Bumblebees

There are about 250 species of bumblebees but most share these characteristics:

• Round bodies covered in soft hair, giving them a fuzzy look
• ½ inch to 1 inch in size
• Striped bodies with some combination of black, yellow, orange and/or white

Bumblebees usually live in underground nests, often in tunnels built by other animals, and their colonies have fewer than 50 members. Queens, which are twice as large as the worker bees, prepare a new nest each spring, creating cells and then laying worker eggs and collecting nectar to feed them.

Once the workers hatch, they collect both nectar and pollen from flowers and take them back to the nest to feed other colony members. They’re efficient at this job because they can detect the pattern of electrical fields on flowers, which tells them if another bee has visited the flower and gathered the pollen.

Only the queen bee lives through the winter; the workers and drones die off as the weather becomes colder.

No one likes getting stung, but if bumblebees are making a home in your backyard, we’ve got some good news. Unlike some bee species, bumblebees aren’t aggressive and won’t usually sting unless they feel threatened.  However, a bumblebee can sting repeatedly because there are no barbs on their stingers.

If you have a bumblebee colony in your yard, your best course of action is to leave the nest alone and keep children and pets away.