Bumblebees are larger and more furry than honey bees.
|
 Dr. Entomology Suggests:
|
|
 |
Bumblebees are important pollinators for a number of plants. They are particularly important to many alpine plants because they are able to fly at low temperatures when most other insects are too chilled to be active. They are also important, however, to plants at lower elevations as well.
Queen bumblebees, which overwinter as adults, emerge in early spring before other pollinators such as flies and butterflies are around, so they are probably especially important to early-blooming plants such as early blueberry and purple mountain saxifrage. When queens begin their nests in underground cavities, they collect pollen in clumps, then lay eggs for their first brood on the pollen. When larvae emerge from the eggs, they feed on the pollen, which is rich in protein. Meanwhile, the adult bees eat mostly nectar, which is rich in energy-packed carbohydrates.
Bumblebees are particularly attracted to blue, irregularly-shaped flowers like lupines and beach peas. The bees are heavy enough to force open blossoms of vertically symmetrical blossoms like those of lupines, and their proboscises, or tube-like mouth parts, can reach deep into the base of a blossom where nectar is stored.
As the bees delve deep into a flower, pollen grains stick to the hairs on their bodies. The bees use their legs to comb the pollen into special storage sacs on their hind legs for carrying it back to the nest. But inevitably some pollen grains rub off the bees' bodies when they visit subsequent flowers, so the insects end up distributing pollen from one male blossom to the female parts of other blossoms, achieving the pollination and cross-pollination that is so important to their plant hosts. |
|
|
|
 |
Arthropoda |
|
|
|
Insecta
|
|
|
|
Hymenoptera
|
|
|
|
Various
|
|
|
|
Various
|
|
|
|
Various
|
Distribution • (in blue)
The Bumblebee is found throughout the world.
|
|
|
