Meet my neighbor, Clara. She is smart, sweet, and a good mom. You will like her.

Oh, did I tell you she is a Bumblebee?

Preamble: on the style of the story.

The text is information about Bumblebees (the genus Bombus), and a story about my time with Clara, an individual Bumblebee Queen and mother.

In the story portion, I relay my observations of Clara over her active adult life, what I learned about her individually, and a little about her family. I gained insight into her perceptual world governed by her sense organs different than ours.

I was surprised at her awareness of her environment, her capacity for intelligence, learning, decision-making, memories, play, emotion, and understanding of actions and outcomes.

Come meet Clara BB Huginton - I am sure you will like her.

Much of the descriptions of the life of Bumblebees in this story are taken from various online articles and books. The name of the author and the article title follow the excerpt. If the source is a book, the title is listed in italics.

Remember to leave room for the wild animals.
Leaves provide important insulation and habitat for bumblebees,
other bees, and other animals.
Andrena (Melandrena) pictured above is not a bumblebee.

This native shrub (pussy willow) provides some of the earliest flowers which means
that they provide plenty of pollen for our native bees!

Clara must learn how to access the reward from flowers.
Each flower species has a different puzzle.
Some individual bees do better than others.

Postscript from The_beeguy (Twitter handle): Basic bee fact #42

Bumblebee tongues are red/orange in color, long, stretchy, and hairy at the end.

Perfect for lapping up nectar.

When in flight the tongue folds under the head and body inside a sheath.

The three smaller eyes are on the forehead in between the two larger eyes.

Many male BB species have tufts of yellow hair on their face.

A complex tongue that varies among BB species and even within a species.

The Abdomen has segments called "Terga".
The Tricolored Bumblebee shown above,
the T6, T5 are black, T4 yellow, T3, T2 orange, T1 yellow.

"Experiments have shown that bumblebees are theoretically capable of flying at altitudes higher than Mt. Everest (29,000 feet) & they have been observed in the wild at altitudes as high as 16,000 feet above sea level." the_beeguy (Twitter handle).

Bumblebees have cute butts!

"Civilized yards are all alike. Every wild yard is wild in its own way."

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Blueberry - a favorite for Clara - and mine too.

Leg up means you are getting too close - a sign of bee stress.

Beewolf

Robber Fly

Mite on a bumblebee.

Mite on a bumblebee

I have no hot coffee to offer.
Instead, I blow a warm breath
to help my bumblebee neighbor
warm up on a cool wet morning.

Sweatbee excavating a Goldenrod stem from last year's growth.

Sarah BB Huginton
(Clara's daughter)

