A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A BUMBLEBEE

If the sun shows her face in late February, the first bumblebees emerge from hibernation. They’re starving, as they have been living off their fat reserves for six or even eight months. The few flowers around are vital: winter heathers, crocus and hellebores may be mobbed by ravenous queen bees. The first queens to emerge are usually buff-tailed or whitetailed bumblebees, but in March they’re joined by all the other common bumblebees: early, common carder, redtailed, garden and tree bumblebees.

The queens then search for a nest, flying low and side to side, scanning for holes in the ground. If they find one they crawl in to investigate, hoping to find a dry, dark space with an old mouse nest inside. They then settle down and each queen gathers a ball of pollen and lays a batch of eggs in it, covering them in wax. She incubates them much as a bird would, and all being well the eggs hatch into little white grubs. She dashes out repeatedly to collect food for them and herself.

It’s a precarious time; if there are not enough flowers nearby, her nest is likely to fail. Those queens that succeed are rewarded, about a month after laying their first batch of eggs, with their first adult workers – daughters. These take over the foraging, and for the rest of her life the queen remains in her nest, laying eggs. The nest grows through spring, accumulating more and more workers – a buff-tailed bumblebee nest can have 400.

Eventually the queen stops producing workers and switches to making new queens and males. Most species will do this in July or August. The young males and queens fly from the nest and mate, most queens mating just once with a single male. A few days later, the young queens burrow into soil to wait, alone, until the next spring. For the males, mating is their only purpose – they do no work for the nest. The old queen dies, perhaps 13 months after she was born. The workers too die off one by one. By October the last nests are all but gone, but if all has gone well each will leave a legacy of young queens, safe underground, waiting for spring.

Red-tailed bumblebees love yellow flowers