Wildlife Watching Wednesday: Bumblebees Are Important Pollinators

By: Tom Berg

Everyone has seen bumblebees in their back yards or in their flower gardens. These large, plump native bees are covered in soft hair that makes them look (and feel) fuzzy. Often, those hairs are covered with a thick layer of pollen grains. Some bumblebee species are mostly black in color, although most around here are some combination of black and yellow.

Believe it or not, there are more than 250 species of bumblebees out there. Equally surprising is the fact that they are part of the 4,000 species of bees living in the USA and Canada. Most of our local bumblebees are less than an inch long, while the largest bumblebee species in the world (1.6 inches) lives in Chile and is often described as a “flying mouse”!

Although bumblebees are typically not striped like honeybees, the bumblebee’s contrasting yellow and black hairs serves as a warning to all other creatures, including predators, that they can inflict a very painful sting. Unlike honeybees, bumblebees can sting repeatedly since their stinger is not barbed. Luckily for humans, bumblebees are not normally aggressive and they usually ignore us unless we disturb their nests.

Bumblebees are valuable pollinators, both of agricultural crops and of wildflowers. They have long tongues for collecting nectar from flowers with long tubes, and they pollinate these flowers that honeybees typically cannot reach. Bumblebees are also better than honeybees at foraging and pollinating plants during poor weather conditions like when it is cold, rainy or cloudy. The hairs on the bumblebees help insulate them from the cold, allowing them to retain more heat and keep foraging.

Certain farm crops like tomatoes rely on bumblebees for pollination because the tomato flowers require “buzz pollination”. These tiny yellow flowers only release their pollen when a certain resonant vibration shakes it loose. Amazingly, bumblebees vibrate their wings and flight muscles at just the right frequency to dislodge the pollen. Honeybees and most other insects cannot perform buzz pollination.

That makes bumblebees pretty important!

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