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Researchers just discovered that queens of a certain bumblebee species can survive a flood while diapausing.
Insects tend to avoid winters by going into diapause, a temporary state of dormancy. In the case of bumblebees, the queens go into a deep sleep while the workers and males perish. Her survival is then critical because she has to create a new colony in the next season.
That’s why Dr Sabrina Rondeau of the University of Guelph in Canada and Professor Nigel Raine set out to study bumblebees in the first place. If anything threatens the queen’s life while diapausing, it means the end of a colony.
Given the global decline of bumblebee populations worldwide, scientific study on pollinators has increased as their role in the …