Bumblebee Facts
Bumblebee Facts
HONEYBEES - These are domesticated, form long-lived social colonies that live in hives and are cared for by beekeepers. They are the source of the food we call honey. There is one species.They can sting aggressively if the hive is attacked.
BUMBLEBEES- are wild, form short-lived social colonies and construct their own nests in cavities in hedgerows, under rocks, or in disused mouse or birds nests. There are about 200 across the world. They are docile and only sting if severely aggravated.
SOLITARY BEES - this is a collective term for about 250 other species of bees in Britain, that are not social (i.e. do not co-operate in a group), but each individual lays its own eggs, usually in small cracks or tunnels in dead plant stems, dead wood, walls, or earth. Well-known examples include Mason Bees, Leafcutter Bees, and Mining Bees. They don’t sting. Many are very small, and people don’t even realise that they are bees.
2. These eggs develop into the female worker bees, whose job it is to feed and nurture the colony.
3. At the end of the summer the queen makes male babies, along with new queens.
4. After mating, the males die off and so does the old queen and workers. Only the new queens survive to hibernate through the winter and then they start nests of their own the following Spring. Bumble bees eat nectar and pollen and may fly over a mile from their nest to find food.
5. All bumblebees require NECTAR, a sugary solution produced by many flowers, as a high-octane fuel to power their flight. This is sucked up through a tube-like proboscis, commonly referred to as a ‘tongue’.
6. They also require POLLEN, as a source of protein and minerals. This is collected from flowers on their furry coats. They periodically comb pollen out of their coats with their legs, and females mould it into cakes (“pollen baskets”) which they store on their back legs as they forage. As well as co-incidentally accumulating pollen on their coats while they are sipping nectar, bumblebees will deliberately wallow among the stamens of certain bowl-shaped flowers and vibrate their wings to release pollen; this is called ‘buzz-foraging’. Females take both pollen and nectar back to the nest to feed the colony. Food is stored in wax cells to keep the colony going in bad weather; a colony can last up to two weeks without foraging before starving to death.
7. They are excellent pollinators of currants and other soft fruit, strawberries, runner beans, broad beans, tomatoes, and many other vegetable crops.
8. They are important pollinators of many wild flowers. Scientific research showed that where bumblebees had declined or become extinct due to intensive agriculture, local populations of wild flowers gradually changed and deteriorated, due to in-breeding and lack of viable seed set.
9. This member of the ‘Big Six’ common species found in Britain has the longest tongue, and has a distinct preference for flowers with deeper throats. In centuries past it found traditional gardens, with their borders of herbs and flowers of European wild origin very much to its liking; so much so that Linnaeus named it the ‘Garden Bumblebee’ (Bombus hortorum in Latin).
10. Birds like the spotted fly catcher eat bumble bees they don't have many predators.
11. Bumble bees need to live where there are flowers they can collect nectar from. Flowers like clover are very good for bumble bees.
12. Worker bumble bees pollinate clovers and many other flowers, the nectar and pollen they collect is used to feed the young.
13. Bumble bees make honey too but only enough to feed the babies.
14. The bumble bee is not aggressive like honeybee; she will ignore you and fly around collecting pollen and nectar.
15. Bumble bees have smelly feet so that other bumble bees can tell that the nectar has already been taken.
16. Bees are hymenoptera, top 3 biggest insect groups 19,500 bee species described.
17. Bumblebees - 267 species world wide described.
18. All bumblebees live in the northern hemisphere, and are adapted to cooler climates.
19. Bumble bees are documented to pollinate many important food crops. They are also more effective than honey bees at pollinating crops grown in greenhouses.
20. When most insects are inactive due to cold temperatures bumble bees are able to fly by warming their fight muscles by shivering, enabling them to raise their body temperature as necessary for fight.
21. Instead of starting their own colonies, some bumble bee species have evolved to take over another species’ colony to rear their young. These ‘cuckoo’ bees then use the workers from the queen-less colony to feed and care for their offspring.
22. Some bumble bee are known to rob fowers of their nectar. Nectar robbing occurs when a bee extracts nectar from a fower without coming into contact with its reproductive parts (i.e. anthers and/or stigma), usually by biting a hole at the base of the flower.
Comments
Post a Comment