Anja Murray: The difference between bumblebees, solitary bees and honeybees

In 2021 a ‘new’ bee species arrived in Ireland, the ‘ivy bee’. This bee was first spotted in Wexford... perhaps warming temperatures have facilitated the expansion of its range. Have you seen it yet?

Buff-tailed bumblebee. Picture: Grahame Madge

I watch an October bee flitting from flower to flower, a substantial bumblebee with a white backside which I guess might distinguish it as a Buff-tailed bumblebee. These bumblebees nest in large social groups of up to 600 bees during the summer, making their colony underground, often in repurposed burrows of mice. In Ireland the buff tailed bumblebee is one of more than 100 native bee species. There are 20 types of bumblebee, most of whom nest collectively like the buff-tailed bumblebee, and a further 80 solitary bees, who are not ‘social’ bees.

For bumblebees, the colony begins when a lone queen finds a suitable nesting site in spring. To begin, all her offspring are female worker bees, who help the queen as she continues laying successive broods of eggs over the summer. Males are only produced later in the season. At the end of summer, the old queen and all her workers reach the end of their natural lifespan. Only a few queens born late in the summer will endure the winter, hibernating in a safe nook or in loose soil somewhere. When she awakens in spring, she will begin the cycle again with a brand-new colony.