Bumblebee Activities

Bumblebee colonies have a yearly cycle, except for tropical species, where year-round colonies are known to survive for more than one year, due to the fact that there are year-round flowers available.

Mated queens hibernate, usually in the soil, in a place that can’t be warmed up too early in the year by the sun. This prevents premature emerging, with disastrous results when there are no flowers around yet. If the temperature falls below a certain point, the queen’s body automatically produces glycerol (anti-freeze).

In Spring she emerges, in dire need to replenish her stomach’s honey store, which she used up during the hibernation. After she has found a suitable nest, e.g. a deserted small rodent’s nest, she builds a wax honey pot and fills it with regurgitated nectar (honey). Not only she eats from her pollen store but turns it into ‘bee-bread’ ~ balls moistened with nectar. This way, even with bad weather the queen can survive a day or two.

Stimulated by the pollen the ovaries produce eggs, which she lays in batches of 4-16 on the ‘pollen-ball’ she then covers with wax. At this stage all the eggs are fertilized, for the queen needs female workers; queens are usually only produced at a later stage in the life of the colony. While the bumblebee queen broods the eggs like a bird, she replenishes her energy by drinking from the nearby honey pot. Through the bare patch on her abdomen she passes her body heat to the clump of wax-covered eggs. The larvae (who look like maggots) are eating machines.

Another batch of eggs is usually laid when the first batch is in the larval stage, and it takes 4-5 weeks to produce adult bumblebees. Depending on the species, of which there are about 250, worldwide, a colony can contain between 30 – 400 bumblebees.

When a female worker bumblebee emerges into the light for the first time, she memorizes the landmarks by making a zigzag flight, which enables her to recognize the nest entrance. She navigates by the sun and has an inbuilt clock to compensate for the rotation of the earth.
Most workers have foraging preference ~ particular species, shape or color of flowers.

It takes time before she learns how to get into the flowers to get her reward ~ the pollen. Monkshood e.g. is a ‘difficult’ flower, which can only be pollinated by bumblebees. Only they have the weight, strength and know-how to get inside.
Because it takes time to learn, each bumblebee usually specializes on one or two types of flower at the time, also depending on the availability. The first time a bee enters a flower, she has to take a leap of faith and the moment the top petal falls down behind her, she is locked in into the flower. In reaching for the nectary down at the bottom, she receives her reward, and with the pollen, rubbed on her body, she pollinates the next flowers she’s visiting. An experienced forager doesn’t hesitate to enter a flower: by using her weight she squeezes her way down, drinks the nectar and comes out rear first. Novice bumblebees turn around inside the flower and emerge head-first.

After each foraging trip, the worker performs a figure-of-eight dance on the combs in the nest to tell her workmates where to find good food.
After visiting a flower, the bumblebee leaves a scent mark, telling the other workers not to bother with that flower, thereby reducing their time probing unprofitable flowers.
With an average of 10 foraging trips bumblebees can provide the nest with 3 ml. honey a day. The collected pollen are stored in the pollen basket, used to feed the larvae. For a bumblebee, time is honey!

At night most workers return to the nest, unless they are surprised by a change in weather. Then they hide under or in a flower.
Only queens and female workers have stings, which is not barbed like a honeybee (which dies afterwards). She will only use it to defend the nest against intruders.

A bumblebee cannot fly if its wing-muscle temperature falls below 30◦C. Powered by the sugars from the flower’s nectar, in flight the muscle temperature stays between 30-44◦C.

Male bumblebee production means the beginning of the end of the nest. Males drink from the honey pot, but don’t do anything to replace it. Some males help inside the nest by incubating the young, but for the rest their sole purpose in life is to mate with a queen.

Once they leave the nest, male bumblebees spend the rest of their lives outside in the open, at night sheltered under flowers or inside of them.

A grounded bumblebee can be a lethargic male who needs his first nectar shot to wake and warm up. At the start of the summer, it may be a queen caught out in a sudden shower or a cold spell. She will revive as soon as she gets her nectar. However, when the bumblebee is found at the end of summer, it might be an old queen or worker, reaching the end of her short but very productive life ~ a worker lives only 4 weeks.

This is the way our Creator God made them:
A bumblebee queen emerges from hibernation, starts a colony, later helped by her female workers. In the course of summer unfertilized eggs (males) are laid and under the influence of hormones, the female worker larvae develop into new queens.

During the next phase, males and new queens mate, the colony disintegrates, all the old bumblebees die, while the new queen hibernates. And with the next spring, the whole cycle begins anew ~ creating a new generation of bumblebees, needed to pollinate flowers and crops.
What an awesome God we serve!

“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”
~ James Russell Lowell

Helpful website: www.bumblebee.org/

The Amazing Bumblebee

“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. Krutch

The 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

The Seven Days of Mourning

In my historical novel “FIRST FRUITS IN JERUSALEM”, (presently at a British Publisher to be read) I describe the practice of the so-called Shiva, the seven days of mourning. In the story, because of the suicide, the parents are not allowed to mourn for the dead.
Mourning is the act of grieving over the death of a loved one. Jewish law and traditions provide a specific framework to guide mourners through their grief.
Judaism has a strong element of the acceptance of death and the seven days of mourning – Shiva – is a helpful tool by which people are not left alone in their grief, but surrounded by family and friends.

Jewish laws of mourning balance emotionalism and philosophic wisdom. Mourners are expected to cry, tear their garments and participate in the burial ceremony. However, they are not to mourn too much, nor for too long. The emphasis of the mourning period is to recover from the loss and to focus on the business of living.

In a Jewish family, after the burial the mourners return to the home where the shiva takes place and eat a meal consisting of bread and a hard boiled egg which is provided by others, as a sign of compassion and communal concern. In Orthodox families mourners sit on the floor on low cushions or benches. They won’t shave, bathe, go to work, or wear freshly laundered clothes. Some people cover the mirrors in the house of mourning.

In Sephardic communities visitors bring prepared food for the mourners, and offer consolation. In Ashkenazi communities bringing food is considered improper.
Visitors don’t greet the mourners, but speak in quiet, consoling words.

During Shabbat, a house in mourning won’t receive any visitors, as the Shabbat is seen as the Queen, and a day of rejoicing.

The Shiva ends on the morning of the seventh day, but the mourning continues in a lesser content through the 30the day, called the Shloshim.
Religious Jews don’t cut their hair during this time, nor shave, wear new clothes or attend parties.
The custom of marking the anniversary of the death is called the Yahrzeit.

Excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Judaism.

General Update

This is so exciting! I've been working hard to update the website and also found out how to give the blogs a 'new look'. I'm very pleased with the results!
Also, they're now out in the 'open' for everyone to find, a bit scary, but we'll see what happens.
Hope you enjoy the changes, and make sure to visit the links on the right side. More blogs have been birthed.