Variety is key to survival for bumblebees
THE threatened bumblebee could be saved if gardeners grow a wider variety of flowers, according to research.
It helps combat the spread of diseases that are wiping out the insect, scientists claim.
The number of parasites is reduced when there are more species of pollinators and flowers.
Bee populations play a key role in production of a third of our food.They have dropped around 17 per cent in Europe and 46 per cent in the US in the last century.
Lead author Dr Peter Graystock, a biologist at Imperial College London, said: “We found when bee communities are at their most diverse, the proportion of infected bees were at their lowest.
“And when flowers were at their most abundant, fewer were likely to be acting as transmission hubs.”
His team analysed 110 and 89 species of bees and flowers respectively over the course of one growing season in three fields in New York.
They also measured the presence of five common parasites using molecular screening.
Dr Graystock said: “There are two things potentially occurring here. In diverse bee communities, parasites are more likely to end up in a species they are not compatible with, meaning they can’t replicate and spread further.
“The second thing is by having more flowers, bees aren’t all visiting and contaminating the same few flowers with high concentrations of parasites.”
He added: “These findings suggest increasing the diversity of bee species and the number of flowers may improve pollinator health by diluting the transmission of disease.”