Arctic bumblebee
The northernmost bee in the world, nesting within a few hundred kilometres of the pole on Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. It survives by being the most effective thermoregulator of any insect — a queen can hold her thorax above 30 °C in air near freezing — and by compressing a whole colony cycle into an Arctic summer of a few weeks.
Can it sting?
Can sting and does not. Encounters are limited to Arctic fieldworkers.
How to recognise it
A densely furred bumblebee with unusually long, thick hair, patterned in black, yellow and orange-red. The hair length is the visible adaptation: it is markedly shaggier than any temperate bumblebee.
- Very dense, long hair — the shaggiest bumblebee anywhere.
- Found only in the high Arctic, on tundra.
- Active in air temperatures near freezing, when no other bee is flying.
- Frequently seen basking in flowers that track the sun.
Body length 13–22 mm (typically 17 mm).
Biology
- Social organisation
Eusocial, colony dies each autumn
A true colony with a queen and workers, but only for one season: everyone dies in autumn except mated new queens, who overwinter alone. Bumblebees.
- Colony size at peak
- 20–80 individuals
- Colony lifespan
- A single very short Arctic summer.
- Winter
- Mated new queens overwinter alone in tundra soil, frozen for most of the year. The colony dies with the first hard freeze.
- Castes
- Queen, Workers, Males, New queens
- Nesting
- Burrows in the ground
Nests in tundra soil, frequently in old lemming burrows and under insulating moss. Nest insulation matters more here than anywhere: the colony's survival depends on retaining metabolic heat in ground that is frozen a short distance below.
- Carries pollen
- Corbicula (pollen basket) on the hind leg
- On the wing
- May to August
Lifecycle
- Emergence into a short summerQueens emerge as the tundra thaws and must found a colony, rear workers and produce reproductives within a few weeks.May to June.
- Compressed colony cycleThe entire cycle runs in six to eight weeks, against three to five months for a temperate bumblebee.
- ReproductionReproductives are produced by August and the colony dies as the freeze returns.
Where it lives and what it does
- Habitat
- High Arctic tundra, from northern Scandinavia and Siberia across Arctic Canada to Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland.
- Distribution
- Circumpolar Arctic, and the bee with the northernmost distribution of any species.
- Behaviour
- The thermoregulation is the whole story. A queen shivers her flight muscles to raise thoracic temperature above 30 °C in air close to freezing, and the dense pelt retains it. Arctic flowers help: several tundra plants are parabolic and track the sun, concentrating warmth at the centre, and bumblebees bask in them between foraging bouts.
- Pollination role
- The principal insect pollinator of much high Arctic flora, in a system with very few alternatives — which makes it functionally irreplaceable across an enormous area.
Very high, and effectively irreplaceable in a landscape with almost no other pollinators.
- What it forages on
- Arctic willow, saxifrages, Dryas, louseworts and the limited tundra flora available in the brief summer.
Honey
Keeps only a few days of stores
Minimal. An annual colony in an eight-week summer has neither the time nor the reason to store.
Relationship with people
- How people interact with it
- Almost no direct relationship, and considerable scientific interest as the extreme case of insect cold adaptation. It is also monitored as a climate indicator, since Arctic warming affects both its season and the plants it depends on.
- Conservation
- Declining in parts of its range. Arctic warming is shifting plant phenology and allowing southern species to move north, and a bee adapted to extremes has nowhere further to go.
Sources
- Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation — Oxford University Press (2010) · Monograph
- The Bees of the World — Johns Hopkins University Press (2007) · Textbook
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this bee
- Why flowering seasons matterBees and flowers have to be in the same place at the same time. That synchrony is being pulled apart by warming, and for specialist bees with narrow windows it is a serious problem.
- Most bees are not honey beesAround 20,000 bee species exist. Roughly 90% are solitary, almost none make honey, and most of the ones in genuine trouble are not the one on the jar.
- How honey bees survive winterHoney bees do not hibernate. They form a cluster, shiver to generate heat, eat their stores and move slowly through the comb — and most colony losses happen in this period.
- How bees regulate hive temperatureA honey bee colony holds its brood nest between 34 and 35 °C year-round, in climates ranging from Siberian winter to Australian summer. It does this with shivering, fanning and evaporative cooling, and the precision matters.
Tools for supporting this bee
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?