Pesticides kill 50,000 bumble bees in Wilsonville, OR

Scientists investigating the mass death of bumble bees in Wilsonville, Oregon say that pesticides are the most likely cause. “To our knowledge, this incident is the largest mass poisoning of bumble bees ever documented,” said Mace Vaughan, Pollinator Conservation Director for the Xerces Society. Rich Hatfield, a biologist with Xerces, estimates that over 50,000 bumble bees were killed, likely representing more than 300 wild colonies. “Each of those colonies could have produced multiple new queens that would have gone on to establish new colonies next year. This makes the event particularly catastrophic.”