Bumblebees are in crisis

Bumblebee queens come out of hibernation in March and April. When queens emerge, they need to establish colonies, and that’s what they’ve struggled with this year.

Queens need to do several things at the same time:

• Find a suitable nest site (usually underground)
• Collect nectar and pollen to feed themselves and their offspring
• Incubate their developing offspring

Colder, wetter weather this summer has impacted all of these points. Underground nests become waterlogged, heavy rain has made foraging for nectar and pollen much harder, and colder temperatures have made it more difficult for queen bumblebees to incubate their offspring (they ‘shiver’ to maintain a nest temperature of around 30°C).

Overall, the weather conditions have made it much more difficult than normal for bumblebees to fly, forage, and nest.

With more queens than normal dying this year, and the ones that do survive unable to nest successfully, this means numbers are much lower than usual. This has a knock-on effect for the following year, with less new queens making it to hibernation.

As well as this year’s harsh weather, bumblebees also have to contend with long-terms impacts too:

Climate change
2024 has been the fourth poor spring in a row, so bumblebees are gradually decreasing, year on year. Climate change means that extreme weather events (such as the 2022 heatwave, or 2023-4 winter flooding) are more frequent and more extreme. This pushes species to the brink of survival.

Pesticides
Insecticides can directly kill or affect the ability of bumblebees to find food and reproduce. Herbicides kill the flowering plants which are a vital food source for bumblebees. When bumblebees visit numerous flowers, they can become exposed to a cocktail of different pesticides, which combined can also have lethal effects.

Habitat decline
Long-term declines in habitat quality and quantity means that bumblebee populations aren’t as resilient as they used to be because the food availability is poor and there are less places to nest. This means the impact of poor weather years like 2024 is magnified.

There have always been poor-weather years, but this one is coming at weakened bumblebee populations, already trying to recover from a series of other extreme weather events.

We’ve lost 97% of our wildflower-rich meadows since the 1930s. As the number of flowers in our countryside have declined, so too have our bumblebee pollinators, and they need our help.

84% of all crops in the UK depend on pollination, an estimated service worth approximately £691 million. Bumblebees are responsible for pollinating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers, beans, raspberries and strawberries. Without them, many of the foods we eat would become scarce or more expensive.

Bumblebees also pollinate agricultural crops such as oilseed rape, legumes and red-clover, helping to provide forage for the dairy industry. Many farmers rely on bumblebees to ensure high crop yields.

Many flowering plants and wildflowers are also reliant on pollination by bumblebees. This not only provides our gardens, parks and countryside with beautiful colour, but also means these plants can produce the fruits and seeds which feed many birds and mammals, keeping ecosystems balanced and healthy.

Without bumblebees our world would be quieter, less colourful and lack many of the foods we love. Without bumblebees, we could soon face our own crisis.

We’re asking people to join our fight to save the bumblebees by making a donation to our charity.

Your donation will support our charity’s work to secure a thriving and sustainable future for bumblebees.

Our actions are driven by the latest bumblebee science, including data from our ‘BeeWalk’ bumblebee-monitoring scheme, and we will work tirelessly to create a world where bumblebees are thriving and valued by everyone.

Together, we can ensure our rarest bumblebees recover and our more common species thrive, so that no more species become endangered in our lifetimes.

How you can help
You can make a donation by using the donate form at the top of this page.

If you want to do even more for bumblebees, you can become a member of our charity. You’ll get a welcome pack in the post, plus you’ll receive our membership magazine, ‘Buzzword’ three times a year. It’s full of gardening advice, identification tips, plus news from our conservation teams so you can see the impact your membership is having.

Absolutely! You can send a donation by cheque in the post. Please complete a Donation Form and make cheques payable to ‘Bumblebee Conservation Trust’. Send them to: Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Units 6-7 Beta Centre, Stirling University Innovation Park, Stirling, FK9 4NF.

Or you can donate over the phone. A member of our friendly membership team would be happy to discuss donation options with you. The team is available between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. Give us a call on 01786 594 130, or leave a message and someone will get back to you as soon as they can.