As I have learnt more about the interweaving of all the aspects of gardening – soil, nutrition, seasonal timing, insects (beneficial and not), right plant, right place I have become fascinated by our native bees. Basically, I have become bonkers about bees! I came across a new piece of research from Felicity Muth at UC Davis. She has studied how bumblebees learn, in particular queen bumblebees. Muth studies the thought processes of bumblebees - how they learn, how the choose which flowers to visit - and what motivates them. Her goal, said Much, is to understand how they think about the world that they inhabit.
The following is a portion of What Makes Queen Bees So Smart? by Douglas Fox:
They had visited the meadow early enough in the spring that the queen bumblebees, which hibernate through the winter, had emerged to spend a couple of weeks foraging before retreating permanently into a burrow and starting a colony.
“Queens are much more elusive than workers. They are much less studied, and that's what drew me to them,” said Muth.
Compared to workers, queens only have a short time to forage, because colonies need to be started early in the season to have their best chance of success.
“They have to move quickly,” said Muth. “They've got to be smart. There is so much pressure on them at this stage.”
Muth found that queens captured in the wild were significantly faster learners than the female workers of the same species.
As we learn more about the complexities of the behavior of bees, especially our native bees, we gardeners can understand and do more to provide the environment needed for these wonderful insects to thrive.
This article was originally published in The Yolo Gardener Newsletter, January 2025