Do bumblebees live alone or in hives? I don’t mean wasps, hornets or honeybees, I am referring to the great furry things that “bumble about” the garden.
[url href=“http://www.mearns.org.uk/mrssmith/bees/bees.htm”]Yes, they do.
Tris
Everything is on the Net.
I, being a naturally inquisitive child who apparently cannot learn across species lines, have a wealth of experience in this matter.
Bees are annoying, and numerous.
Wasps are painful, but not so numerous.
Yellowjackets are very painful, and fairly numerous, and quite persistent.
Hornets are trouble–avoid at all costs!
Bumblebees are like being attacked by a wing of B-52’s. Contrary to Triskadecamus’ citation, workers will sting, and it is a nice, lasting hurt not unlike a charley horse. They are loud, scary, and slow, and you know the sting is coming, slowly, but not so slow as to be able to brush off the hairy clasping critter before it happens. And, at least in my case, once I pissed them off they followed me fully a hundred yards, and then spent half an hour patrolling the house just in case I thought I could take 'em.
Funny thing is, I never found out where that bumblebee nest was, or what it looked like. I just got close enough to annoy them.
I know how bumblebees fly: they’d kick the crap outa God if He didn’t let 'em.
The large black and yellow banded, fuzzy “bumblebees” where I live tend to live in hives underground. Often they are located in stands of tall dry grasses or under shrubbery. If disturbed they will attack in full strength (I liked the B-52 simile).
Once, while mowing the lawn, I unknowingly pushed the mower over a hive of the demons. When I pulled the mower back, out they came. I sustained at least five hits. I retreated to the garage. Seeking revenge, I remembered that bumble-bees will not fit through a tennis-racket. Imagine what the neighbors must have thought as they witnessed the attack on the bumble-bees in my front yard with a “Jimmy Connors” Wilson aluminum!
IIRC, there are some (maybe called “carpenter bees”?) that live in holes bored into rotten wood… I fuzzily recall my misspent youth in Pennsylvania, where there were some BIG muthers who I think lived alone in holes… my father (an entymologist [bug doctor]) told me at the time that this type of bumble bee couldn’t sting… but I never had the nerve to test this out (the bees LOOKED lethal, and my father has a weird sense of humor…)
True. Carpenter bees (same size and shape as bumblebees) do not generally sting. (I think they may have the equipment, but they are generally so effective at driving off people by pretending to be bumblebees that they never have to resort to stinging.)
My deck was infested with carpenter bees and it took several years to get rid of them all, but no one in my family has been stung by a carpenter bee in the 13 1/2 years we’ve lived here. (several wasps, two bald hornets, and a few yellow jackets have all laid their marks on me, but the carpenter bees just buzz loudly next to my ear and move away.
Bumble bees live in ground nests with from 30 to 200 members IIRC (I haven’t had a chance to check Tris’s link, yet.
Sometimes when bumblebees are really tired they sleep on the flowers in the garden instead of going back to their hives. They are hard to photograph when they are actively collecting pollen (they move around too much), but I took a picture of a slumbering bumblebee loaded down with pollen. I have accidently brought bumblebees indoors on cut flowers, they didn’t wake up even when I cut the flower they were sleeping on.
I have seen them entering cracks in my brick backstep/planter thingy, and I think they nest in there.