BUMBLEBEES WORKING in the far north are not shy of a bit of work, clocking in tough 16-hour days as they take advantage of constant light in the land of the midnight sun. By comparison Irish bumblebees have it easy, heading for cover as soon as it rains.
A 6am-10pm workday is typical for Bombus pascuorum, according to scientists from Queen Mary University of London. They proved it by gluing tiny microchip backpacks to 1,000 bees, using them to track movement automatically as the bees flew into and out of hives.
Their research, conducted in northern Finland, provided the ultimate time and motion study of bumblebee activity and proved that the bees also stuck rigidly to their time off, even though there was light enough to forage continuously.
The study might give employers ideas, given the microchip technology is the same as used in transport smart cards and to “swipe” people into their offices.
But, like their human worker bee counterparts, the bumblebees stuck union-like to their hours, working all day but avoiding work during the sunny summertime night inside the Arctic Circle, the researchers say in their study published this morning in BioMed Central Biology.
The researchers imported bumblebees from the south, Bombus terrestris, to see if they might take advantage of the extra light and do a bit of overtime foraging. But they too avoided the night work, satisfied with their typical 8am-11pm working day.
Irish bumblebees work to a different agenda, according to Dr Una Fitzpatrick, an ecologist with the National Biodiversity Data Centre. “In Ireland the weather is so poor they have to take advantage when they can. When the weather is suitable you see them,” she said yesterday.
There are no comparable studies showing the working day of Irish bumblebees, Dr Fitzpatrick said. But Ireland has 20 species of bumblebees and three are under threat. Of the wider bee population which includes about 100 species, a full one-third are under threat of disappearing.
Pesticides cause some of the problem but the real culprit is land-use change, according to the data centre. Bee habitat is lost by changing farming practices and by land development.
The data centre monitors bees, birds and hundreds of other species to measure existing biodiversity here. This data will tell us when species go into decline or are lost.
It has planned a “Bumblebee Blitz” on July 23-25th on the Burren, a key bumblebee habitat, Dr Fitzpatrick said. Ecologists will be on hand to help visitors spot and identify bee species and encourage people to get involved in biodiversity monitoring. More details from biodiversityireland.ie.