Do bumblebees have honey

Bumblebees belong to the bee family and have a similar lifestyle with bees. They also live in large families and collect nectar from flowering plants. Their difficult mix up with other insects, so every student knows what they look like. But not many can say with certainty whether bumblebees make honey.

On a note!

Shaggy relatives of bees are able to process with the help of special enzymes the nectar they have collected into a sweet and nutritious product called honey. They feed larvae and eat adults. The dessert created by bumblebees is no less useful and tasty than bee, and is of great value to people.

Insect nectar collection

The shaggy family has a strict hierarchy. The main female lays eggs and is responsible for the increase in offspring. She does not fly out of the nest. Working females make up the majority of the bumblebee family. They should use long proboscis to collect nectar from plants and bring it to the hive. Worker bumblebees process their prey into honey. The life and well-being of the entire bumblebee nest depends on the performance of these family members.

Females that are not able to breed reproduce other benefits. They are able to collect nectar from 30 flowers in one minute. For this reason, they are deservedly considered the most effective plant pollinators. Bees during the same time have time to fly around only 10-12 inflorescences. And the working day for bees is much shorter than their opponents.

Interesting!

Good vision of shaggy insects allows them to collect flower fluid in rainy weather and even at dusk. Bees cannot boast of such abilities.

Male drones do not collect nectar. They build honeycombs in the form of deep cells, similar to closed water lilies. In some cells there are eggs and larvae, in other food supplies, including beef and pollen. They feed them the growing larvae, so in need of nutritious and wholesome food. Bumblebee honey meets all this requirement and is the main feeding for posterity.

Bumblebee Product Features

The taste and consistency of bumblebee treats are significantly different from the usual bee product. Bumblebee produces its honey from liquid nectar, in which more water is present in percentage terms. This is due to the fact that bumblebees prefer to pollinate such plants in which flower juice is more liquid:

• meadow clover;
• pikulnik;
• medicinal black root;
• purple nettle and others.

The floral fluid of these plants contains a large amount of water - up to 80%. Bees do not collect such nectar, preferring flowers of acacia and linden, in which it is more dense. The density of the substance also depends on the density.

On a note!

The specific gravity of bumblebee products is low, and its caloric content does not exceed 300 kcal per 100 grams. Such a dessert will delight even those who follow their figure. Bumblebee syrup contains particles of pollen, which is also not typical for beekeepers goods.

How much honey bumblebees can collect

Despite the high productivity of shaggy insects, their stocks are significantly inferior to the number of honey stocks of bees. Bee families live in huge colonies of several thousand individuals, in order to feed their offspring, they need a lot of sweet product. In addition, bee colonies live for several seasons and every winter they need to hibernate, having enough food reserves.Their immediate family does not have such a need.

A bumblebee nest has an average of 400-500 individuals, most of which are working females. Family life spans only a few months. They live for one season from April to September. But does bumblebees have any honey in reserve? In order for him to be, interested beekeepers create hives specially for bumblebee families and contribute to their favorable development. From one such hive, you can collect only 200 ml of a valuable product.

Due to such a small amount of goodies, breeding these insects for honey has not become popular. But they are bred for another equally important mission - to pollinate greenhouse crops on an industrial scale.