The bumble bee is a medium- sized insect easily recognised by it hairy abdomen which is striped yellow, black or white. It is related to the honey bee and, like it, is an important pollinator of wild and cultivated plants.

It is frequent in the countryside and in gardens and can be seen throughout the summer at San Anton and Buskett gardens tirelessly visiting one flower after another, collecting pollen and nectar.

Bumble bees are colonial insects. They build underground nests often in an abandoned rat’s nest.

A bumble bee colony does survive the winter. In cold weather all the members of the colony, except for the young fertilised “queens”, die. These queens spend the winter hibernating in a sheltered place.

In spring, as soon as the days are warm enough, these females become active again. The first thing they do is visit some flowers to replenish themselves with nectar and immediately after start to search for a suitable site to build a new nest. The queen then lays a few eggs and after these hatch, cares for the larvae until they pupate.

When the first bumble bees emerge, they start looking for nectar and pollen which they carry to the colony and take care of the larvae as soon as they hatch. Once they take over this work, the queen concentrates her energy on laying eggs and does not leave the nest again. At the end of summer the queen lays unfertilised eggs which hatch into males.

At the same time some of the eggs are given extra food and these hatch into new queens. It is these queens that survive the winter. The males leave the nest and never return. They forage for themselves and search for queen bumble bees and mate with them.

The bumble bee, known in Maltese as bomblu, is nowadays being imported and released in greenhouses to pollinate the flowers of agricultural plants because wild bumble bees and the honey bee do not regularly enter these man-made structures.

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