How Long Do Bumble Bees Live. Last year in summer, I was sitting in the garden of my home with my friends and while I was talking with my friends I noticed a bee moving around the flowers in my garden. I was curious to know what bee it was and found out it was a different bee, similar to the honeybee, but not a honeybee.
When I got closer to it I realize it was a bee with yellow and black stripes on it, it was sucking juices from the flowers. It was a bumblebee.
Looking at bumblebee sucking nectar from the flower of my garden was a pleasing experience, and I bet it would be a pleasing experience for you as well.
Like me, looking at bumblebees might have also given birth to curiosity to know more about bumblebees so that you can easily differentiate between honeybees and bumblebees.
Knowing the differences between honeybee and bumblebee is not the only a reason to know about bumblebees but sometimes you just wish to learn bit more details about the thing that do look good to you just to increase your knowledge, which is good for us.
Knowing in detail about bumblebees will also be helpful for us in order to understand the power of teamwork. In this article I’ll be discussing the lifespan of bumblebees.
How Long Do Bumble Bees Live
There is individual difference in the lifespan of different species of bumblebees.
The bumblebees that you see in equatorial regions live for a longer period than the bees that live in a harsher climate of North American regions.
In order to give you a proper understanding of the lifespans of the bumblebees, I feel the need to discuss it in the below-given details.
Bumblebee Queen
The average lifespan of the queen is one year. Queen bumblebee is actually the creator and mother of the entire colony.
Her actual life begins when she leaves her cocoon in order to search for food and to find a shelter where she can be dormant.
In the weather of spring, queen bumblebee is more active. In spring, queen bumblebees go out in search to find a shelter where they can make their nest because that’s where they can lay their eggs.
Being a mother of eggs, she takes care of eggs and lets the eggs be warmed. The first batch of bees she produces is the workers that quickly take charge of their duties. In other words, the responsibility of the queen is only feeding and laying eggs.
Worker Bumblebees
The average lifespan of worker bumblebees is 2 to 6 weeks. The lifespan of worker bumblebees is contingent on their species and as well as their responsibility.
Some of the worker bumblebees are assigned the responsibility of guarding the nest and other group of worker bumblebees are assigned the responsibility of gathering nectars and pollen. Life of workers is purely dependent upon their species and their roles.
One of their species called Bombus terricola fails to even live more than 3 weeks regardless of its role in the colony. These species of bumblebees are native to Canada.
What queen bumblebee do good is that she keeps producing the worker bumblebees in order to maintain their cycle work.
Male Bumblebee
The average lifespan of male bumblebee is 2 weeks. In contrast to queen and worker bumblebees, male bumblebees are very different. New queens and the male bumblebees are produced at the same time.
As soon the male bumblebees come into being they just go outside their nest without looking back. All they are concerned is to mate with the virgin queens and then they become lifeless.
Its also true about them the male bumblebees that not all of them are fortunate enough to have a queen that hasn’t lost her virginity because there are already many male bumblebees in competition with fellow male bumblebees to mate with queen bumblebees therefore they try their level best to perform better than the others.
Factors That Affect Bumblebees
- Factors that affect queen bumblebees
Queen bumblebee spends some of her life in the cocoon and then she goes in hiding to go for inactivity where she lays her egg, but that’s the most vulnerable part of her life is, because there she is exposed to a number of parasites that potentially affects her life.
One other factor that affects their life is beekeepers who use them for their own selves. In such cases, the queen bumblebee spreads parasites to other queens that are in a state of inactivity.
- Factors affecting workers and male bumblebees
It depends on their role. Workers that protect the nest live longer than those who extract nectar and pollen from flowers. Because workers are not exposed to external threats such as predators and rain etc.
Similarly, male bumblebees are more exposed to the outer world, which puts their life always into risk.
What is a Bumblebee Insect?
Conclusion
How Long Do Bumble Bees Live. In this article, you have learned the lifespan of queen bumblebees, worker bumblebees, and male bumblebees. You also have a little bit of idea of what factors affect their life.
Queen bumblebees are exposed to parasites and they can spread it to other queen bumblebees, while many workers and male bumblebees who go outside their nest to suck the nectar are always exposed to external dangers such as their predators and rain etc.
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