Seriously – think of all the dead insects you find on your car windscreen after a summer journey. Then multiply the number by hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Most British motorways and many roads run north-south while the prevailing wind is east-west and Britain has one of the densest road networks in the world, so every insect is going to have to cross a road at some time. Millions of deaths a minute must have an effect; does this mean that on each side of our motorways there’s a wide zone that is within a day’s flying distance and is depopulated of insects?

while the prevailing wind is east-west a south westerly

Does this make a difference to your question?

Aerodynamics innit – cars now are better at moving bees, etc. out of the way.

248,685.3 per annum

Not all are killed – some survive :

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhXkQu5_Ig[/video]

More than offset by the positive effect of all the midges we kill. Frankly it’d be worth driving over a bunch of kids in order to reduce the flying shark population.

If you kill a bee on the road, are you allowed to take it home and eat it?

work out how many bees exist, per square mile.
work out how many square miles the motorway system takes up.
take into account not all bees are killed
do some maths

your answer.

Oops, I meant west-east. South west-north east really as sharkbait writes.

Think of roads as a permanent death trap aligned right across the path of any flying insect or bird. OK, cars are at 1.5m above ground so the majority must survive but significant numbers must die, surely? Especially low-flying pollen-seekers.

Especially low-flying pollen-seekers.

So are we driving evolution to create a new species of high flying bee? And a world where only sun flowers and apple trees will be pollinated?

Same as rabbits – what have they evolved to do they do when threatened? Freeze. What happens if the threat is a car? Flat bunny. So only those who break their genetic programming and run away are going to live. Hence ‘rabbit in the headlights’ is losing its relevance.

I killed a bee on the bus the other day – I felt bad.
I did try and let it live, given their decline and all that, but I don’t think it was a bumblebee and it looked a bit waspy to me.
It was on it’s last legs and I noticed it hadn’t swiped it’s Oyster card when it got on so it just had to go.
In contrast to this, I am helping the bee population by creating a habitat for them in my garden by not bothering to maintain it properly.

How many people are killed by bees? you’re driving along, bee flies into the car and you’re a townie so this means it’s time to panic, you crash the car and die, bee flies out.

Bees are ace.

They bumble around, powered by their little 0.5cc 2 strokes being all busy and furry and stripey

Wasps on the other hand are obnoxious, malicious and downright bloody nasty. And they drink cider and go shoplifting.

I’ve never killed a bee with my car as I weave around them.

If you kill a bee on the road, are you allowed to take it home and eat it?

No, you have to leave it for the next person to find. Dems the rules.