REFERENCES

About BB		About Bumble Bees. The Xerces Society.
American BB		The American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) - U.S. Forest Service.
BB Butts	2018	Someone Noticed How Cute Bumblebee Butts Are, And Now We Can’t Get Enough.
BB natural history and conservation in VT	2020	Bumble Bee Natural History and Conservation in Vermont - Kent McFarland, VCE (Video recording)
Bernie’s Insect Blog	2023	VTBugeyed Blog
Book review	2014	The Amazing World of Bumblebees. - UC News about Entomology and Nematology BB of NA Book Review.
Book review	2015	The Bees in Your Backyard, Joseph Wilson & Olivia Carril, Princeton Univ. Press.
Book review (Research)	2022	The Mind of a Bee, by Lars Chittka, Princeton Univ. Press
Book Review (Research)	2013	A Sting in the Tale by Dave Coulson
Brain	2022	Bumble Bee Behavior: Surprising Capabilities of Small Brains. - Owlcation.
Brain /mind	2023	Bees are sentient’: inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers. The Guardian.
Brood Care by males	1985	Brood care by male bumblebees
Buzz pollination	2016	This Vibrating Bumblebee Unlocks a Flower's Hidden Treasure \| Deep Look. Video
Buzz pollination	2016	Watch: The Secret Buzz Only Bumblebees Know To Unlock Our Favorite Crops. - NPR.
Carry capacity	2021	Bumblebees are the super heavyweights of the insect world… - Daily Mail.
Cognition		Animal Cognition: An Insect’s Sense of Time?
Cognition	2012	The mysterious cognitive abilities of bees: why models of visual processing need to consider experience and individual differences in animal performance. - Journal of Experimental Biology.
Conservation		Bumble Bee Conservation. - Xerces Society PDF
Conservation	2022	Opinion: The Bumblebee’s Decline Shows How We Get Conservation Wrong. - UNDARK.
Conservation	2019	Honoring Robbin Thorp. A Legendary Figure In North American Bee Conservation. - The Xerces Society
Conservation	2023	Insect Pollinators: The Time is Now for Identifying Species of Greatest Conservation Need. McFarland, Spencer (VCE), et al.
Decline	2018	Study Reveals Striking Decline of Vermont’s Bumble Bees. - University of Vermont.
DLR Leg Lifting	2021	The disturbance leg-lift response (DLR): an undescribed behavior in bumble bees. - NIH.
Education in schools	2018	Don’t Know Much about Bumblebees?—A Study about Secondary School Students’ Knowledge and Attitude Shows Educational Demand
Education in schools	2022	Teaching and Learning about Bee Extinction through Project-Based Learning (PBL): Its Impact on the Classroom Climate (CL) among Eighth Grader Students
Education in schools	2003	Bumble Boosters: Doing Science as a Community of Learners - Univ of Nebraska
Energy economic laws fundamental to living	1979	Bumblebee Economics by Bernd Heinrich. Harvard University Press
Facts	2022	15 Buzzworthy Bumblebee Facts - Treehugger
Field Guide	2015	Field Guide to the Bumble Bees of VT - Vt Center for Ecostudies
Field Guide	2014	Bumble Bees of North America, by Paul Williams, Robbin Thorp, Leif Richardson & Sheila Colla
Field Guide Poster		Bumble Bees of the Eastern United States - Pollinator Partnership
Finding flowers	2013	Bumblebees use logic to find the best flowers. - PHYS ORG
Foraging	2018	Strong Interspecific Differences in Foraging Activity Observed Between Honey Bees and Bumble Bees Using Miniaturized Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
Franklin BB	2021	Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Endangered Species Status for Franklin's Bumble Bee. - National Archives.
Fun Facts	2016	11 Fun Facts You May Not Know About Bumble Bees. - Brody Brothers.
General		Bumblebee. - Wikipedia.
General		Native Bees. The Jha Lab
Grooming		How Do Bees Clean Themselves, Each Other, And The Nest or Hive?
Heat Stress	2023	Feeling the heat: Bumblebee workers show no acclimation capacity of upper thermal tolerance to simulated heatwaves. - Journal of Thermal Biology.
Hibernation	2022	Where do bumble bees go in winter? - Honey Bee Suite
Hibernation	1969	A Study of the Hibernation of Bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Bombidae) in Southern England. - JSTOR
Intelligence	2023	Insect intelligence. Princeton Univ. Press.
Learning	2023	Bumblebees learn new 'trends' in their behavior by watching and learning - Science Direct
Learning	2023	Bumblebees learn new 'trends' in their behavior by watching and learning - Science News
Learning	2023	Can insects have culture? Puzzle-solving bumblebees show it's possible. - NPR
Life History	2021	An organizing feature of bumble bee life history: worker emergence promotes queen reproduction and survival in young nests. - Oxford Academic.
Lifecycle	2021	The Bumblebee Lifecycle - The Bumblebee Conservation Trust. (This is a UK-based and focused charity so the information we provide applies to the UK.)
Lifecycle	2019	The Bumblebee Professor II. The life cycle of the bumblebee. - Dave Goulson. Video
Lifecycle		Guidance - Bumble bees - natural mortality
Lifecycle		Look Inside a Bumblebee Nest - Bumblebee Conservation Trust (UK-based and focused charity so the information we provide applies to the UK.)
Lifecycle	2021	The Bumble Bee Life Cycle - Buzz About Bees
Lifecycle	2021	The Wonderful World Of Bees - Buzz About Bees
Mating	2013	Bumble bees mating. Video
Microbiomes	2023	The secret life of bumblebees - UCI News
Mortality		Finding dead bumble bees. NatureScot.
Nesting / overwintering. Photo of BB on the nest		Bumble Bees: Nesting and Overwintering. - Xerces Society.
Personalities	2016	Flight of the Bumblebee: survey finds individual personalities. The Guardian.
Pesticide	2021	It's not the Glyphosate, it is the inert ingredients. - Bee Culture.
Pesticides	2022	Quantifying exposure of bumblebee (Bombus spp.) queens to pesticide residues when hibernating in agricultural soils
Petition		Save the American Bumblebee (petition). CENTER for BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
Petition	2018	WOMAN BECOMES FIRST KNOWN PERSON TO KEEP BUMBLEBEE AS A PET - APIS CERA
Physiology	2023	Using physiology to better support wild bee conservation - Conservation Physiology
Plants for BB	2020	Bumblebees!: The Early Spring Garden. - A Wild Garden.
Plants for BB	2022	Heather Holm, Bumble Bee Banquet: Selecting Native Plants for Bumble Bees. Recording, Heather Holm Presentation.
Plants for BB		SOFT LANDINGS. - Heather Holm
Play	2022(?)	Bumblebees enjoy playing with balls, according to study – BBC News. - Video
Play	2022	Do bumble bees play? - Science Direct.
Play	2022	First-ever study shows bumble bees ‘play’. Video
Play	2022	This YouTube Video Shows Bumble Bees Playing With Toys. - Medium.
Poem	1863	Hello Poetry, “Nature is what we see” (Poem) by Emily Dickinson
Recognize human faces	2023	The Conversation: Bees can learn, remember, even recognize human faces. - News Register.
Red List		IUCN Red list of threatened species
Research of boxes used in Commercial use of BBs		Bumblebee research sparks rapid industry change
Robin Thorpe / Franklin BB	2016	The old man and the bee - CNN
Self Aware	2020	Bumblebees perceive the spatial layout of their environment about their body size and form to minimize inflight collisions. - PNAS.
Sensory	2022	An Immense World by Ed Yong, Random House NY
Sharing observations		iNaturalist
Specialists		Pollen Specialist Native Bees - Heather Holm.
Stress	2022	Bumblebees have been increasingly stressed over the past century. - earth.com.
sunflowers	2023	UMass Amherst research finds surprising science behind Bumblebee superfood - UMass Amherst
Survival rates	2023	First field-based estimates of bumblebee diapause survival rates showcase high survivorship in the wild. PMC.
Sustainability	2020	Why bees are critical for achieving sustainable development. National Library of Medicine.
Taxonomic & FG	2014	Bumble Bees of North America by Paul Williams, Robbin Thorp, Leif Richardson & Sheila Colla, Princeton Univ. Press.
Temperature sensitivity	2022	It can be too warm or too cold for bumblebees to fly - Moment of Science
Vision	2014	Can bees see at a glance?
Watching BBs	2021	The Basics of Bumble Bee Watching. - Bell Museum