This is the heartwarming moment a veterinary nurse saved her tiniest patient from the heatwave - a dehydrated bee.

Donna Chester-O'Neill, 39, spotted the struggling insect crawling on the ground outside the Pilgrim Veterinary Surgery, in Boston, Lincolnshire, as temperatures soared to 86F (30C).

She dashed to its rescue with a syringe full of sugary water and dosed the parched bee back to health.

Donna Chester-O'Neill, 39, spotted this struggling bee as it was crawling on the ground outside her vet surgery as temperatures soared to 86F (30C)

The veterinary nurse dashed outside with a syringe full of sugary water and dosed the parched bee back to health

Incredibly, after a few minutes, the bee regained its strength and buzzed off.

Heartwarming pictures of Ms Chester-O'Neill feeding the bee on Tuesday have since gone viral, after being viewed and shared more than 8,000 times across the world just hours after being posted Facebook.

Ms Chester-O'Neill, from Strickney, Lincs., said: 'I found the bee outside the surgery and it was the first time I tried it.

Heartwarming pictures of Ms Chester-O'Neill feeding the bee outside Pilgrim Veterinary Surgery, in Boston, Lincolnshire, on Tuesday have since gone viral

'I got the idea on Facebook. You're supposed to administer the solution with a teaspoon but there was none around so a syringe was the next best thing.

'It was so cute to see it drinking the solution, which is made from two parts sugar, one part water.

'This is just something that we can do to help because bee populations are having a hard time at the moment.

'The day was scorching hot and I just couldn't stand to see it suffer in the heat. I'm glad I could help.

'It was certainly the smallest patient I've ever treated.'

Life cycle of the bumblebee In the UK, most bumblebee colonies live for less than a year. Nests are formed in the spring by a single queen who will give birth to a few hundred daughter workers. At the end of the summer, new queens are born. The daughter queens quickly mate before going into winter hibernation, ready to start a new colony the following spring. But understanding survival between these critical life cycle stages has proved challenging because in the wild colonies are almost impossible to find. There are over 250 species of bee in the UK: 25 species of bumblebee, 224 species of solitary bee and 1 honey bee species. Over the past 50 years, there has been an overall decline in wild and honey bees. The numbers of managed bees in the UK are recovering from large losses due to the Varroa mite in the early 1990s. In 2013, over 29,000 beekeepers managing around 126,000 colonies were registered in England on the National Bee Unit’s BeeBase database, compared with 15,000 beekeepers managing just under 80,000 colonies in 2008. Advertisement

Climate change and the plight of the bumblebee

Bees are at risk from climate change because more frequent droughts could cause plants to produce fewer flowers, researchers say.

A study by the University of Exeter in April examined the impact of droughts – which are expected to become more common in many parts of the world – on flowering plants.

Drought roughly halved the overall number of flowers, meaning less food for bees and other pollinators, it found.

Bees are at risk from climate change because more frequent droughts could cause plants to produce fewer flowers, researchers say

The research, carried out in collaboration with the University of Manchester and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, was published in the journal Global Change Biology.

Ben Phillips, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, was joint lead researcher for the work.

'The plants we examined responded to drought in various ways, from producing fewer flowers to producing flowers that contained no nectar,' he said.

'But overall there was a very clear reduction in the number of flowers that were available – and obviously this means less food for flower-visiting insects such as bees.'

Bees are already under pressure from threats including including habitat loss, the use of particular pesticides and the spread of diseases.

Dr Ros Shaw, of the University of Exeter, said: 'Not only are these insects vital as pollinators of crops and wild plants, but they also provide food for many birds and mammals.'

The study took place in Wiltshire on chalk grassland, an important habitat for UK pollinator species.

Plant species studied included meadow vetchling (Lathyrus pratensis), common sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia) and selfheal (Prunella vulgaris).

Dr Ellen Fry, from the University of Manchester, said: 'Previous studies of the impacts of drought on flowers and bees have looked at individual species, often in the laboratory, but we used an experiment with rain shelters to examine the effects on real communities of plant species living in chalk grassland.

'The level of drought that we looked at was calculated to be a rare event, but with climate change such droughts are expected to become much more common.'

Results of the study suggest that chalk grasslands may support lower pollinator populations in the future.

However, the scientists warned the findings are likely to be broadly applicable to other regions and habitats.

The research was part of the Wessex Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability project, and was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.