What are the differences between a bumble bee and a honey bee?

Bumble bee and the honey bee are distant cousins.





Unlike the honey bee the humble bumble is gentle and slow. As she trundles around the garden collecting pollen and nectar she is quite different to her streamlined relative who dashes about everywhere.





Even her body shape is different as you can see from the pictures. The bumble is round and furry and not at all like her more wasp shaped cousin. In fact as you can see from the photo there are three kinds of bumble bee, the large Queen, the smaller imperfectly formed female worker bee and the tiny male or drone bee. All are seen at different times of year. Only the Queen and the worker bees have a sting.





Bumble bees are much less aggressive than honey bees.





Bumble bees do not lose their sting and die if they use it, as a honey bee will





Because they live in small nests bumble bees never swarm - so you can encourage a nest or two in the garden without fear of this happening. What are the differences between a bumble bee and a honey bee?
Many different types of bee are called ';bumble bees'; but nearly all have fatter rounder bodies. Some are solitary, some live in small colonies and others in larger ones. Some burrow into clay banks to make a nest. The sting is not barbed like that on the honey bee so that it can pierce the skin and withdraw. If a honey bee stings you it will try to work its sting out by turning round in a circle so that the barb can be eased out. If you brush it off the poison sac is usually ripped out leaving it embedded in you. The bee will then die because of blood loss. The poison sac will continue to pulse as it pumps more poison into you. The best way to remove it is to scrape it off with a knife with a sideways action. If you try to pich it out with your fingers you will squeeze more poison into your body.


Honey bees are more highly evolved than their close relatives the wasp which also does not have a barb. Wasps are carnivourous and eat greenfly, caterpillars and anything they can carry away to their nest which is constructed of chewed up celulose to make paper. Honeybees eat only nectar from flowers and pollen. They also sometimes are attacted to ';honeydew'; which is produced by certain trees such as lime and poplar and plane trees. Some bumble bees are solitary, others live in small colonies. In early spring the large bumble bees that you see flying round the garden or woodland are queens. They have overwintered on their own after having been mated the previous autumn and are searching for a nest site to lay one or two eggs which they will feed themselves having found some nectar and pollen. When these workers hatch out they will take over the task of feeding and caring for the infant colony as the queen devotes more time to egg laying. Some bumble bees construct large ';pots'; of wax in which honey is stored for use by the colony in times of scarcity. The honey bee constructs many smaller cells (honeycomb) which is used both for the queen to lay eggs in and for storing honey and pollen. The honey is stored above the brood rearing combs so that the heat rising from the nest will help to evaporate the thin nectar produced by flowers into thicker honey which will keep better. Honeybees produce much greater quantities of honey because unlike bumblebees the colony continues on for more than one season and although the bees hibernate during the cold months when there are no flowers or food sources the bees go into their store of honey to keep themselves alive and warm. Honeybee colonies number in the thousands. A big colony can number 50,000 at the height of the summer. If the colony gets too big the workers sense that they are overcrowded and start making large cells in the comb. These are queen cells and although the queen will lay a normal egg into them the workers feed the growing grub with a special food called Royal Jelly which because it is so rich and nutritious has the effect of turning the egg into a queen. They also make slightly smaller special cells for making drones. These are male bees which will be needed to mate with the emerging queens when they fly. If a freshly hatched queen bee can do so she will attempt to sting to death all the other queen bees whilst they are still in their cells. Drones do not have stings-their sole purpose in life is to mate with a queen who will mate with several drones and store the sperm inside her body to fertilise her future eggs.Killing the other emerging queens will ensure that when the colony swarms as they will do shortly there will be more bees for her to share. The younger bees which have just hatched usually fly off with the new queen and the older bees stay in the hive. When you see a swarm of bees its just a colony having divided and off to seek a new home.


A swarm of bees contrary to popular myth is not aggressive and will not sting you unless provoked. Their stomachs are full to capacity with honey which they have taken with them from the parent nest as start up supplies for the new nest.What are the differences between a bumble bee and a honey bee?






1 iz bumble bees, e other iz honey bees.. but both r '; BEES ';.......


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