Red-tailed bumblebees, Bombus lapidarius, nesting

[spiralsheep]

Red-tailed bumblebees, Bombus lapidarius, nesting. The open cells are "honey pots" for food and the closed are "larval cells" for baby bees. A couple of bees exhibited territorial behaviour by flying at me while I captured these images but they were investigative not aggressive.

Comments

[weaverbird]

Very cool pictures! Glad they didn't get aggressive with you; they sound pretty mellow. Our bumblebees in New England seem to be getting crankier in recent years, making it risky to photograph them.

[spiralsheep]

Thank you.

I shuffled forwards very slowly and otherwise kept as still as possible, especially when the sentry sisters were checking me out. But it has to be said that their scatterbrained queen had chosen a busy urban path and built her nest at human chest height so they must be used to people passing by and stopping to look.

If they'd been paper wasps then I definitely wouldn't have risked it.

[el1ie]

Wonderful photos and thanks for identifying the bees! Fascinating to see those little open honey pots, I've never seen those before, of if I had, not recognised what they were, I'll know what to look for now.

We have tons of different bees around the flowers right now, I should start trying to identify them to keep track of what flowers they enjoy most. I do try to grow as much for them as I can.

[spiralsheep]

You're welcome!

Most bumblebees nest underground or inside trees or in other places where you're unlikely to see their nests without specialist equipment. I was amazed to see a nest out in the open so I had to cap it and share.

Bees can be difficult to identify with 100% certainty so you're likely to end up saying this bee is *probably* x species a lot (I do!). If I hadn't seen the nest above for identification purposes then there would have been a tiny possibility that my Red-tailed bumblebees were rare Red-shanked carder bees instead (unlikely but possible). It's still fun though, and much easier with photos (especially cos there are so many places online where experts will help with IDs). Have fun, and keep growing your insect-friendly garden!