In mid to late\nsummer the bumblebee boys are in town! They emerge from their nest at around\nthe same time as the virgin Queens, and then hang about supping nectar from bee\nbars with plenty on tap. Male bumblebees don\u2019t have pollen baskets and don\u2019t\ncollect pollen, so if you see a bumblebee with heavy shopping bags full of\npollen on the back legs, it\u2019s a female.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might find males\novernighting in flowers, or just feeding lazily on the nectar rich flowers in\nyour garden. The males are chucked out the nest and rarely allowed back in,\nperhaps this ensures that they disperse and don\u2019t mate with their siblings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And finding a mate\nis pretty much the only thing that gets these bees animated. They leave little\nsmudges of pheromones like post-it notes around to attract a female of the same\nspecies, using their cartoon facial hair like a paintbrush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love the fact\nthat male bumblebees often have a yellow moustache. It gives them a comical\nlook but it can also be a useful way to tell a male bee from a worker of the\nsame species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Male bees don\u2019t\nsting. That\u2019s because the stinging mechanism is an adaptation of the ovipositor\nstructure in female bees. Male bees don\u2019t have this and subsequently can\u2019t\nsting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you can safely\nidentify a male bee you can very gently pick them up for scrutiny. It\u2019s a very\nstrange sensation holding a buzzing bee. It literally vibrates as you hold it.\nBut \u2026. You do need to know what you are doing. Get it wrong and you will likely\nbe stung, so best improve your ID skills before you try this party trick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes male bees will cluster around a nest as the new queens hatch out, this is often seen with Tree bumblebees (Bombus hypnorum<\/em>), which can become very animated when the Queens emerge. If you\u2019ve ever been the host to a nest of these beautiful white-bottomed bees, you might have seen the nest apparently boiling over in summer. Usually this is a number of very keen male bees flying around the nest entrance waiting for the fresh Queens, who once emerged will have the undying attention of many males vying for her attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once mated the\nQueens will feed up on nectar before finding a place to safely overwinter, and\nthe males will fade away and die, many without adding their genes to the next\ngeneration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Male bees are the lager louts of bee worldd, hanging around in nectar bars waiting for the girls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,27,33,36,53,55,56,81,82],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bees","tag-addicted-to-bees","tag-bees","tag-bumblebee","tag-bumblebees","tag-jean-vernon","tag-male","tag-nectar","tag-the-green-jeanie","tag-the-secret-lives-of-garden-bees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addictedtobees.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}