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Dying bees

B3B3 Posts: 27,505
in Wildlife gardening
I keep finding bumble bees ( I think - they're huge anyway-) wandering about on the lawn, falling off things and eventually dying.
Is someone spraying them or is there a disease they might have?
In London. Keen but lazy.
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  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    Bumble bees do die off before the onset of winter but this does seem too early.
    Another possiblity is that if they are nearby to pollinating flowers there maybe a nest also nearby and they have been removed so that they don't contaminate the nest.
  • seacrowsseacrows Posts: 234
    If you're fairly rural, there's a possibility the local farmers have changed their pesticide. It takes a while for the insects to recover and adapt.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    No. I'm in London.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Rob LockwoodRob Lockwood Posts: 380
    I know rhododendrons are poisonous to them, so presumably other plants are too?
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    I've been seeing a lot of stumbling, bumbling, dying bumbles over the past few weeks - crawling in circles all discombobulated. There are two nests in the garden, so I would guess that is why I am seeing more of them.

  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    It looks like it's the natural order of things ,then.  I wish they'd do it in someone else's garden, though.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    Whilst it is unpleasant to see and find dying animals you must have a garden that it attracting the bees in the first place. They as are other insects so valuable as pollinators for the plants, veg and fruit that we grow.
  • RoddersUKRoddersUK Posts: 537
    My daughter and I saw several dead and dying bees, walking home from school the other day. 
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    A lot of solitary bees like masons have a fairly short life cycle too - the emerge, mate, the males mate and then die, as I understand it, all in a few months. It is how it has been for over 80 million years.


  • CrazybeeladyCrazybeelady Posts: 778
    Rob Lockwood said:
    I know rhododendrons are poisonous to them, so presumably other plants are too?
    Apparently not to bumblebees - I asked the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and they said they can be poisonous to honeybees, masons etc but not bumbles. I was worried because they were mad for my rhododendrons. 
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