A BRITISH resident transported to the Antipodes a century ago will soon be repatriated. The short-haired bumblebee was sent to New Zealand to pollinate red clover in 1875 in one of the first refrigerated ships. The bee subsequently died out in its native country: last seen in 1988, it was declared extinct in the UK in 2000.
Efforts to reintroduce the bee have been thwarted by failures in captive breeding and by 鈥渂ee jet lag鈥� 鈥� the inability of long-haul bees to adapt to the sudden hemisphere shift.
The situation is now urgent. New Zealand鈥檚 short-haired bumblebees thrive on another non-native species, viper鈥檚 bugloss, but the government is about to embark on a programme to eradicate the plant.
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Fortunately, Czech bumblebee enthusiast Jarom铆r 膶铆啪ek has at last succeeded in getting the bees to breed in captivity, by feeding captive queens exclusively with high-quality bumblebee pollen instead of honeybee pollen, as had previously been attempted.
The Bumblebee Conservation Trust at the University of Stirling, UK, now plans to reintroduce the bees after breeding them up in New Zealand, refrigerating them to induce hibernation and avoid jet lag, and transporting them to the UK. The trust presented its work on the reintroduction at the British Ecological Society meeting at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, this week.