14 DAY TRIAL // For the first time since the 1980s, short-haired bumblebees are once again nesting in the UK. Thus, workers belonging to this species have recently been spotted flying around in Kent.
Conservationists explain that the overall headcount for this species started to decline in the 1940s. By the 1980s, very few short-haired bumblebees were left in the wild.
According to Inhabitat, the species was officially declared extinct in 2000.
Since then, several green groups have been doing their best to reintroduce them into the English countryside.
The short-haired bumblebees that are now nesting in Kent were brought to the UK all the way from Sweden. Conservationists had to make sure the area they were going to be released in was tailored to their needs, and even scanned them to make sure they were not carrying any diseases.
“It’s been a long journey to get here, from creating the right habitat for them, collecting queens in the Swedish countryside, scanning them for diseases and then eventually releasing them at Dungeness,” conservationist Nikki Gammans told the press.
“Seeing the worker bees for the first time is a fantastic reward for all that hard work but we still have a long way to go to ensure this population is safe and viable,” she added.