Animal
Common eastern bumblebee
Bombus impatiens
The most-common bumblebee species in eastern North America — and the species most likely to be encountered in any Staten Island garden, meadow, or park. Yellow-and-black social insect; colonies of ~150–500 workers. Native pollinator; manages buzz pollination (vibrating flowers to release pollen) that honeybees cannot perform. Critical pollinator of tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, and many native plants.
Scientific
Bombus impatiens is a 0.5–0.75 inch social bee. Annual colony cycle: a single overwintered queen founds a new colony each spring; colony grows through summer to ~150–500 workers; produces new queens and males in late summer; new queens overwinter solo while the rest of the colony dies.
Capable of buzz pollination (sonication) — vibrating flowers at specific frequencies to release pollen that ordinary visiting cannot dislodge. Tomato, [[blueberry|blueberry]], [[cranberry|cranberry]], eggplant, and many Solanaceae depend on buzz-pollinators; honeybees cannot do this. Commercial bumblebee colonies are widely used in greenhouse tomato production for this reason.
Less species-decline pressure than some other native bumblebees (the rusty patched bumblebee, B. affinis, is federally Endangered and largely gone from the Northeast). B. impatiens remains broadly common.
On Staten Island
The borough’s most-encountered bumblebee. Common at GreenThumb-supported community gardens, residential flower beds, parks meadows, and any flowering-plant-rich habitat. Active April–October.
See also
Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.
- Substrate of: [[common-milkweed]]
- Shares approach with: [[eastern-carpenter-bee]]
- Member of: [[animal]]
- Contained by: [[staten-island]]
Sources
- USDA NRCS native pollinator documentation
- Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation native-bee species accounts
- Cornell University bumblebee biology research
Rooted in life.
What links here, and how
Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.
Scientific
substrate of
- Goldenrod critical late-season nectar source for native bumblebees building winter fat stores
- New England aster essential late-season nectar for native bumblebees building winter fat
- Summersweet summersweet's late-summer flowering provides nectar in the lean window between June flowers and September goldenrod
- Wild bergamot wild bergamot is a top-tier native bee plant — bumblebees, leafcutter bees, mason bees all heavy users
4 inbound links · 4 outbound