> if the first couple of bumblebees founding a colony 

> are dosed with an insecticide, that it can strongly

> negatively impact the development of that bumblebee colony.

 

I've been quietly fabricating and burying bumblebee boxes for years under
hunks of slate to protect them from being crushed and mark their locations.
Not so sure if the expected new NYC Parks commissioner will allow me to
continue or not.  (Quietly, because one is technically not allowed to dig in
the parks without a metric ton of paperwork per shovel of dirt, and we did
only one sheet of paperwork, my “Get out of jail free card”.)

 

Anyway, there are two waves of bumblebee househunters every spring, at least
in VA and NYC. First, you have the queens that are lucky enough to find one
of my pre-fab bumblebee dream houses upon emergence from winter hibernation.
Second, you have the queens that meet with misfortune, most often moisture,
which results in mold, which tends to kill brood, and prompts her to abscond
and seek a new home.  If a queen's first-batch offspring got a snootfull of
pesticide, this might also prompt the queen to abscond.  I don't think I've
ever seen more than the queen herself move into an empty
Bumble-Stumble-Inn®, so this may be only a reaction to the death of all
workers.

 

And I can say from personal experience that failure of bumblebee colonies is
very common, for reasons unknown, even in 100% pesticide-free,
herbicide-free, and fungicide-free areas like the entire NYC parks system,
and the “George” and “Jeff” National Forests in VA.  About ¼ to 1/3 of all
colonies that have a queen move in don’t make it through the summer.

 

Bumblebees get lots of different versions of Nosema, and it is often fatal.

 

 

 


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