Bumble bees have been commercialized, mostly the species Bombus impatiens. Farmers and homeowners can purchase bumble bees from businesses that package them in hives and ship them throughout the US. This is an international business existing in Central and South America and Europe. However, unlike the honey bee, selective breeding and strain improvement has not taken place. In large part this is because the bumble bee business is not a form of husbandry. Bumble bees are not purchased with the goal of creating a continuing population of bees for the future, but the goal is short-term pollination. Farmers purchase bumble bees each year to meet their pollination needs with no objective of collecting reproductives and overwintering them for next year. If this was done, farmers would only end up with solitary queens in the subsequent year, each queen needing to initiate its own colony, no different from the wild spring bumble bee queens. The purchase of a bumble bee hive results in an already established colony of 60 - 200 workers (depending upon the need for a specific hive strength) and a queen.
- Frank Drummond, University of Maine
Bee Informed Partnership