Bumblebee flowers, which to choose? And their ecology

Most popular bumblebee flowers in late July

The garden centre is the obvious place to compare the attractions of different garden flowers. And, I discover, a good place to observe the ecology of bumblebees.

The main bumblebees on view today were white tailed: B terrestris and B lucorum

The most popular flowers by a mile were all colours and varieties of Salvia:

But if you look closely you can see that the bees are cheating the flowers by robbing nectar through a hole in the calyx [sepals] or corolla [tubular petals]

In the photos, nearly every flower has been broken into. 

 


The next most popular flowers were Echinacea



And after that: Penstemon, Veronica, Alstomeria, Cirsium, Helenium, Physostegia

and the Common Carders favoured Nepeta

Where to find bumblebees in late July

In Gardens

My neighbour's Lavendar is buzzing with B terrestris, lapidarius, pascuorum and pratorum, the early bumblebees are still plentiful here. Also a cuckoo bumblebee, R rupestris

In Grassland

The bramble flowers still attract B terrestris 
but the main bumblebee interest is around scabious: B lucorum, 

B terrestris, 

B pratorum

 And these oddities: a cuckoo bumblebee B rupestris?

And a faded B terrestris?

B pascuorum on thistle

Flowers for bees in July

Which flowers attract bumblebees this July?

I've seen fewer bumblebees in my garden and the countryside in the South West this week.

 Cue a visit to the nearby Botanical Garden to find which bumblebees are active and which flowers are providing pollen and nectar.

  Hebe flowers from New Zealand seem the most attractive; here's a Bombus lucorum [queen?] heavily weighed down with bundles of pollen

Also among the Hebe flowers, there were tree bumblebees: Bombus lapidarius 

Another popular flower is the   St Johns Wort : Hypericum which attracted common carder been, Bombus pascuorum carrying red pollen loads

 

And Bombus lucorum, here carrying a yellow pollen load

And Japanese anemones

Do bumblebees hold grudges?

Do bumblebees hold grudges?

Late June and the Cotswold brambles are coming into flower. 

attracting our smallest bumblebees, like this Bombus pratorum worker

and our largest, like the White-tailed bumblebees, Bombus lucorum, 

 each lucorum bee seems to linger on the bramble flower to savour every single drop of sweet nectar. Sometimes colliding with bramble thorns as they search for new flowers. Are they intoxicated? Sometimes they seem a little dizzy and poorly coordinated as they fly between the thorns.

I startled one lucorum sunning itself on the grass. It flew up into the brambles and barged a fellow lucorum bumblebee that was gorging on bramble nectar. She was taken unawares and fell like a stone onto the grass. Moments later she reappeared and smacked into the offending bee, causing it to fly off in search of another flower.

Could they be from the same colony? Or were they rivals for the food which seemed plentiful. All around, there were open bramble flowers; why pick on the bee on this one particular flower?

October Bumblbee Quest

Where might you find bumblebees now that October is here?

Well on warm sunny days you could try any flowering plants. 

This rosemary bush is still well in flower and was still producing nectar on the 19th October for honey bees and the odd carder bee so there are still active colonies of carder bees.

Also Lavendar where it's still in flower

The other place you might try looking is fruiting ivy which is popular with wasps and bees:

However I saw lots of wasps, the odd hornet and quite a few honey bees but not a single bumblebee. There was a red admiral butterfly that returned several times while I was watching, though.

The ivy has been buzzing with insects today, 20th October.

Bumblebees and stinging nettle puzzle

Nettles and bees

Common Carder bumblebees are still busy collecting pollen from Hebe bushes 

and white deadnettles. 



In the late September wind, I watched common carder bees struggling to reach the flowers. which were surrounded by stinging nettles as they often are.
  One worker carder bee that was blown off-course onto a nettle leaf and buzzed in a way that sounded angry.

Can bumblebees feel nettle stings?

It seems unlikely that the bee was stung through its cuticle. 

 But could it have activated the nettle sting and then, via its antennae, would it have tasted the irritating contents of formic acid, histamine and acetal choline released by the nettle?

Or was it simply upset by the wind?

Should I be surprised? Bumblebees are active

September bumblebees

White-tailed bumblebees are still collecting pollen, 

Here's a white-tailed bumble on a windy day on 18th September, feeding on an evergreen Hebe shrub, [sapphire variety] in a park in Bristol:

Around mid-September I expected queen white-tailed bumblebees to be seeking a quiet underground tunnel to overwinter. In fact I photographed a queen bee doing exactly that back in August. 

But this worker bee indicates otherwise.

She's carrying a pollen basket, signifying that she's still collecting pollen for her colony. After many mild winters and speculation about global warming maybe I shouldn't be surprised at this even on mild days in October. 

I guess you're still going to find bumblebees if you look in October and November. 

But if you do see one, is it a queen about to hibernate, a lone survivor or a worker and member of a persistently active colony?

Menawhile here's a common carder been on white deadnettle in the same park

The strong wind was causing this bee considerable problems.

And here's a common carder bee feeding on a Fuchsia in a Bristol garden after 5pm. 

That's a long day's work.