She's huge, wears black and yellow stripes, and looks just like her latin name:
"Bombus."  We named her Queen Azalea because she was sipping nectar from a purple azalea when I captured her in a big jar.  At home, we put her in a small two-room pine box called the "Humble Bumble Home."  In preparation, we had attached the box firmly to a window sill and directed a little plastic tube from the box to the outside world through a 2 x 6 board we fitted under the window.  We'll keep the end of the tube sealed for 3 days, hoping she'll begin housekeeping.  There's no guarantee she'll stay around when we open the tube.  If she does, we may get to watch her raise a thriving bumblebee colony this spring and summer--we'll study the activities through the plexiglass inner box lid.  For a start, we furnished her with some fluffy cotton stuffing and a little diluted honey.  She drank deeply of the honey just before we put the outer pine lid on, and we resolved not to disturb her for the next 3 days.
         Many species of bumblebees are native to North America.  They are not aggressive to humans, their life cycle is fascinating, and they are tremendously important for pollination of plants.  A plant makes flowers to attract pollinators:  fragrant aromas, stunning shapes, and gorgeous colors are like billboards enticing insects to the sweet energy-giving nectar and protein-rich pollen inside.  Collecting pollen and nectar from many flowers, an insect spreads some of the pollen around, thereby completing a crucial stage in plant reproduction.  Bumblebees forage for much longer hours than honeybees, work in a wider variety of weather conditions, and visit two to three times as many flowers in a given time.  Also unlike honeybees, bumblebees can perform "buzz pollination," in which the sexual parts of a flower are vibrated rapidly to loosen the pollen grains.  Tomatoes and blueberries benefit immensely from this treatment.
         With advancing technology, we humans tend to forget that we are part of the
natural world and totally dependent on it.  Plants produce all the oxygen for our every breath, and ultimately all our food as well.  Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson says that "eighty percent of the species of our food plants worldwide depend on pollination by animals, almost all of which are insects."  Apple blossoms are pollinated by insects; if an apple tree is not pollinated, then there are no apples.
         Pesticides, habitat destruction, and other causes have led to a worldwide decline of many pollinator species.  There has been a severe decline in honeybee populations (up to 50% in some areas) due to infections with mites and diseases.  Not only does this increase the price of honey, but we lose the "pollination services" provided by these creatures.
         The honeybee is actually not native to North America; it was introduced by
European colonists in the 1600s.  Honeybees form colonies of many thousand insects, and store enormous amounts of honey for their winter survival.  Declining honeybee populations may actually enable a resurgence of our native bumblebees.
         A bumblebee colony derives from a single queen; the colony grows, lives, and dies within a single season of flowering plants, and generally never exceeds a few hundred members.  By late fall, the only survivors are some new queens who have burrowed underground to hibernate.
         The queen bumblebee is much larger than most of her offspring will be.  Emerging from hibernation, she searches for a nesting site.  This can take several weeks:  she flys about, feeding on nectar for energy and looking for the right spot.  (This was when we caught Queen Azalea.  Foraging queens that already have a home carry lots of pollen on their legs, which they collect for their young.  Azalea's legs were fuzzy, but not loaded with pollen.)  Bumblebees generally nest in the ground, often in abandoned nests of mice or other creatures.  A cow's hoof or the cut of a plow can destroy their home.  When the queen chooses a nest, she begins to secrete wax from glands in her abdomen.  She fashions a waxen "honey pot" into which she regurgitates nectar gathered in foraging.  Then she makes a small wax cup and lays her first eggs into it, covering them with a waxen canopy.  She broods over them, warming them like a mother hen and nourishing herself from the honey pot.  She continues to go foraging, and after the eggs hatch she feeds the larvae a combination of pollen and honey.
         Within a few weeks, her first set of young (about 8-10 "workers") are adults, and begin doing all the foraging.  By this time, the queen already has several other groups of young on the way.  She never again leaves the nest, but spends the rest of her life mothering and directing her family.  All the "workers" are female.  In the late summer and fall, the now tiring queen produces some males, and also some big new queens.
         When the males reach adulthood they leave the nest forever, and are only
interested in one thing (guess what?).  The new queens may hang around awhile, but then they too leave for good.  A new queen flies off and may mate with males from many different colonies.  She stores all the sperm in a special organ called the "spermatheca"--she will use this to fertilize her eggs the following year.  When the days turn chilly and the last flowers fade, she finds a well-drained spot and digs several inches underground, carving out a walnut-sized chamber for her winter's sleep.  With the following spring's warmth she emerges, drinks from new flowers, and looks for a home.
         It's an amazing world, that has such creatures in it.  I expect to learn a lot from them.  I hope Queen Azalea decides to stick around; it'll be fun to watch her family grow, and maybe we and the neighbors will get some especially good tomatoes with all that "buzz pollination."
 
 

        Knox Cellars makes the "Humble Bumble Home."  You may have to dig around on their site a bit, but the information is there.  They publish a basic, simple book on bumblebees called "Humblebee Bumblebee," which includes information on how to start a home colony.  They also publish a newsletter or magazine called "The Urban Farmer."  About pollination in general (including much on bees), an excellent and detailed book called "The Forgotten Pollinators" is also available through their site, or could undoubtedly be ordered through a bookstore.