- Published on
In which we contemplate these flying fur balls and inquire about their rather unusual name.
Recently, I've had opportunities to observe and photograph several different types of bumblebees. For example, THE FIRST PHOTO is a tricolored bumblebee we saw in Minnesota. This was the first bumblebee I had seen with orange bands on its abdomen.
There are about 250 species of bumblebees worldwide. THE SECOND PHOTO is a vestal cuckoo bumblebee (not my photo... these live in Europe). This is the only bumblebee I've seen photos of that has white bands on its abdomen.
Bumblebees (in the genus Bombus) usually live in small colonies of about 50 to 400 bees (honeybee colonies can have up to 100,000 bees!). Like honeybees, they are typically eusocial, which means they have division of labor within the colony—the queen lays eggs, the other females (workers) go out and gather pollen and nectar and care for the young, and the males (drones) exist only to mate.
Cuckoo bumblebees are an interesting exception to this. They are what we call brood parasites—they do not make nests or form colonies. Instead, queen cuckoo bumblebees invade the nests of other types on bumblebees and kill the queen. Then they lay their own eggs in the nest, and the workers of the other species actually feed and raise the invading cuckoo bumblebee's young. Cuckoo bumblebees got their name because the birds called cuckoos do something similar—they lay an egg in the nest of another bird species, and when the baby cuckoo hatches, it shoves the eggs that were already there out of the nest, and the mother bird feeds and cares for the baby cuckoo. Very rude.
By the way... the largest bumblebee species in the world is Bombus dahlbomii, also called the moscardón, from South America. They grow to 1.6 inches (40mm) long, and they have been described as "flying mice."
Okay, let's look at why these insects are called bumblebees. The name is fun to say, but where did it come from?
First, a shout out to Scotland, where the bumblebee has the coolest colloquial names, including the drumbledrone and the foggy toddler. And long ago, they used the name dumbledore (which is where J.K. Rowling got the name for her Hogwarts Headmaster).
Before the early 1900s, bumblebees were widely known as humblebees. Back when Charles Darwin (and all of his contemporaries) wrote about these insects, they called them humblebees. This name resulted from the humming sound they make as they fly.
So, when did the name change to bumblebee? In a famous book on bees written by Frederick Sladen and published in 1912, he still called them humblebees. However, by that time the newer name was starting to appear. In fact, many people consider Beatrix Potter's 1910 book, Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, to be the biggest factor in the momentum of this name change. Mrs. Tittlemouse is deeply troubled by squatters making mossy nests in her yard. The squatters happen to be large bees, and their leader is Babbitty Bumble.
So, a fictional character, Babbitty Bumble, led to widespread use of the name bumblebee. THIRD IMAGE.
Photo Credits:
- Tri-colored bumblebee - Stan C. Smith
- Vestal cuckoo bumblebee - René Cortin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Babbitty Bumble - Original Beatrix Potter illustration from Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910) - Public Domain