Bumble Bees
The Bumble Bee Lifecycle
Bumblebees, honeybees, wasps and ants are all social insects: they live in a colony with a queen and her daughters (the workers). Bumblebees have an annual lifecycle, with new nests being started each spring by queens. The queen bumblebees are very large, and from February onwards can be seen feeding on flowers such as willow catkins, bluebells and lungwort, or flying low over the ground searching for a nest site. Some species prefer to nest underground in abandoned burrows of rodents, while others nest just above the ground in dense grass or leaf-litter.
The queen stocks her nest with pollen and nectar, and lays her first batch of eggs. She incubates them much as a bird would, sitting on the eggs while shivering her flight muscles to produce warmth. When the eggs hatch the legless grubs consume pollen and nectar, grow rapidly, and pupate after a few weeks. A few days later the first workers hatch from their pupae and begin helping their mother, expanding the nest and gathering food.
By mid-summer nests of some species can contain several hundred workers. At this point the queen starts laying both male and female eggs. The females are fed extra food and become future queens. Both males and new queens leave the nest to mate, and the new queens burrow into the ground to wait until the following spring. The males, workers, and the old queen die off in the autumn, leaving the nest to decay.
Species of Bumble Bee
These six species are common in gardens throughout the UK (apart from the far north of Scotland). More than 90% of all sightings will be of these species, so if you learn to identify these then you're a long way to becoming a bumblebee expert!
Rarer bumblebees that occur in gardens
Three of these species are severely threatened and have declined greatly in abundance (ruderal, brown-banded carder and red-shanked bumblebee). In contrast the tree bumblebee is expanding its range northwards in the UK, having arrived on the south coast from France in 2001. The heath bumblebee is widespread but often overlooked because it is small and superficially similar to the more common garden bumblebee.
Verminate pest control will continue to help educate the public as to the importance of this declining insect and if they have nested in a position which is to inconvenient we will remove the nest and relocate it for them. Pest control is also about conservation where possible.
For further information please visit the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust.
If you have a problem with bees, Verminate can help you! Contact us today for more information.
