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Garden bumblebee

 

 

Bumblebees feed on nectar and pollen. Since food is collected for the whole family, not only for oneself, they must constantly be out foraging and visit a great number of flowers. For this female individuals have pollen baskets (corviculas) on their hind legs where different-coloured pollen balls can be seen. The smell of the flowers and the large composite eyes of bumblebees, by which bumblebees manage to differentiate colours, are means to help finding the food resources.

 

Thanks to their ability to learn and the need to minimise energy use, bumblebees are flower-true: in one collecting flight they gather food from two or three flower species which makes them good pollinators. Bumblebees need rich collecting areas in flower-rich areas from spring to autumn. Some mass flowering cultivated plants (e g clovers, lucerne, rape) offer bumblebees ample food resources but they need food when cultivated plants are not in flower too.

 

Thanks to their warm fur bumblebees collect food in cool and rainy weather too, different from garden bees, whereby they help to bring about pollination in such weather too. High air temperatures (above 26ºC) do not suit them, which is why they are out collecting in early mornings and late evenings in hot weather.

 

While honeybees inform other workers about the location of rich food resources by a bee dance, such information is not shared by bumblebees – they must find the food resources for themselves. Information may be available about the existence of a plentiful food resource but they must choose the direction themselves. Thus it does not pay for bumblebees to go looking for food as far off as honeybees do.   

 

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