A lady by the name of Bombus was in the neighborhood looking for real estate. I didn’t get to have a conversation with her as she was impatient. She seemed indecisive in her back and forthing through the neighborhood.

I was mesmerized by her tireless, haphazard coursing over the area. How could she so quickly analyze a decent quarters to raise her family?

Suddenly she paused. I guess you could call it momentarily hovering. Then, just as quickly she moved on; leaving me only wondering where this fat, noisy bumblebee, whose genus name is Bombus, might find a home place.

The Latin word bombus means “buzzing;” an apt christening of this group of insects. In Minnesota there are over 20 species of bumblebees in the genus Bombus.

Bumblebees are uniquely suited for unseasonally chilly days such as today. Though the calendar reads the third week of May, I have a fire in the kitchen stove. Unlike monarch butterflies, these bees, like all species of bumbebees, have developed a strategy to put up with freezing temperatures. The bumblebee is capable of stoking her inner fires by internally generating heat.

After spending a solitary long winter hibernating underground, she is patrolling low to the ground, looking closely through her huge, multi-lensed compound eyes for a likely site to create a nursery to raise her colony of children bumblebees.

Okay so “children bumblebees” is a pathetically anthropomorphic choice of words for bumblebee larvae, but it lands better on the ears of folks who tend to shy away from bees and their kin.

Ideally, this female bumblebee, fertilized last fall, will find a small excavated hole left perhaps by a rodent or some other critter. She will place dead grasses, leaves or other similar materials in the nesting chamber and then camouflage the entrance of her nursery den with these same natural materials.

Bumblebee are very competitive for these subterranean quarters and will sometimes fight to the death to claim a nesting site. Some entomologists feel that as many as 10% of the nests are taken over by a second challenging female bee.

Once the quarters are ready, the mother-to-be, collects pollen and tucks it in the chamber. The next step is to lay eggs on the pollen. The adult bee warms the eggs with her robust, hairy body until they hatch in 4-5 days. The hatching larvae feed on the pollen and then pupate for another nine or so days before they emerge as sterile females or worker bees. These are the corps of workers that will help the mother or queen bee with the following summer broods.

By the time fall comes around, the queen will lay eggs that will develop into fertile male and female bees. They will develop, leave the burrow for a mating flight and only the fertilized females will survive the winter. All others in the colony will die.

Sadly several Minnesota species of bumblebees are in decline. Overall there are too many pollinating insects in decline. Scientists feel most of the declines are the result of humans interaction and influence on the biosphere. Issues of climate change, invasive species, poisonous insecticides and habitat loss all make life difficult for bees and untold numbers of other critters.

Last year, I spent the better part of June and early July paddling down an arctic river to the Chuckchi Sea, at the southern margin of the Arctic Ocean. As we descended the serpentine river the tundra surrounded us and the long summer days gave rise to an amazing crop of short, arctic flowers. It wasn’t unusual to have a sensorial moment of celebration when the wind carried the powerful, sweet smell from thousands of crowded arctic lupines flanking the river.

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Busying themselves in the parade of purple blooms, were the largest of all bumblebees, the arctic bumblebee (Bombus polaris). It would be an exaggeration to claim these robust, well-furred bees are sparrow-sized, but they seem twice the size of our Minnesota variety. And their loud buzz makes you turn and look for an out-of-place dirt bike.

The big arctic bumblebee spends up to nine months, three quarters of a year, hibernating underground. It seems so wrong that this hardy bee can tough out months of dark and frigid days and competition among themselves and yet they cannot withstand our treatment of the natural world.

The irony is that we learn so late of the importance of these tireless pollinators.

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