{"id":304472,"date":"2026-02-27T07:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/304472\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T07:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:00:11","slug":"the-adorable-tree-bumblebee-is-stirring-from-its-winter-slumber-and-its-hungry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/304472\/","title":{"rendered":"The adorable tree bumblebee is stirring from its winter slumber \u2013 and it&#8217;s hungry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tree bumblebees stir from their\u00a0hibernation remarkably early, in\u00a0February and March. Here, we\u2019re talking about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/insects-invertebrates\/how-is-a-queen-bee-chosen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">queen bumblebees<\/a>, of\u00a0course, because the female workers\u00a0and males all perished in the autumn.<\/p>\n<p>The queens desperately need to stock up on\u00a0nectar before starting a new colony.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike other British <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/insects-invertebrates\/facts-about-bumblebees\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">bumblebees<\/a>,\u00a0which all nest near the ground, frequently\u00a0in old mammal burrows, tree bumblebees\u00a0go house-hunting much higher up. Their\u00a0preferred locations are holes in trees and\u00a0empty nestboxes. Some nest under eaves.<\/p>\n<p>They are easy to identify, due to their pure\u00a0white tail that provides a bold contrast with\u00a0their black abdomen and furry ginger thorax\u00a0\u2013 no other bumblebees look like this.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays, they\u2019re one of the commonest bumblebees in England and Wales, which is incredible considering the species only colonised Britain in 2001. And the march continues, with the population in southern Scotland increasing rapidly.<\/p>\n<p>Tree bumblebee feeds from a flower. Credit: Tony Baggett\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Top image: Tree bumblebee on a clover flower. Credit: Ghislain Teillet\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tree bumblebees stir from their\u00a0hibernation remarkably early, in\u00a0February and March. Here, we\u2019re talking about queen bumblebees, of\u00a0course, because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-304472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}