Non-native bees swarm Lower Mainland, UBC survey finds

Now that spring has officially arrived, many of B CS native flowers are also back, along with our pollinators. But if you’ve seen a fuzzy black and yellow insect buzzing around the Lower Mainland lately, chances are it is not a native species at all. That’s the finding of a new survey of our bees from researchers at UBC. Here with more is science and climate specialist Darius Madhabi. Darius, Where did these non-native bees come from? These ones in particular came from out east. We’re talking about bombas impatience, or the common Eastern bumblebee. You can see some photos of that here. As the name suggests, they’re not really supposed to be found here, but UBC researchers say they’re now the most common species of bee they found on the Lower Mainland. They represented over 40% of all the bees they observed. Now, for years, bombas impatience have been intentionally imported from Ontario and even Europe for use in greenhouses, particularly here on the Lower Mainland in Delta. But they’ve been found across the region. Now to pollinate they’re they’re used to pollinate crops like tomatoes and Peppers, and there are supposed to be controls in place of various kinds to prevent them from getting into the environment. But according to the data collected by the UBC researchers, they don’t seem to be working. Professor Recess Sargent was part of those surveys and walked me through how we got here. So now bombas impatience is, according to our survey, is the most common bumblebee in the lower Bay left. So that’s why it’s kind of a story, right? It went from Okay. It’s going to be in the greenhouses. It’s going to do this great service and we’re not going to let it out. And then OK, it’s getting out. And so just like I said, some introductions, OK, a couple get out, but you know they don’t survive the rain or whatever it is that doesn’t fit with their, with their ecology. They just don’t go anywhere. Vomits and patience is going places. Fast. Fast. Indeed. This map shows observations of bombas, impatience from both the labs, field surveys, and data collected by members of the public, which was then verified by experts. Now, according to Sargent, the timing of the observations suggests that it wasn’t just one event where bees escaped. It seems to be a recurring issue that’s happened a number of times, as evidenced by the range that these these bees have reached. These are busy bees. Why are scientists concerned about them? Yes, well, they could pass diseases and pathogens to native bees. If you keep bees in these colonies in, you know, intentionally kept, they can build up. Really big and problematic disease loads that can not only affect their colony but then get passed to other species. And then even outside of that they can compete with our native bee species to for resources and nesting sites and pollination. And now they are active at slightly different times with the eastern bees, you know, being active later because again we get warmer faster than out east. But there is lots of overlap in the timing of these species and this isn’t the first time that kept bees have been an issue. In BC we’ve already cycled through a couple of managed fee species. In greenhouses there was a a native species that was managed called Bombas Oxidant Palace, which is actually no longer seen in in much abundance at all in the Lower Mainland. The populations really crashed following some issues with they think pathogens and parasites in that management and so that’s why bombs impatience was introduced. It was sort of an emergency patch. So we have Bombas oxidantalus, which is the western bumblebee and then Bombas impatience, which is the eastern one. Now Oxidantalus is actually a native species and the population crashed after these bees were done being kept because they built up really, really high disease loads that were then passed into the wild populations or that’s the leading hypothesis by scientists. Now those eastern bees pose those same threats and more. Now we should talk about why I’m saying non-native species instead of an invasive 1 invasive species are really happened when an introduced species becomes a big problem either to people or to the environment that they’re in. And it’s a bit of a fuzzy line, if you’ll pardon the bumblebee pun, but really, you can introduce a species many times. They won’t often take hold, but as soon as they do and they become an issue for other species in the area, that’s when it becomes invasive. And we’re just not sure if we’re there yet. OK And now, is there anything anybody watching at home and listening can do to help? Yes, absolutely. The biggest thing that you can do is what people have already done. And the reason we have this survey in the 1st place. If you see a bee log the observation on I naturalist, you can see that website here. It’s a place where you can any sort of insect or plant or really any wildlife that you see, You can take a photo, It’ll give you a suggestion of what species that might be. And then you can log it in and send it off to experts to verify. And that can help you support native bee. And then also, sorry, after you do that, you can help support the native bee populations directly. Now there are probably more native pollinators around you than you even know. It’s funny, I teach a bee course at the university and afterwards a lot of the students say, I thought those were all flies, but a lot of what people think, you know, a lot of bees are very tiny, and if you’re not paying super close attention, you might not realize that there actually are native bees. But there’s something like 500 species of wild bees just in BC alone. So if you want to help protect our 500 species of bees, avoid pesticide or herbicide use, both of which can really negatively affect the populations and naturalize your lawn. As we talked about earlier, weed is not a scientific term. It’s just something that we assigned to plants that we don’t like. But the bees love them. I know people love their lawns as well, but I’m willing to be a buzzkill if it helps us avoid killing the buzzing bees. Science and climate specialist Doris Madhavi, thank you. Thank you.