Honeybees go crazy and pack it into every nook and cranny. Honeybees rely more on their corbicula, and bumbles can carry it here-there-and-everywhere on fuzzy bodies. They both carry pollen on a pollen basket on their hind legs called a corbicula. Honeybee queens are longer lived at 3-4 years versus 1 year for bumbles. Bumble queens overwinter and “get the party started” in spring. Honeybees can overwinter the entire colony IF honey reserves and weather cooperate. Bumbles live in loose colonies with a few hundred others. Honeybee colonies are filled with tens of thousands of bees. Let’s compare and contrast honeybees and bumblebees (or bumbles), beyond the pollination specifics: And they can literally bounce pollen from flowers to their fuzzy bodies by vibrating their wing muscles - a technique known as buzz or sonic pollination (how cool is that?!). Photo courtesy of Sam Droegeīumblebees are more like honeybees than any other native bees but very different at the same time. Our best-known native bee: the Bumblebee Eastern bumblebee, Bombus impatiens. If honeybees are the canary in the coal mine, we’re overdue to figure out what’s up with native bees. If honeybees are crashing, what’s happening to native bees then? Similar to how germs pass from one human to another through a shared cup of coffee, door handle, or other surface. Here’s the kicker, though: Honeybee pathogens transfer to native bees when they feed from the same flowers. The “why” is a topic for another post, but in summary, management practices, new pesticides, introduced pests, and poor diet caused the bees’ immunity to plunge while pathogen rates soared. Then in the winter of 2006-07, something strange happened.īeekeepers saw massive losses to their hives, and the term Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was coined to describe losses from mysterious causes. This model worked decently well through the early 2000s. They’re important pollinators of over 100 crops grown in North America. Because they form huge, social colonies honeybees work well with the farming model here. They arrived with European settlers in the 1600s. Honeybees are not native to North America, though. We’ve even figured out how to move colonies around as needed. Honeybees have been domesticated through selective breeding to maximize honey and pollination productivity. What do cows and honeybees have in common?īoth are recognized as livestock by the United States Department of Agriculture. Honeybees: Industrial-strength Pollinators Honeybee, Apis mellifera. The variety is overwhelming! Let’s dip our toe in the water with two well-known groups: honeybees and bumblebees. Each varies wildly in appearance, behavior, and habitats. When you hear a loud buzz, what do you think of? It could be a honeybee, bumblebee, mason bee, sweat bee, mining bee - or even a wasp!ĭid you know there are nearly 20,000 known bee species in the world? Nearly 4,000 bees are found in North America, and roughly 400 of those species call Minnesota home.
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