GlobalLab
Приметы весны: проснулись шмели
Why so few bees?
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Accidentally caught the eye of a recent study of the International Union for Nature Conservation (International Union For Conservation of Nature, IUCN) about bumblebees. It turns out that almost a quarter of the European bumblebee species are threatened with extinction, and one of the main reasons - the disappearance of clover, the main host plants for some species of bumblebees.
I did not conduct scientific research - but it seems to me that the bees are in Moscow was much smaller than it was in the days of my childhood.
Of course, the number of bees may be adversely affected by various factors - habitat destruction (hard to find a place to nest), pollution (especially because of the exhaust gases). But perhaps, like other European bumblebees, Moscow is still missing and feed?
Now on urban lawns grow one herb (cereals), and earlier (in the 1970s and 80s), much of it was covered with clover (mostly creeping, "Kashka", but also other kinds of met - hybrid, red and more rare) . The current purity lawns achieved mainly through the use of special herbicides, harmless to crops, but those who kill bipartite lawn "weeds" - dandelions, clover, etc. But maybe, just a drab lawn vegetation species and caused decrease in the number of bumblebees Moscow? Maybe they too lacking in clover? And all food plants? Something on the lawns of pure herbs bumblebees have nothing.