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Bumblebees
Greetings members:
The other day as I was walking along the tow path of the Delaware
River Canal in Pa., looking for spring plants etc., I noticed a
profusion of Bumblebees buzzing around the flowers. When I returned home
I looked in " A Guide to Observing Insect Lives" by Donald Stokes and
read about them. The article was real interesting so I am including it
in this post. After all they are fellow foragers. I think it is
interesting to know about the lives and habits of the insects that
forage on the same plants we do.
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BUMBLEBEES
Relationshps
Bumblebees, along with honeybees, are a family (Apidae) of insects in the order Hymenoptera, or bees, wasps, and ants. Both differ from all our other bees in being social rather than solitary..Bumblebees are large, robust bees withlots of hairs on the backs of their abdomens and with color patterns of yellow and black. They look similar to the closely related carpenter bees, except that the abdomen is densely covered with hairs, while the abdomen of the carpenter bee is practically hairless and shiny.
Life Cycle
Bumblebees overwinter as fertilized adult females---queens. These emerge in early spring and start a nest by choosing an existing underground cavity, collecting pollen into clumps, and laying eggs on the pollen. The pollen and eggs are covered with wax and the queen sits on them, keeping them warm while they develope.The eggs hatch in four to five days. The larvae feed on the pollen and in about a week pupate in tough cocoons that they make. During pupation, which lasts about ten days, the queen takes off the wax that was covering them. The energing adults are sterile females, and they take care of the subsequent broods during the summer. In late summer, the queen lays eggs that develope into fertile females and males. These leave the hive, mate, and the fertilized females overwinter. All other members of the colony die.
Highlights of the Life Cycle
One of the most interesting times to observe bumblebees is when the queens first emerge in the spring, for it is then that they search for nest sites and do a great deal of foraging on the early spring flowers. Watching them closely often leads you to the nest. Other stages of their lives take place hidden underground
How to Find Bumblebees
The queens are the largest bumblebees you will see all year, and they are very conspicuous in early spring, buzzing loudly as they fly about. You will find them in two plces: at early spring flowers as they collect food, and flying low over the ground in meandering patterns in woods or open fields as they look for nest sites. It is not an insect that you can always find when you want, but rather one that is frequently encountered as you walk in the woods looking for other things.
What You Can Observe
searching for nest sites
The first bumblebees of spring always seem particularly loud and buzzy. This may in fact be the case, since these early arrivals are the queens that have overwintered from the last year's colonies. They are the largest bumblebees you will see until new queens are produced in the fall. A prominent feature of their behavior is their constant weaving flight low over the ground, interspersed with periods of landing and crawling in and out among the fallen leaves and grasses. They are out looking for places to make nests and the most suitable spots are underground chambers, such as the old burrows of chipmunks, mice, or moles.Once they have chosen a spot, they collect grasses, moss, and leaves and form a soft ball of these materials inside the nest. Before starting their brood in the nest, they often gather more material and pile it around the outer entrance to the nest. This is believed to function in part as camouflage of the nest entrance, since suitable nest sites are in short supply and there is competition between and within species for the best sites. This pressure for nest sites makes it advantageous to emerge from hibernation early to claim the best places. But a bee can't emerge before the flowers have bloomed to provide food, and in Northern areas snow may still cover the best sites if a bee emerges too early. It is estimated that about ten percent of all nests are takn over by other queens. This is accomplished by a fight that either kills the original queen or makes her submissive..
parasitic bumblebees
There are two genera of bumblebees. One is Bombus, and the habits of these have been described above. The other is Psithyrus, and strangely the queens of this genus have no place on their hind legs for carrying pollen. Further-more, these queens produce only males and fertile females, but no sterile female workers. The reason for this odd occurrence is that Psithyrus is parasitic on colonies of Bombus. Psithyrus emerge from hibernation later than Bombus and only after the colonies of the latter have gotten well underway. They enter the nests of Bombus and, through various means, dominate the workers and original queens. They then lay their eggs in among the center of the existing brood, and the workers of the Bombus queen raise them as if they were their own. If the original queen is still in the nest and not killed, the invading queen kills any of the eggs she lays from then on.. In the East, the common species of this genus is P. variabilis, and it most often parasitizes the nests of Bombus americanus.
The foregoing was copied from "A Guide to Observing Insect
Lives" by Donald W. Stokes.
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I hope that after reading the above you will look upon the Bumble- bee with interest and perhaps a little affection as a fellow forager.
Blessed be,
Grandfather.