The bumble bee life cycle begins with queens emerging in the spring. The annual bumble bee's lifecycle is a fascinating process where the queen transitions from a seasonal solitary phase and progresses to a social phase later in the cycle.įigure 2. Bumble bees are an annual species that have one queen per year, whereas honeybees are perennial species, with one queen that can live for up to five years. However similar bumble bee and honey bee colonies may seem, the appearance and life histories of the two species vary a lot. In contrast, bumble bee division of labor is correlated with body size, where larger bees can carry more pollen, and smaller bees perform in-colony tasks, such as caring for brood. As new workers emerge, the more senior workers will adopt new colony tasks according to age (Johnson 2010). Younger workers feed and care for the developing brood, while older workers are foragers. In honey bees, the division of labor is dependent on age. Task allocation is also a feature shared by both honey bees and bumble bees. Their purpose is to mate with virgin queens that are typically reared by the colony during late summer. Male drones have fewer responsibilities to the colony and are less abundant than the workers. The queen is the only one in the colony to lay eggs, while the workers maintain the hive and bring in local pollen and nectar resources. Each colony includes a single queen, nonreproductive female workers, and male drones. And, as with honey bees, individuals within the colony are divided into three distinct castes.
Just like with honey bees, all individual bumble bees work together as a colony through the late spring, summer, and fall months. Bumble Bees Versus Honey Bees: How Do They Compare? Two important crops grown in Pennsylvania that relies on buzz pollination to produce fruit include blueberries and tomatoes, whose pollen reserves are hidden in the flowers and must be buzzed, or sonicated, to be released. This practice allows them to collect pollen from flowers that are more difficult for honey bees to reach. During buzz pollination, bees vibrate their flight muscles at just the right frequency while holding on to a blossom to dislodge pollen grains that are tightly packed away in the flower.
Pollen stored on the body of bees is transmitted to the female reproductive organ (the stigma) of the flower as they fill their pollen baskets, resulting in fertilization, and ultimately, the development of fruits, seeds, and/or nuts.Īll bees possess branched hairs that enable pollen transfer between flowers, but buzz pollination is a specialized behavior performed by many large-bodied bees, including bumble bees. Together, the scopae and the corbiculae make a pollen basket, which can be easily seen with the naked eye. Just like honey bees, bumble bees store pollen within specialized branched hairs, (or scopae), that are located in a groove on their hind legs (called corbiculae). Bumble bees are excellent pollinators due to the way that they attract and disperse pollen from their bodies with each floral visit, and because of a unique foraging behavior they engage in called buzz pollination. Of over 250 known bumble bee species, 18 are found in Pennsylvania (Kilpatrick & López-Uribe 2020).
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