Queen Bee

Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) on Japanese Skimmia (Skimmia japonica)

Now that the weather is warming up, bees are visiting the garden in ever-increasing numbers. Queen Buff-tailed Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) were among the first to appear, lumbering through the flowering Red Dead-nettle plants as early as March. Queens are the only ones to overwinter, and they're easy to tell from workers and males (which will appear later in the season) by their larger size. The narrow brown neck band, golden-brown "girdle" and buffy tail tip of the individual above help to identify it as belonging to the subspecies audax, which is found only in Britain. The large size and dense "fur" of Buff-tailed Bumblebees allow them to continue foraging when temperatures are as low as 50F (10C), when most other bees become inactive. This is one of lowland Britain's commonest bumblebees, found in a wide variety of habitats, including urban areas. It's rarer in the mountains and on offshore islands. Native to the western Palearctic, it's widespread and abundant across most of lowland Europe and northern Africa as well.

Buff-tailed Bumblebees are general pollinators, visiting a wide variety of flowering plants. In fact, they've been introduced to countries around the globe — including Japan, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand and Mexico — primarily to pollinate greenhouse crops. Some individuals from those introductions have escaped to create feral populations, and the species is considered invasive in some areas. Wild Buff-tailed Bumblebees typically nest underground in old rodent burrows. Mated queens emerge from hibernation and set up new colonies, rearing worker daughters and (later in the summer) males. New queens and males emerge by mid-summer to mate. The newly mated queens will then hibernate over winter, while the rest of the colony dies. I've seen several queens investigating various holes in the garden this week — including a few checking out the entrance holes to our occupied nest boxes!