Do Bumblebees sting?
Bumblebee workers and the queens can sting, and their stinger is smooth – not barbed like that of the honeybee – so they can sting more than once. Male bumblebees cannot sting as they do not have a sting. A honey bee can sting once, since the sting has barbs and it will rip off and stay in the victim’s skin. Reproduction: The queen bee lays all of the eggs in a colony. The queen fertilizes each egg as it is being laid using stored sperm from the spermatheca. The queen occasionally will not fertilize an egg. These non-fertilized eggs, having only half as many genes as the queen or the workers, develop into male drones. Pollen stimulates the ovaries to produce eggs, which the queen lays in batches of 4 -16 on the ball of pollen which is then covered with wax. The queen keeps the eggs warm at about 30 oC. She has a bare patch on the adbomen so heat from the queen’s body can pass directly to the clump of wax-covered eggs. A Bombus terrestris queen may have to visit as many as 6,000 flowers
