Bumble Bees Do They Sting? | Bee Habits & Behaviors

Bumble bees have fascinated humans for centuries. These insects are regulated for survival and productivity. Yet, there’s much confusion about them. Bees, wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets often get lumped into one category, but they’re distinctively separate.

Ironically, they’re all related as part of the Hymenoptera family of insects. Yes, those pesky critters that buzz around your yard and make children run are insects, just like cockroaches and termites.

To fit the classification of an insect, the object needs to have a distinct head, thorax, and abdomen. Scientists have identified more than 20,000 species of bees, and around 5,000 species call the United States home. However, the number constantly changes as new species are identified and others are reclassified.

The Social Structure of Bumble Bees

Some bumble bees are remarkably social as they live in hives or colonies, but the number of bees living in groups is only 8%. Most bee species, approximately 92%, prefer to live alone and don’t belong to any hive. Have you ever encountered a nest in the ground while mowing the grass or playing outside?

Bees that nest in the ground are called tunnel nesters, such as the mason, masked, and leafcutter bees. Yellow jackets also nest in the ground but belong to the wasp family. While some yellow jackets are social, many are not.

Social bees, like honeybees, have a controlled setup that helps them function. They run their hives like a well-oiled machine, including workers, drones, and a queen.

Queen

A strong woman with excellent leadership skills is often called a “queen bee?” It comes from the social hierarchy of bees. Their survival as a colony depends on their queen, who is usually the most prominent female and the only one who is fertile and lays eggs.

Her only job in the hive is to relax, stay healthy, mate with drones, and lay her eggs. The worker bees tend to her every need, including grooming, feeding, and protection.

Drones

Drones are male bumble bees that are only responsible for mating with a queen. They can’t sting for protection and don’t fly about gathering nectar. They can’t even feed themselves without assistance from worker bees.

However, they don’t mate with the queen in their colony. Instead, they search for virgin queens that live in other hives. This process helps establish new colonies as the freshly mated queen will build a new hive to lay her eggs and raise her young.

These male bees can travel as far as ten miles a day searching for a queen. A drone’s lifespan is about 30 days, so it might briefly fly approximately 300 miles.

Bubmle Bee Workers

The true heroes of the social bee world are the workers, who are sterile females. They get all the hive’s responsibilities dumped on them. Think of them as the “Cinderellas” of the colony. Since their duties are chaotic and dangerous, these industrial hive members live an average of 35-42 days.

Experts say that at least 95 percent of the hive’s population are workers, and one hive may contain up to 80,000. Within the ranks of the workers is a strict division of labor. The queen has a sizable court of chambermaids who work around the clock grooming, feeding, and keeping her comfortable. Others are nursemaids who care for the queen’s eggs and larvae.

Foraging Workers

Foraging workers may fly several miles daily, gathering pollen and nectar. They return their bounty to the hive to create delicious, golden honey to feed the colony. While on their daily journeys, they’ll scout potential sites for new hives as the colony grows. They are perpetually busy cleaning, making repairs, creating honeycombs, and using their wings and body heat to maintain a comfortable temperature in the hive.

Soldier Workers

Another elite worker division is the soldier workers. These workers are forever vigilant in protecting the hive from any intruders. The smallest threat can send a virtual swarm of soldiers in attack mode with their stingers ready. However, all workers can sting if they feel threatened.

If you’ve ever had a painful bee sting, it was from a soldier or forager on the defense. The cost of protecting their hive is their lives because part of their insides is ripped out with the stinger. The bee dies within seconds after stinging.

Communication Systems

While bumble bees don’t speak like humans do, they have a unique way of communicating. They use a complex combination of flight and movement to create a choreographed language for communication and survival. Scientists are beginning to discover how intelligent the bee dance language is and the depths of it.

Honeybee dances mix flight circles and angles relating to the position of the sun to alert other workers about a source of food and the distance. This unique communication is called waggle dancing and is exclusive to honeybees. Other bee species use different motions to send messages to each other about food, distance, and possible threats.

Another fascinating bee communication is using pheromones, hormones the bees’ body produces to send messages to their colony via scent. The smell and its intensity can convey messages that keep the hive safe. It also keeps the social hierarchy and each level working efficiently.

Foraging Behavior

The industrial habits of the “busy bee” have long been used for stories and poems. These winged insects are a prime example of self-sufficiency and working together as a team. Their loyal efforts benefit their colonies, living things, and the environment. No wonder social bees and their foraging behaviors continue to fascinate.

Bees are herbivores, which means that they feed on plant products, namely pollen and nectar. Foraging workers spend their relatively short lives flying about two miles daily to find the richest sources of these plant products. They are frequent visitors to flower gardens, orchards, meadows, and anywhere that offers abundant blooms, fruits, and herbs.

