© Janet Davis
The
bumblebee is a marvellous beast
Of
nectar and pollen, she makes a feast.
But
no skill for honey-making has she;
She
leaves such chores for the honeybee.
Clad in stylish fur (though the weather’s
warm),
She’s
the perfect marriage of function and form.
She
flies, she dips, she can even hover;
Hues
of mauve, blue and purple she’ll soon discover.
Working
bloom after bloom, she’s a busy thing,
But
it’s not quite true that she doesn’t sting.
For
she’ll guard her nest, if danger’s near,
Give her lots of room and
you’ve nothing to fear.
So,
what’s the prettiest insect there ever was?
The bumblebee. (Well, that’s the buzz…..)
I love being in the garden
in spring when the big queen bumblebees come lumbering through like noisy,
overloaded cargo planes looking for blooms rich with pollen and nectar. I grow lots of spring flowers in those blue
and purple hues they favor – things like periwinkle and the orchid-purple
blossoms of the PJM rhododendron.
If you think of the rainbow as representing the visible spectrum, bee eyes have a sharp sense of vision in the blue-purple-mauve segment. Not only that, they can detect ultra-violet, a color that’s invisible to the human eye. So when a bee buzzes over a typical flowerbed, it spots patterns and images that the gardener weeding it doesn’t necessarily see.
Unlike honeybees, whose commercial value to apiarists gives them an edge in the public relations department, bumblebees are unsung heroes. Yet, unlike honeybees, which were imported from Europe, bumblebees are native North Americans and essential to pollination of most of our native, bee-pollinated plants.
The three principal species in Canada are the Golden Northern Bumble Bee, Bombus fervidus, the Red Tailed Bumble Bee, Bombus ternarius and the American Bumble Bee, Bombus pensylvanicus. There are many more species in the United States.
Categorized as “social bees”, bumblebees live
in ground-nesting colonies presided over by a queen who is responsible for
laying the eggs. The queen’s daughters
are the worker bees; their main task is to forage for floral nectar. In late
summer, the queen lays 
unfertilized eggs which
become the drones; these bees mate with the late-season females, producing the
hive’s new queens. Only the queen bumblebees survive winter, hibernating
through the cold months to start new colonies the following spring. In order to stay warm in the cool
temperatures of spring and fall and to continue foraging for nectar-rich
flowers, the queen bumblebee and her workers create heat by vibrating the
muscles that control flight. Along with her “stylish fur coat”, the ability to
create heat allows the bumblebee to adapt to life in North America’s colder
regions. Occasionally, like the drone
bumblebee dozing in the aptly-named Clematis ‘Bee’s Jubilee’, right, it might
be necessary to rest in a blossom until the sun’s warmth is strong enough to
permit the flight muscles to vibrate, usually around 10C or 50F.
Bumblebees collect pollen in pollen baskets situated on their hind legs. In my garden, I’ve watched a bumblebee perform “buzz pollination” on the blossoms of the ‘PJM’ rhodos mentioned above, inserting her proboscis as far as into the flower as she can and shaking the blossom to free the pollen. Unlike honeybees, that long proboscis lets the bumblebee obtain nectar from flowers where the nectaries are hidden deep within the bloom. The nectar is used by the queen to fill a honeypot in the nest, providing food as she incubates eggs.
For more information on bumblebees, visit the fabulous website www.bumblebee.org.