People know a lot of things about life of wasps and bees. These hymenopterous insects often meet approach of summer. However – bumblebees – practically average citizens do not know of the immediate family of honey bees.
In spite of the fact that the bumblebee sizes rather big, this insect is peaceful and stings rather seldom. This circumstance explains that larvae and dolls of bumblebees, often become an easy mark for foxes, rodents, badgers. On by these dangerous enemies, there is one more troublemaker of pack - an ant though its sizes and it is much less. Colonies they destroy larvae in the found nests of bumblebees.
Bumblebees, as well as their relatives are bees and wasps, collect nectar from plants, at the same time pollinating them, and produce honey with which they feed the posterity. But unlike bees, they do not prepare honey for the future for a wintering as the main population of bumblebees perishes, and to winter has an opportunity only a young shmeliny uterus.
Bumblebees are useful insects, their interesting and elaborate life deserves that people learned about it a little more.
Nest of bumblebees
After awakening from a winter dream the female of a bumblebee looks for the place for a nesting ground. The abandoned mouse hole, a squirrel hollow, etc. can well be suitable for this purpose. The main requirement to future living space – its closeness from drafts and isolation. It is necessary for maintenance of a certain temperature condition for cultivation of posterity. First of all the uterus clears the found den of all unnecessary and superfluous. Then covers a bottom small blades, a moss and feathers, creating conditions for the first laying. To the end of construction the nest gains deckle-edged rounded shape. Each of the created cells reconstructs after double use.
Cultivation of posterity
Process of construction of a nest goes the whole summer is continuous. While in the first cell filled with nectar and honey already hatched larvae develop, in following the uterus only lays eggs. And so endlessly. As a rule, the food corked in a cell, is enough only for growth for a larva, and formation of a doll from silky threads requires additional supply with nectar and honey. At cultivation of the first party of posterity this function is performed by a uterus of a bumblebee independently. With a consequence it in it is helped by "the senior children".
Unlike the wasps and bees storing honey stocks in the wax built cells, bumblebees as a luggage storage use become empty after a young growth exit, cocoons.
The average family of bumblebees totals about 300 individuals by the end of summer. Larger nesting grounds meet very seldom.