Once a baby worker bee reaches 21 days old, she is ready to begin her foraging duties. These specialty workers take flight during the first light of dawn and stay busy until night falls. Once they’ve located a food source, they’ll dance and use pheromones to alert their fellow workers.

Like graceful ballerinas, forager bumble bees twirl amongst colorful flowers, taking deep sips of sweet nectar. The tiny hairs on their body and legs attract nutritious pollen. Then, it’s off to another bloom for another dose of nectar and pollen dusting.

Unfortunately, many workers will die during the journey due to predators and other natural dangers. Their hard work provides the pollination plants and trees need to produce fruit, reproduce, and thrive. Did you know that a single working bee may collect up to 30 mg of pollen and 15 mL of nectar?

During their daily flights, they might visit as many as 100 blossoms. They’ll return to the colony in the evening and deposit their food in special storage cavities within the hive. Some of the nectar and pollen will be fed to the queen and her young and the workers will have their share.

Honey workers will chew, process the surplus, and turn it into golden honey. The bees use their sweet elixir to eat for the energy they need to continue foraging each day. Each foraging worker will continue this process until they die and are unceremoniously swept out of the hive by younger workers.

Nest Construction Of Bumble Bees

No human-made structure can compare to bees’ skills to build their nests. Depending on the species, the hive can be made in underground burrows or a maze of wax honeycombs. The bees build and carefully maintain their nests for a thriving community.

Mother Nature has gifted worker bees with glands in their abdomens that produce a thick substance called beeswax. They use their beeswax to expertly form a series of hexagon-shaped cells that provide a nursery for eggs and young bees, food storage, and robust stability for the nest.

They build unique patterns for proper ventilation, cooling, and heating. Maintenance workers are constantly repairing damaged cells and keeping them free of debris.

Reproductive Strategies

All living things depend on reproduction for the survival of their kind. Bees have an innate process of mating and expanding each generation. Since up to 95% of a colony consists of sterile female workers, the remaining percentage is male drones and a queen.

Queen bees may have a lifespan of three to five years, or sometimes longer, depending on their species. Since they can lay up to 2,000 eggs in one day, the queen can have over a million babies in her lifetime. Many of these babies will fly away and establish their colonies with new queens.

The newly hatched virgin queen knows her royal place in the bee hierarchy and prepares for her first mating mission. She’ll seek groups of male drones in congregational areas. Their collective scent attracts her, and she produces an alluring smell to attract them.

After a mating dance, she chooses a drone, and he will mate with her midair by depositing a sperm sac in her body. When the drone goes off to die soon, the queen will mate with other drones and store away their sperm sacs. She’ll use some of the sperm to fertilize her eggs immediately and will save some for a later batch of eggs.

Drone sperm can be viable for up to four years. The impregnated queen will establish a colony and spend the rest of her life in her royal chamber laying eggs. Often, an older queen will be forcibly replaced by a younger queen. Typically, new queens seek out new places of their own.

Defense Mechanisms

Most bees are about 1.5 inches or smaller, which presents a constant danger for them. Bees are often a tasty snack for certain birds and larger mammals like skunks or honey-stealing bears. They also must be wary of predator insects like hive beetles and beewolves, a wasp insect. Some spiders, like the crab spider, are natural bee enemies.

Usually, bees will use their flying prowess to evade hungry predators. However, they can and will protect themselves with the barbed stinger in their abdomen that is loaded with venom. The bee can instantly jab the tiny stinger into the predator’s skin, pulling the venom sac out of the bee’s body.

The lodged stinger will release the venom which will cause pain and swelling in the area. Several bees stinging at once can be life-threatening to the predator, especially if a human accidentally invades the bees’ space.

Bees can also ball up into a swarm and protect the hive just by the size of the swarm and the sound of their angry buzzing. Most bee species, like honeybees, die quickly if they must eject their stingers.

Where Do Bumble Bees fit Into All This?

Of the approximately 20,000 species of bees in the world, the most recognized are honeybees and their close cousins, bumble bees. While most bumble bee species are social, their colonies may have as few as 50 members.

Bumble bees are considerably larger than their cousins. You can watch them with iconic gold and black stripes, bumbling amongst the flowers and gathering nectar.

Although bumble bees produce honey, it’s in much smaller quantities than honeybees and is just enough to feed their colony. So, humans consider the lives alongside these bumblers and don’t steal their honey.

The good news is that when you meet bumble bees outside, you’ll find they are shy and peaceful unless provoked. A bumble bee can sting you in such an unusual situation, but they would rather avoid you.

Conclusion

A world without bees wouldn’t be a happy one. Flowers, fruit trees, and other plants depend on these beneficial pollinators. Plus, there would be no sweet honey to eat. It’s a great blessing to know that people worldwide are working to protect our bees and allowing them to thrive as nature intended.

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