Bumblebees are cool. They’re my favorite pollinators.
They buzz around somewhat clumsily on their pollen-and-nectar gathering field trips, openly defying anyone claiming they can’t fly.
They help big time with the pollination of our food plants.
And they’re generally so docile that you’ll have to step on them or try to eat them to make them sting you.
True story: When she was little, my girlfriend didn’t know bumblebees could sting. And she thought they looked all cute and furry and pettable, so she did a couple of times. Pet them, that is. And they didn’t sting her.
This may have been slightly sleepy bumblebee queens that had just emerged from their nests in the springtime. But still.
3 interesting facts about bumblebees
- Bumblebees are endothermic. This means they can, and do, adjust their own body temperature by deliberately burning fat and nectar and by using their large wing muscles. An active bumblebee’s body temperature may swing between 30 and 43 degrees Celcius (86 to 109 degrees Fahrenheit).
- If the temperature in a bumblebee nest drops too low, the bumblebees start brooding on their eggs and larvas. This makes them burn nectar and produce heat. If the nest gets too hot, worker bees flutter their wings inside and around the nest to increase air circulation.
- There are cuckoo bumblebee species. A cuckoo bumblebee queen will force her way into the nest of a regular/social bumblebee queen and kill or evict the existing queen. She will then take over the workers and use them to rear her own offspring.
Building a bumblebee nesting site
Having done a bit of pollinator advocacy in Happy pollinator week 2009 and 10 ways to help pollinators survive and thrive, I think the next logical step for me is to give building a bumblebee nesting site a shot.
As their natural habitats are increasingly being suppressed by urbanization and modern farming practices, finding natural nesting sites are getting harder for bumblebee queens.
There are commercial bumblebee nest boxes available, but I’m far too impatient to wait for that. So I’m going to build a flowerpot based nesting site.
I’ll build and find a suitable site as a weekend project. If all goes well, I’ll do a post about it next week.
I wish everyone a nice weekend – I’m off to rummage through my gardening supplies for a suitable flower pot!
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This post was tagged with: bumblebees, natural habitats, nest boxes, nesting boxes, plants, pollen, pollination, pollinatorsRelated posts:
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Bumblebees are the cutest insects ever :-) I look forward to you post about building the nest for them!