Attached are the paper in question, the supplementary materials, and the plain English article, from the June 2 "Science".  

I still have 10 bumblebee boxes deployed, each under massive flagstones for camouflage and to discourage meddlers.  They've been in place for 19 years, and I've averaged about 70% occupancy, which is not bad.  I won't see any impact of Glyphosate, as Adrian Benepe (parks commissioner 2002-2012),  forbid the use of herbicides and all pesticides in the parks, and bumbles have fairly short foraging ranges.

What I do consistently see is evidence of a lot of poor real estate choices by bumbles.  Most of my boxes sit empty until after significant spring rainstorms, which indicates that the queen selected a poor initial location, got flooded out, lost her brood, and only then found one of my handcrafted luxury insulated underground furnished apartments in which to start over.  I've tried everything (there are a lot of Germans who make, sell, and use bumblebee boxes, so they have hints and suggestions about husbandry) but bumbles are simply not very choosy about nest sites.

The impact on fish and amphibians seems far more serious than the impact on bees, and as usual the claims as to persistence are proven to be wildly optimistic when subjected to collection of data downstream of where the herbicide is used, but having it show up in drinking water wells is likely the factoid that will get the most attention.



 




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