GIZMODO - Some of California’s most crucial insects seem to have gone missing. A new study suggests that populations of once-abundant bumble bee species in California may have experienced serious decline, after researchers conducted the first statewide survey of bumble bee species in 40 years.
“If you go to a place where Robbin Thorp would have visited in the 80s and you just skim, and you take minimal collections, can you take a snapshot of bees in one place at one time and do you see the patterns that he saw?” said Hollis Woodard, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside and an author of the study. “The answer is no, mostly. [The study] strongly suggests that our state has undergone some massive changes when it comes to our bumble bee populations.”