Our Most Important Pollinator: the Bumble Bee

With the sun shining brightly on my front yard’s wildflowers--goldenrods, asters, fleabanes, snakeroots-- the last few days, the bumble bees have been having a field day, bumbling around the blossoms for their last chance to grab nectar and pollen before winter sets in. While the honey bee is the far more famous (and more commercially important) pollinator, the common Eastern bumblebee, Bombus impatiens, is Wild Philly's most common, most recognizable, and arguably most important native flower pollinator. 

And while the plight of the honey bee has deservedly received tons of attention, the bumble bee is due its moment in the spotlight.

Next time you see one, get a little closer-- no worries, they rarely sting. Its fuzzy yellow thorax is the key to its success as a pollinator. As it collects pollen and nectar to bring back to its underground hive, it brushes that thorax against pollen-laden anthers, the sticky grains adhering to the body. As the bee travels its floral route, pollen is transferred from one plant to another. Bumble bees also collect pollen to carry back to the nest in hairy leg baskets on their rear legs, something easy to spot on many of the bees visiting your garden.

You’ve likely never seen its nest, found underground and filled with hundreds of workers. Likely built in an abandoned chipmunk or rodent hole, the bumble bee’s nest is not as organized as the honey bee’s famous comb. Insead, clusters of eggs are randomly laid within the nest. Bumble bees produce wax to build cells for rearing young and storing honey. Bumble bee honey is a less-complex combination of regurgitated pollen and nectar.

There is also a queen, and worker bees who care for eggs and young. The workers come in a variety of sizes, smaller bees caring for larvae, larger ones foraging outside. There are drones as well, the male bees whose one job is to fertilize a queen if needed.

Bumble bees are able to forage among flowers in colder temperatures than honey bees, so you’ll find them outside even in November. Still, many a late autumn morning I’ve found foraging bumble bees desperately clinging to flowers, likely lacking the energy to have made it back to the hive at the end of the previous day’s work, the combination of hard work and colder weather conspiring to harm them. They die like cowboys, with their boots on.

Like its cousin the bald-faced hornet, only the bumble bee’s new queen survives the winter, coming out of hibernation in the spring to begin building a new nest, lay new eggs, and start the cycle anew.

With that afternoon sun warming the world this week, the bumble bees were joined by honey bees, hover flies, and other insects, all reveling-- and working-- in the warmth. It’s their last few moments in the sun, and they were completely focused on their mission of collecting nectar and pollen.

One last note: entomologists have been ironing out the kinks in insect common names, as dragonflies aren’t true flies but house flies are, and ladybugs aren’t bugs but bed bugs are… So the newly emerged convention is when the insect’s common name includes a kind of insect it is not, the name is presented as one word, like damselfly, which is not a true fly. But when the name includes a kind of insect it truly is, the words are separated, so horse fly and stink bug are correct, as horse flies are true flies and stink bugs are true bugs. 

While bumble bee is typically written as one word-- even I want to write it like that-- it is now more correct to present it as two.