Giving Compass' Take:

• Layne Cameron reports that bumble bee populations are in decline in Michigan, putting plants, animals, and people that rely on pollination at risk. 

• How can funders support healthy bumble bee populations? 

• Learn how farming practices are impacting how bees pollinate.  

An estimate of bumble bee population and distribution shows that half of the species studied have seen a more than 50 percent decline.

For the study, which appears in Ecology, researchers compared current distributions of bumble bee species across Michigan to information they gleaned from museum specimens collected as far back as the 1880s. While the findings are specific to the state of Michigan, they mirror what is happening across the Americas, and in Europe and Asia.

“Bumble bees are important pollinators of plants across natural habitats, where they help support the seeds and berries that birds and other animals depend on,” says lead author Thomas Wood, an entomology postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University. “They also are effective pollinators of many fruits and vegetables that are important for healthy human diets.

Read the full article about bumble bees' population decline by Layne Cameron at Futurity.