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Life Without Bumblebees? It's Not Just Honeybees That Are Mysteriously Dying 
| | AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/142616/life_without_bumblebees_it%27s_not_just_honeybees_that_are_mysteriously_dying

Life Without Bumblebees? It's Not Just Honeybees That Are Mysteriously Dying

By Adam Federman, Earth Island Journal. Posted September 15, 2009.

Not only do bumblebees pollinate about 15 percent of our food crops (valued at $3 billion), they also occupy a critical 
role as native pollinators.

Bombus franklini, a North American bumblebee, was last seen on August 9, 2006. Professor Emeritus Robbin Thorp, an 
entomologist at UC Davis, was doing survey work on Mt. Ashland in Oregon when he saw a single worker on a flower, 
Sulphur eriogonum, near the Pacific Crest Trail. He had last seen the bee in 2003, roughly in the same area, where it 
had once been very common. "August ninth," Thorp says. "I've got that indelibly emblazoned in my mind."