Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: SymeAaro on 27/08/2017 23:32:18
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Honey bees are well studied. But Bumble bees are not.
Some sources say they make honey in small amounts.
Others say they feed their young nectar.
So, do workers make honey, and feed the young honey?
OR do they come back with nectar, feed the nectar to whatever young, then turn the surpluss into storage honey?
OR something else?
Sorry being pedantic!
Thanks
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We need @atrox for this one!
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Honey bees are well studied. But Bumble bees are not.
While it is true that honey bees have been much better studied than bumble bees the latter have also been very extensivly studied because of their importance in pollination.
The confusion as to whether they make honey is due to how we might define honey.
When a queen bumblebee emerges from hibernation she begins to make a nest where she makes nectar pots from wax.
She then gathers nectar from flowers and stores it in the nectar pots and she will feed on the nectar herself from the nectar pots while she incubates her eggs.
New bumblebees will also feed on nectar from the nectar pots when they emerge. It could be said that this is the bumblebee version of honey, but it is not the same as that produced by honey bees as there is no extended processing/transformation period, and the nectar is gathered and stored in the wax pots in much smaller quantities and for a much shorter time.
The big difference in the way the nectar is used is that the honey bee colony survives the winter using it's honey stores but the bumble bee colony does not.
If the honey bee did not process the nectar it would ferment and be unusable. This sometimes happens to a few frames of honey in our hives if a sudden cold snap causes the bees to slow down and cluster. The moisture content of the honey needs to be below 20% or it will ferment.