“Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as we love ourselves. The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important. But six legs (like the Bumblebee) are too many from the human standpoint.” ~ Joseph W. KrutchThe bumblebee got its name from an old English word ~ “bomblen” ~ to boom; the dictionary describes it as a clumsy, unsteady or incompetent way; or to make a low humming or droning sound.
The bumblebee is a large, hairy insect, who trundles around the garden with a lazy buzz in a clumsy, bumbling flight. This black with yellow, sometimes orange striped insect is so important for glasshouse pollinating, that they are even sold for this purpose. Scientific trials have shown that with a Bumblebee hive of 400 workers, and a honeybee hive with 10,000 – 20,000 bees, it was the bumblebees who worked more hours per day, visited more flowers per minute and therefore pollinated more flowers.
Some interesting facts:
* The antenna (feelers) are like a nose and used for touching. Both front legs have a kind of notch, in which the antenna can be inserted, then pulled through – voila: inbuilt antenna cleaner! * Two pair of wings, operating together, work like a helicopter rotor: “reverse-pitch semi-rotary blades”. Enabled by a nerve impulse that twangs the muscle (like plucking a guitar string), bumblebees move their wings about 200 beats per second.
* Wings are connected to the thorax, which is like a box of muscles; the biggest, the flight muscles, take up almost the whole thorax volume.
* Three pair of legs ~ hairy with claws; only queen and worker’s legs have special baskets to collect pollen.
* 2 compound eyes and 3 ‘primitive’ eyes.
* The abdomen contains a honey stomach for storing nectar, which fuels them during the foraging flights. Some bumblebees fly back carrying as much as 75% or more of their bodyweight. Wax is secreted from between plates covering the abdomen. The fat body also functions as the nutritional store during the queen’s hibernation.
* Breathing: through spiracles (paired holes) at the down side of the body, that also has air sacs.
* The tongue, specialized to suck up nectar, is kept inside a sheath and folded under the head and thorax when flying or resting.
* The bumblebee is probably deaf but can feel vibrations of sounds.
* he heart runs down the entire body, where the blood sloshes freely, without veins or arteries.
* After mating, the queen stores the sperm inside her body; before she lays an egg she’ll decide either to fertilize it with sperm or not. Non-fertilized eggs became males; fertilized ones either queens or female workers. The females have suppressed hormonal activity for as long as the queen remains dominant. Only when the queen dies, the worker’s ovaries are stimulated, and new queens appear.
* Salivary glands produce saliva, which is mixed with nectar and pollen. It’s also used to soften the nest material.
”The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee, a clover, anytime, to him, is aristocracy.” ~ Emily Dickinson
