songbird said:
Thanks guys. Here's another one then. Bumble bees. They are wild bees, and don't go into the domesticated hives I assume. So what happens to all their honey? Do people trek around trying to find their nests and pinch the honey? And can anyone ever actual get a swarm of bumble bees and get them to go into a hive?
Hello songbird, and Gill. lol.
Bumblebees have a slightly different life cycle to Honeybees in that only the Queens survive the winter in 'hibernation'. This means they do not have to build up a reserve store of honey to see a colony through the winter.
The only storage of honey is made by the Queen, shortly after setting up a nest in spring. This consists of a small thimble like 'honeypot' in which the Queen stores a small reserve of honey to see her through the early and sometimes inclement days of spring when temperatures or weather conditions may make it impossible for her to forage every day. When foraging is possible, the 'honey pot' is kept topped up, so there is always a small reserve for her to feed on.
With Bumblebees there is no Honeycomb at all, or for that matter any breeding comb. Broods of larvae are reared in small groups of cells scattered aropund the floor of the nest.
Bumblebees do not swarm at all, the colony is an annual item producing workers at first, then later in the season males (drones) and new Queens. These leave the hive and after mating disperse into the surrounding area. The new Queens build up reserves, (stored as fat) in their bodies, and then seek out a suitable site for 'hibernation'. The males after mating, possibly several times, eventually die off.
The colony founding Queen once having produced males and young Queens ceases to lay and the colony declines. Both the founder Queen and all the workers eventually die off, leaving only the new 'hibernating' Queens to found new colonies the next year.
A Queen may live a whole year, workers possibly 6 - 8 weeks and males about the same. At the end of the year the last few specimens seen are invariably male.
Hibernation is not really the correct term for the new Queen to undertake as some early appearing species e.g.
Bombus pratorum produce new Queens as early as June or July. The correct term for this passage of time is 'diapause' rather than 'hibernation'.
It is possible to create artificial breeding sites for some Bumblebee species so that observations may be made on the developement of a colony, but it is a tricky thing to do, and not all attempts at doing so are, by any means, successful.
Harry