Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Insect

Big buzz, busy bee

Who am I?

Behold, the Buff-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, a fluffy, buzzing dynamo crucial to the chaotic ballet of our ecosystem! Forget your silent, minimalist pollinators; this bee brings the drama with its loud hum and insatiable appetite. Think of her as the tiny, striped queen of the garden party, bossing around the Dandelion and Wild Marjoram with equal enthusiasm.

This busy bee isn't just flitting about for a sugary snack, mind you. She's a critical matchmaker in the plant world, ensuring the Nettle and Selfheal can reproduce with gusto. And while she's sipping nectar, she's also unwittingly providing a buffet for the Common Garden Spider, who waits patiently in its web for her or a careless White Ermine Moth or Ladybird lured in by the same floral feast. The circle of life, fuelled by buff tails and buzzing wings!

Expert Take

Glory bee! Buzz pollination in middle C!

This bumblebee is most famous for its ability to buzz pollinate: certain plants such as Wild Poppy have ‘poricidal anthers’ which need a specific frequency of vibration for their pollen to shake out through their pores. This frequency just happens to be middle C, the frequency buff-tailed bumblebee bodies have evolved to vibrate at. When they do so, the result is a clearly visible puff of pollen!

Not all their feeding expresses such mutualistic neighborly relations however. Their tongues are too short to reach the nectar of certain tube-like flowers, so they bite a hole in the bottom of the flowers and rob the nectar without providing the usual pollination service.

In other news, they are one of the first bumblebees to emerge, often as early as January, giving them the edge on finding good nesting sites, such as safely underground in old vole holes.

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