It’s hard to like February. It’s been cold and dark and grey now for four months, the days are still over as soon as they’ve begun, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign that winter will ever be ending. Then one cold, clear day as you’re standing at the kitchen sink doing the washing up or out walking the dog, a miraculous thing happens: a big, fat, furry bumblebee buzzes past. You double-take: a bumblebee in February? Yes, it’s a big, fat, furry bumblebee. She has two egg-yolk yellow bands on her body, one high on her thorax and the other through the middle of her abdomen, and the end of her tail is white. She is a white-tailed bumblebee queen. In British bumblebees, as is the case with most species around the world, colonies are short-lived and only young queens live through winter. These are the offspring of last year’s colonies and, having mated in the autumn and fattened themselves up in preparation, they have spent the winter hibernating in a small cavity such as a mouse-hole.

While buff-tailed and white-tailed bumblebee queens are often the first to emerge in late winter, the names of others of our common species give a clue to the time of year when they may first be seen. One species’ common name is early bumblebee, while the common carder bee’s scientific name is Bombus pascuorum, meaning the Easter bumblebee. These insects are often recorded flying at temperatures as low as 10°C though it’s technically impossible for them to fly if their thoraxes are colder than 30°C. Bumblebees defy late winter air temperatures by means of a remarkable trick: they detach their flight muscles from their wings and whirr the muscles as if they were flying. With the wings out of action they stay still, but the movement of the muscles warms their thoraxes until they are ready to fly.

White buff-tailed bumblebee, by Julian Thomas

Once airborne, the queens’ first tasks are to feed on pollen, find a suitable nest hole, defend it from rival queens, and lay the eggs which will become the colony’s first wave of female workers. These she broods with the underside of her abdomen, much as a hen broods her eggs, passing heat from her own body to allow them to develop.

On bright days in late winter bumblebee queens may be seen in many habitats in Norfolk, including gardens, roadside verges and rough grassland. You can help bumblebees at this critical times of the year by providing winter- and spring-flowering plants. You could let red deadnettle flower in a wild corner of your garden or allow grape hyacinths and crocuses to naturalise on the edges of a lawn. These will provide precious resources of pollen and nectar for bees during the last cold days of winter.

Any wild place is likely to harbour bumblebees on warm days in February but heathlands and old railways lines, where the bold gold flowers of European gorse are often out now, can be especially good. If you visit NWT Roydon Common and Grimston Warren, in the Gaywood Valley Living Landscape, or NWT Narborough Railway Line on a warm day this month you will most likely find white-tailed and buff-tailed bumblebee queens. And once you’ve started watching and identifying bumblebees you’ll soon find yourselves searching wild places for all of Norfolk’s bumblebee species at all stages of their life cycles.

Header image by Elizabeth Dack

This article was first published in Norfolk Magazine.
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