All About The Bumblebee
Just the other day I saw a bumblebee while trying to get a picture of a flower, I tried to avoid it because I'm scared of bugs. However they are pretty cute (from a distance) so I decided to learn about them, and there's a lot to know.
Bumblebees have a pretty short life span, but they make the most of it. The cycle starts in early spring when the queen comes out of hibernation. She immediately starts to find food and a place to nest, normally someplace close to the ground like under piles of wood or dead leaves, but they've even been known to nest underground in abandoned rodent tunnels. After she finds the perfect spot she lays her eggs, and sits on them to keep them warm for about two weeks. After they hatch she feeds them for another two weeks until they cocoon themselves, they stay cocooned until they're adults. After that all the queen does is lay eggs, and the worker bees take care of everything else. Among the new bees there are drones (male bees), and the future queens. They both leave after maturing, and the drones from other colonies mate with the future queens and vise versa. Soon after they mate the males die. In late fall all the bees except for the queen dies, then the queen goes into hibernation and the cycle starts over again.
Bumblebees are very social, and live in colonies of about 50 to 500 bees. They don't communicate in "bee dances" like honeybees do, instead after one of the bees finds a good food source it'll run around the nest excitedly for a few minutes, and then go off to forage again. To bees food is honey, and they make it by mixing the pollen they find with their saliva. The food reserves are carefully monitored, and if they start to run low on honey they set out to find more. We also know that bumblebees partake in social learning. We know this because of a study done in 2017 involving the Bombus terrestris (the buff-tailed or large earth bumblebee), in which the bees were taught to move large objects in order to obtain a reward. The bees were more likely to complete the task successfully when they had watched another bee move the object, compared to when they had watched a magnet do it.
Another interesting fact about bumblebees is that scientists once thought they shouldn't be able to fly because of their small wings in contrast to their large body, and that the bees were defying aerodynamics by doing so. They now know the fact that the bees can stay aloft is due to the fact that they flap their wings back and forth, instead of up and down. Therefore creating tiny bits of low pressure air above the bee's wings that help it fly.
All in all, I'm glad that I learned about these fuzzy little guys, and maybe just maybe I won't run away next time I see one.
Bumblebees have a pretty short life span, but they make the most of it. The cycle starts in early spring when the queen comes out of hibernation. She immediately starts to find food and a place to nest, normally someplace close to the ground like under piles of wood or dead leaves, but they've even been known to nest underground in abandoned rodent tunnels. After she finds the perfect spot she lays her eggs, and sits on them to keep them warm for about two weeks. After they hatch she feeds them for another two weeks until they cocoon themselves, they stay cocooned until they're adults. After that all the queen does is lay eggs, and the worker bees take care of everything else. Among the new bees there are drones (male bees), and the future queens. They both leave after maturing, and the drones from other colonies mate with the future queens and vise versa. Soon after they mate the males die. In late fall all the bees except for the queen dies, then the queen goes into hibernation and the cycle starts over again.Bumblebees are very social, and live in colonies of about 50 to 500 bees. They don't communicate in "bee dances" like honeybees do, instead after one of the bees finds a good food source it'll run around the nest excitedly for a few minutes, and then go off to forage again. To bees food is honey, and they make it by mixing the pollen they find with their saliva. The food reserves are carefully monitored, and if they start to run low on honey they set out to find more. We also know that bumblebees partake in social learning. We know this because of a study done in 2017 involving the Bombus terrestris (the buff-tailed or large earth bumblebee), in which the bees were taught to move large objects in order to obtain a reward. The bees were more likely to complete the task successfully when they had watched another bee move the object, compared to when they had watched a magnet do it.
Another interesting fact about bumblebees is that scientists once thought they shouldn't be able to fly because of their small wings in contrast to their large body, and that the bees were defying aerodynamics by doing so. They now know the fact that the bees can stay aloft is due to the fact that they flap their wings back and forth, instead of up and down. Therefore creating tiny bits of low pressure air above the bee's wings that help it fly.
All in all, I'm glad that I learned about these fuzzy little guys, and maybe just maybe I won't run away next time I see one.
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