This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. This hour, we're going to talk about the bees,

bumblebees and honey bees in particular. There are two species of bees that live in communities,

and like any group of animals living together, it can get complicated. First, the bumblebee.

When you think about bees, what picture pops into your head? A bee buzzing around a flower and a picturesque field of glowing color?

Well, I'm betting you don't picture a bee in an urban city environment,

unless you're trying to swat one away as it interferes with your morning latte.

Scientists have been interested in how these two different environments affect bumblebees where they live,

their nests. Is there a difference in the reproductive success of city versus country living bumblebees?

And the results are going to surprise you. The study was published this week in the journal Proceedings

of the Royal Society Bee, and my next guest is an author on that study, and she's here to fill us in on the details.

Ash Samuelson is a PhD student in biology at Royal Holloway at the University of London in Egham, England, and she joins us by Skype.

Welcome to Science Friday.

Hi there. Thanks for having me on.

And just in passing, how are the bumblebees doing in the UK and Europe?

Are they healthy?

Yes. Well, there's a big range of effects of various environmental stresses on bumblebees in Europe and the UK in the same way that there is in the US.

So some species are doing well, but other species are really at risk here in the UK.

Now, we talk about bumblebees living in nests and honeybees living in hives, correct?

That's correct.

Can you tell us what is unique about bumblebee nests, how is different from the honeybee hives?

So you can kind of think of bumblebee nests as a kind of primitive version of honeybee hives.

And so honeybee colonies are huge colonies from 20,000 to 60,000 bees.

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