Since long before I started taking photos, I’ve noticed bees feeding on nectar and pollenating all sorts of flowers. If you spend any time outdoors at all, I’m sure that you have, too. When I began taking photos, one of the images I really wanted to collect was of a large bumble bee feeding on a beautiful flower. I’ve had a few opportunities, but their speed and my limited photography skills have lead to some pictures that I sure don’t want to share! I’ve been learning (taking classes and tutorials) and practicing, and I know my skills are improving (still lots to learn, though!). And I guess they have finally improved enough for me to be able to capture that image! These aren’t perfect, but they are much improved over some of my previous attempts.

On my afternoon trip out to Henry Beck Park, I came up on a buttonbush with some incredible round balls of small, white flowers. It was one of the many plants and animals that I photographed that afternoon (I took photos until my battery died. It was an unplanned trip, and I wasn’t fully prepared, but at least I had most of my gear). While I was taking pictures of those amazing flowers I was hearing buzzing, and when I walked towards it, I found several two spotted bumble bees very busily feeding on several of the balls of flowers. They didn’t seem to mind my being there at all, so they made good subjects. Like I did with the black racer, I did make my approach slowly so as not to scare them off and also so as not to get stung by being seen as a threat (I’m somewhat allergic and I’m miserably itchy for days and days if I get stung).

The two spotted bumble bee has some very unusual differences from most other bumble bees. First, it has a very long proboscis; considerably longer than most other bumble bees. That allows these bees to feed on flowers with long trumpet shapes that many other large pollenators can’t get to. These particular bumble bees also seem to be fairly resistant to some types of fungal infections that have been very hard on many of the other species. It’s not known why two spotted bumble bees are less easily infected, but entomologists believe that this along with the ability to feed on more flower types are factors in they’re being one of the few bumble bee populations that is not in decline.

Two spotted bumble bees have a pretty wide range in the eastern United States and Canada. They can be found from Ontario south into Central Florida and west to Mississippi. This area of Florida is near the end of their southern range since they prefers a temperate climate to tropical or even subtropical. It is generally a woodland species and can be found in oak forests, mixed forests, prairies, farms, and parks and gardens. They will feed on a large variety of plants and flowers, which is one of the reasons they are such great pollenators, and may also be a factor in keeping it’s populations up. They build their nests in abandoned underground burrows. Most of those burrows were originally occupied by rodents, but in this area they’ve also been known to take over old gopher tortoise burrows. They can be found nesting anywhere from one to four feet under the ground and because of this they make no effort to camouflage the nests. They typically live in small colonies within those burrows. What types of bumble bees are you familiar with? Are their populations steady or declining?