Bumble bee on Common Tansy

There are 29 species of bumble bee that are endemic to Alberta. They all belong to the genus Bombus. This one appears to be Bombus moderatus , the white-tailed bumble bee. If you look closely at the bee's hind end, you will see that it is distinctly white. These bees do not make large nests, usually having no more than 200 workers. I photographed this bee in Leduc; they are fairly abundant in the southern half of Alberta and eastward in to Saskatchewan. Bumble bee workers feed the queen and support the colony. As the colony grows into late summer and early fall, the workers produce new queens and drones. It is the workers that determine which larva will become a queen. They feed it a special diet of honey and royal jelly. A fertilized egg produces female worker bees and an unfertilized egg will produce a male bee called a drone. The existing hive will die out come winter. The drones will mate with the young queens who hav...