What this means for you and me...
Fascinating and beautiful, bumblebees deserve conserving in their own right. However, there are also pressing ecological and economic reasons to act.
Bees are regarded as a keystone species: they are the major pollinators of most of our plants and flowers. If they continue disappearing, these plants will spread less seed - potentially bringing gradual but sweeping changes to the countryside. This will lead to catastrophic knock-on effects for other wildlife that depends on these plants.
Bumblebees are also of commercial importance, being vital to the agricultural industry. It's estimated 35% of our diet depends directly on them. That's because many arable and horticultural crops rely, to varying degrees, on bumblebee pollination. Some, like oilseed rape, can set adequate seed without bumblebees (provided there are enough honeybees), but others - such as broad, field and runner beans, tomatoes, peppers, garden peas, apples, pears, plums, cherries, strawberries, brambles and raspberries - are heavily dependent on bumblebees. Without them, there will be little or no crops to harvest.
It has been estimated that bumblebees and honey bees contribute £1 billion a year to the UK economy.
The sting in the tale
If that's the sober scientific and economic analysis, there's also the headline.
Because of their essential role in the natural food chain, it's been suggested that if bees die out, the human race would only survive for approximately six more years before running out of food.
If you ever thought bumblebees were just buzzing nuisances at summer picnics, it's time to think again.
