumblebees are very hairy and so find it hard to cool down – it’s like permanently wearing a coat. That’s great when it’s cold outside, but makes life difficult when it gets hotter because the bees can’t cool themselves down enough and so their internal body temperatures climb higher and higher.
“Bumblebees live on an energetic knife-edge. Nests already struggle in degraded flower-poor habitats to bring in enough food – enough energy – to produce the queens that will build next year’s colonies. If heatwaves increasingly produce droughts that see workers struggle for weeks to find enough pollen and nectar in the desiccated landscape, or if extreme temperatures see them having to sit through weeks – or even days – of a heat-induced mid-day siesta, then it could be the final straw for some of our most cherished species.”
