Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the bumble bee population in the UK.

There are 24 bumblebee species in the UK. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust runs the Great Britain (GB) BeeWalk survey, which involves volunteers walking the same fixed route at least once a month between March and October (inclusive). The abundance of each bumblebee species seen is recorded in a 4m x 4m x 2m recording box to standardise between habitats and observers. The data for 2010-2019 shows that for the 20 species with enough observation data to assess trends, 8 species had positive population trends and 12 had declining trends in GB.