🐞✗ Tested and false“Bumblebees die after they sting, just like honeybees.”
A honeybee's stinger is barbed and stays lodged in skin, tearing loose from the bee's body and killing it. Bumblebees have smooth, unbarbed stingers that pull back out cleanly, so a female bumblebee can sting more than once without dying. Only queen and worker bumblebees carry a stinger; males have none.
What to do: Treat a bumblebee sting the same as a wasp sting, and don't assume the bee has died after stinging; it hasn't, and it can sting again if provoked further.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustBumblebees have smooth stingers and survive stinging, unlike honeybees, and only female bumblebees, queens and workers, can sting.
“A bumblebee nest in the garden should be destroyed for safety.”
Bumblebee nests are best left alone and in place rather than removed or destroyed. They last only a few months, cause no structural damage, and the bees themselves pose minimal risk if left undisturbed. Where a nest is inconveniently placed, temporary netting, a barrier around the entrance, or moving play areas away from the site are suggested instead of removal.
What to do: Leave an active bumblebee nest where it is; it will naturally die out within two to six months, and keeping people or pets away from it is safer and simpler than trying to destroy it.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustNests are best left alone since they don't last long, cause no structural damage, and pose minimal risk; temporary barriers or netting can manage access if needed.
“Bumblebees make honey, just like honeybees.”
Only honeybees produce and store honey, because their colonies persist through winter and need a food reserve to survive it. Bumblebee colonies don't overwinter as a whole; only new queens hibernate, while the rest of the nest dies off in autumn, so there's no need to convert nectar into a stored, preserved food. Bumblebees consume the nectar they collect fairly quickly rather than processing it into honey.
What to do: Don't expect honey from a bumblebee nest in the garden; there won't be any to find, and disturbing the nest to check would only stress the colony.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustOnly honeybees produce honey for winter storage; bumblebee nests don't survive winter so they have no need to make or store it.
- RHSHoneybees are the only insects that produce honey.
“Bumblebees are less effective pollinators than honeybees.”
A peer-reviewed comparison of wild bumblebees and introduced honeybees found bumblebees removed and deposited significantly more pollen per flower visit, moved faster between flowers, and visited far more flowers overall. Their larger body size and longer proboscis gave them a better mechanical fit with the flowers studied, transferring roughly 27,900 pollen grains per visit compared with about 17,700 for honeybees. Bumblebees also keep foraging at cooler temperatures than honeybees, continuing to work flowers when honeybees have become inactive.
Our read This particular study looked at one plant species, so it shouldn't be read as proof that bumblebees always outperform honeybees on every plant, but it does show the common assumption that honeybees are the more capable pollinator has no solid basis; for many garden plants, especially tomatoes and other buzz-pollinated crops, bumblebees do the more effective job.
What to do: Don't assume a garden with few or no honeybees is poorly pollinated; a healthy bumblebee population, especially around tomatoes, beans, and other buzz-pollinated crops, can do at least as good a job.
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- peer-reviewed journal (PMC/NCBI)Wild bumblebees transferred significantly more pollen per visit than introduced honeybees on the plant species studied, aided by larger body size, longer proboscis, and more frequent visits.
“Bumblebee populations are declining mainly because of predators like birds and wasps eating them”
The Bumblebee Conservation Trust directly addresses this as one of its 'seven bumblebee myths': bumblebees and their natural predators have co-existed for thousands of years without driving populations down. The real drivers of decline are human-caused habitat loss and pesticide exposure, not predation.
What to do: If you want to help bumblebees, focus on what actually moves the needle: planting a range of pollen- and nectar-rich flowers through the season and avoiding pesticides, rather than worrying about natural predators in the garden.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustBumblebees and their predators have co-existed alongside one another for thousands of years. [The real threat is] human-caused habitat loss and pesticide exposure.
“Only female bumblebees can sting; males can't sting at all.”
Female bumblebees, meaning queens and workers, carry a stinger and will use it defensively if they feel threatened, for example by vibration from a lawnmower or disturbance close to the nest entrance. Male bumblebees have no stinger and are physically incapable of stinging under any circumstances.
What to do: A bumblebee landing on you or buzzing nearby is very unlikely to sting unless handled or trodden on, so there's no need to react defensively to every bee you see in the garden.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustFemale bumblebees will usually only sting defensively if they feel threatened, while male bumblebees don't have a sting and can't harm people.
“If you find a tired bumblebee, you should feed it sugar water to help it.”
A sugar water mix, made from equal parts white sugar and water and offered as a drop or two on a spoon, can give a genuinely exhausted bumblebee a one-off energy boost. This is recommended only as a last resort, used when there are no bee-friendly flowers nearby and only after confirming the bee isn't simply resting; queen bumblebees in spring often rest on the ground for 30 to 45 minutes as normal behaviour, not because they're in trouble. Brown sugar and honey should be avoided, since brown sugar is harder to digest and honey can carry pathogens harmful to bumblebees.
Our read In practice this means most bumblebees seen sitting still in a garden don't need feeding at all; sugar water is a rescue measure for a genuine emergency, not a routine kindness to hand out to every bee that pauses on a path.
What to do: Only offer sugar water if the bee has been motionless for well over 45 minutes with no flowers nearby to feed from; otherwise, gently move it to a sheltered spot near flowers and leave it alone.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustSugar water made from equal parts white sugar and water can be offered as a last resort to a bumblebee that appears exhausted with no flowers nearby, but should never replace natural forage.
“Bumblebee populations are declining, and this matters for pollination in the garden.”
UK bumblebees have been in decline over the past century, with two species driven extinct and eight of the remaining 24 species now listed as conservation priority species because of large population losses. Even common species such as the red-tailed and white-tailed bumblebee show a gradual long-term decline. The main causes identified are loss of wildflower habitat, with around 97% of UK wildflower meadows lost in the last century, pesticide exposure, and increasingly disruptive weather patterns.
What to do: Growing a range of nectar and pollen-rich flowers from March through October and avoiding pesticides on flowering plants gives garden bumblebees a meaningful boost, since garden habitat has become a significant substitute for the wildflower meadows that have been lost.
In Scotland: The Great Yellow bumblebee, one of the UK's rarest species, now survives mainly in the far north and west of Scotland, including machair coastline and the Northern Isles, making gardens in those areas particularly relevant to its survival.
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- Bumblebee Conservation TrustTwo UK bumblebee species have gone extinct and eight of the remaining 24 are conservation priority species, driven mainly by habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change, with the Great Yellow bumblebee now confined to the far north and west of Scotland.
