Why bumble bees

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Donate Take Action. Conservation Garden Habitats Wildlife Facts. David Mizejewski , Laura Tangley May 20, A bumble bee visits a cone flower in a Tennessee backyard. Native plants are vital to a vibrant habitat for pollinators like bumble bees. Here are a few more facts you may not have heard about bumble bees: 1. Unlike most native bees, but like honey bees, bumble bees are social insects that live in colonies.

Bumble bee gathering on Butterfly weed. Photo by J. Written by David Mizejewski. Written by Laura Tangley. Recent Popular. Conservation , People and Wildlife. Students and Nature. Students and Nature , Wildlife Facts. People began to explore the use of bumble bees for crop pollination in the late 19th century. Bumble bees were intentionally introduced from the UK to New Zealand, which had no native bumble bee species, in order to pollinate red clover plants used for livestock forage.

Anyone using bumble bees for pollination at this time was relying on wild populations, as domestication methods had not yet been developed. The first major breakthrough in bumble bee domestication came in , when F. Sladen outlined methods for domesticating bumble bees in his book The Humble Bee.

With domestication, farmers no longer needed to rely on sporadic wild populations. Bumble bee colonies could be produced and placed directly within crops to provide pollination. However, one major impediment to widespread use of bumble bees for pollination is that colonies could only be initiated from queens caught in the spring after emerging from hibernation. Colonies were only available from later spring through the fall.

Bumble bees are pretty amazing, and not just for their pollinating abilities. Bumble bees are found throughout the Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic tundra to deserts and forests. Bumble bee colonies die at the end of each growing season, only the queen survives to start a new colony in the spring.

This is unlike honey bee colonies, where the queen and some members of the colony survive throughout the winter. Bumble bees go in search of food in temperatures as low as 0 C. They stay warm by vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat. Bumble bee diversity tends to be the highest around mountain ranges.

Bumble bee species have different lengths of tongues that match the flowers they feed on. Bumble bees with long tongues can reach the nectar in long tubular flowers, while medium and shorter-tongued species collect nectar from smaller flowers.

Instead of foraging for pollen or starting their own colonies, cuckoo bumble bees will take over the nests of other bee species. Even though they are thieves, cuckoo bumble bee species are still important for biodiversity and declines in their numbers can be a warning sign of change within the ecosystem. After foraging at various flowers, bumble bees will carry their collected pollen and nectar back to the nest to feed.