delving into pink

delving into pink

tubular bee balm flowers

fumbling bumble bee

Another thunderstorm approaching. No honeybees in sight near my neighbor's hives. But their fat, furry cousins, the bumble bees, are leisurely working the bee balm along the verge, sometimes two on one blossom. 

Their long tongues, curled up during flight, are able to extend down the tubular flowers that cluster in each pink pom pom, whereas honeybees, with their short tongues, prefer open flowers, like this bowl-shaped blossom.

The two types of bees differ in a number of ways.There is only one species of honeybee, which originated in Europe, while there are dozens of species of bumblebees. 

Honeybees live in large above-ground hives of 50,000 to 60,000 bees, where they store honey in wax combs for food all year long. Honeybees communicate by waggle dancing to show the location of nectar. A honeybees that stings will die, as her barbed stinger sticks in the skin. The queen can live three to four years, over-wintering with many of her worker daughters. An older queen may leave her hive and swarm with over half of the worker bees to start a new hive. Beekeepers try to capture these swarms and place them in a new hive.

Unlike honeybees, bumblebees live in the ground in small nests of 50 to 400 bees, producing only a small amount of a honey-like substance which they eat. They may communicate by passing pollen between workers. They can sting more than once, but only if aggravated. The workers only live a few months, while the queen lives for one year, hibernating in a hole. No wonder the bumblebees are busy!

The different species of bumblebees have different lengths of tongues, so they feed on different shaped flowers. Here one is crawling on the platform under the overhanging "lid" of an iris petal.

 

This bumblebee, its legs laden with pollen, is plunging into the center of a rose.

A bumblebee in flight sips nectar from a bell-shaped sage blossom.

This buffed fellow is meticulously probing each of the tiny tubes of a coneflower.

The bumblebees delving into the bee balm (Monarda fistulosa, also called wild bergamot, horsemint and Oswego tea), are inadvertently pollinating the plant. This native plant has many medicinal uses, due to the antiseptic compound thymol found in the plant's leaves and buds. It has a minty fragrance and taste, though a bit bitter. Indigenous Americans as well as later settlers used the plant for everything from seasoning meat, to treating wounds, throat infections, headaches and fever. After the Boston Tea Party, the rebellious Colonists substituted Oswego tea for British tea.

Honeybees, mostly domesticated, are threatened by mites, diseases and pesticides. Bumblebees, which are wild, are threatened by loss of habitat and also by pesticides. Fewer pollinators, fewer flowers, fewer food crops, not a fun scenario.

wild bee balm blooming

wild bee balm blooming

in the meadow, nectar for

yellow swallowtail

Monarda, also called wild bergamot, bee balm, horsemint or Oswego tea, is blooming in pinkish-lavender clumps all over the meadows and sunny swaths along the roads. The tiny tubular blossoms clustered at the tip of the stem look like a tasseled head out of a Dr. Seuss story. The flowers attract pollinators able to extract nectar and pollen from the long tubes, such as hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. My apiarist neighbor is happy that her honeybees are foraging on these pesticide-free flowers. The crushed leaves exude a spicy, fragrant oil that tastes like a slightly bitter blend of spearmint, peppermint and oregano. When my Potawatomi friend came for a visit, she was delighted to find bee balm growing in my wildflower garden. She said the plant has long been used by Native Americans as a seasoning for wild game, as well as for medicinal purposes, such as an antiseptic poultice for skin infections and minor wounds, an infusion for headaches and fevers, and a tea for mouth and throat infections. Not just a folk herb, the antimicrobial ingredient of bee balm, thymol, is used commercially as the primary active ingredient in modern mouthwash formulas.