Category: bumblebees

Stockholm syndrome

I’m very fond of cuckoo bees. They don’t build their nests and have amazing adaptations to make other bee species raise their children. Many of them, “true” cuckoos, just lay their eggs in the nests of solitary bees, and their success depends on making it so that the nest owner doesn’t know of the parasite’s egg in her nest. Others, like the cuckoo bumblebee pictured on the cartoon you see, invade nests of social species and usurp the title of the queen. After succesfully establishing its position in the nest, the cuckoo bumblebee female begins laying her eggs and host workers care for them like for their own sisters. The cuckoo keeps discipline by biting and dominating the workers (and the old queen, if she survived) but usually doesn’t kill the workers, as they are precious workforce for her young.

On the cartoon you can see the Field cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus campestris) in the nest of the Common Carder bumblebee (Bombus pascuorum). The cuckoos are picky when it comes to host choice, and usually parasitize only one or a few host species.

March 15, 2024

bee, bees, Bombus, bumblebee, cuckoo, cuckoo bees, insects, justyna kierat, nature, nonhoneybees, Psithyrus, wild bees, wildbees
The suspect

Bee species identification is considered quite a hard job. There are some easily distinguishable species, but others demand looking closely at the specimen under a magnification. Some bumblebees take it to an even higher level. Bombus terrestris, B. lucorum, B. cryptarum and B. magnus are four closely related species living in my area, whose males and queens are often very difficult to separate, and workers, especially old and worn ones, are considered inseparable in many cases, and I mean inseparable at all by the means of looking at a specimen – even if you take it to the laboratory and look under the microscope. How on earth do these bumblebees recognize each other?! Well, they have more senses than just vision at their disposal. For example, males’ pheromones differ between these four species. When scientists are very determined to be sure which species they caught, they can do chemical analyses of these substances, or just do genetic analysis.

Fun fact: if you are eg from UK or Iberian Peninsula, you might have far less trouble recognizing your Bombus terrestris than me in Central Europe. In UK it tends to have more or less buffish tail (instead of pure white), and in Iberian Peninsula the corbiculae of females are reddish.

March 13, 2024

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, justyna kierat, nature, nonhoneybees, wild bees, wildbees
Robbers and thieves

Yesterday I read a very interesting article by Andreas Müller and Paul Westrich about Andrena lathyri, a mining bee species specialized in nectar robbing. I learned from this paper, among other things, that there is more than one way of obtaining nectar without pollination. Two of them I portraited on the cartoon. The first method, nectar robbing, involves damaging a flower, eg. piercing a hole in its side, like Bombus wurflenii, the famous nectar robber, is doing. On the other hand, nectar thiefs don’t damage flowers but are so small that they sneak past the reproductive organs straight to the nectaries, and as they don’t touch stamens or pistil, it doesn’t pollinate.

If you want to read the paper about Andrena lathyri, which I recomend, here you have the citation: Müller, A., & Westrich, P. (2023). Morphological specialisation for primary nectar robbing in a pollen specialist mining bee (Hymenoptera, Andrenidae). Journal of Hymenoptera Research, 95, 215-230.

January 29, 2024

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, justyna kierat, nature, nonhoneybees, robbers, wild bees, wildbees
The variable bumblebe

I’ve just began drawing a series of little portraits of bee species living in Poland. The drawings are referring to distinctive features of the species or their Polish names (or both ). Meet the pretty Bombus humilis, “trzmiel zmienny” in Polish, which translates into “the variable bumblebee and refers to extreme colour variability of this species.

By the way, have you known that “nacked” bumblebees (ie, under their fur) are glossy black?

January 11, 2024

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, justyna kierat, nature, nonhoneybees, wild bees, wildbees
Plagiarist

Anyone who ever tried to learn bumblebee identification, knows that there are species which are very similar in colouration to each other. Moreover, there are some strange species where one colour morph is similar to one species, and another morph – to a different species. Bumblebees form mimicry rings, which are groups of species which are visually similar and live in more or less the same area. The advantage of this similarity is that predators more quickly learn which insects are not worth attacking (bumblebee females have stings which makes them a rather unpleasant lunch).

November 26, 2023

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, nature, wild bees, wildbees
Recruiting

Bumblebees don’t dance like honeybees and can’t communicate a precise location of food. However, they can recruit nestmates to the flowers. The worker who found a good food source is running excitedly, bumping into other bees in the nest and presenting samples of collected food to them.

November 1, 2023

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, justyna kierat, nature, nonhoneybees, wild bees, wildbees
No comment.

June 8, 2023

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, nature, wild bees, wildbees
Six-toothed bumblebee

Bombus wurflenii’s Polish name is “six-toothed bumblebee” – this refers to its toothy mandibles. It is one of the species which frequently make holes in some flowers, in order to rob nectar from them. The females often fly in the bad wether and even rain which is very unusual for a bee.

June 8, 2023

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, nature, wild bees, wildbees
Buzz

Bumblebees are known for their “buzzing” behaviour – they vibrate some plants, like tomato, to effectively release pollen from poricidal anthers. (They are not the only bees which can do buzz pollination, though.)

June 8, 2023

bee, bees, bumblebee, insects, nature, wild bees, wildbees