How to feed a bumble bee colony

Publié lefévrier 18, 2025parCole Blair|Les bourdons, Events, Initiative pour les pollinisateurs indigènes, Actualités et événements, Pollinisateurs, Bourdon terricolePhoto: T. Harrison

Qu'est-ce que le Programme de rétablissement des bourdons? Depuis les années 1990, les populations de bourdons sont en chute libre, ce qui représente une véritable catastrophe écologique. Quatre-vingt-dix pour cent de toutes les plantes à fleurs — y compris la plupart des fruits et légumes dans votre réfrigérateur — ont besoin de ces pollinisateurs pour se reproduire.

Jusqu'à ce que les causes de ces déclins puissent être inversées, l'élevage de conservation et la réintroduction sont la seule façon de protéger les bourdons en péril. Aujourd'hui, CFC est la seule organisation au Canada à reconstruire les populations d'abeilles sauvages grâce à l'élevage de conservation. Grâce à des percées récentes, nous avons trouvé comment augmenter considérablement le nombre de reines que nous produisons. Une fois relâchées dans la nature, elles peuvent établir leurs propres colonies, produisant des centaines de pollinisateurs pour soutenir les écosystèmes qui les entourent.

If you’ve been following along with the efforts of our Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, you’ll know that our dedicated staff care for and monitor these fuzzy friends throughout their entire life cycle. But wait… don’t bumble bees need flowers to feed from? How do our lab’s colonies stay fed?

In the wild, bumble bees forage nectar and pollen from a variety of flowers to fulfill their dietary needs. In our Conservation Lab, this looks quite different! Pollen and nectar are provided to each of the colonies by our staff, and today we’d like to delve into how we prepare pollen to feed our buzzing bees!

We start with dried pollen grains. Then, using a food processor or a spice grinder, we grind up the pollen grains until it becomes a fine, loose powder (Pictured above, photo by S. Evans).

We then mix in small amounts of nectar that we whip up in-house to turn the pollen into a dough. You can see the dough coming together in the above photo (Photo by P. Smale). Our bumble bakery is now ready to start preparing delicious and nutritious meals for our queens and their colonies!

We store this ready-to-roll dough in a sealed bag to keep it fresh (see below photo, photo by P. Smale).

The doughy pollen is then broken apart into tiny pieces and rolled into balls, each weighing the same amount to help us meet the colonies’ needs and monitor their feeding habits (Pictured above, photo by P. Smale).

When a queen is first installed in the lab, we will actually feed them pollen balls coated in beeswax. You can see two of these special pollen balls in the above image (Photo by A. Saleh). The beeswax coating helps the pollen inside remain fresh, which means that the queens can remain undisturbed for a longer period before new pollen balls are needed. This is crucially beneficial for the queens as they need peace and quiet in order to feel comfortable enough to initiate their colonies.

Cole Blair

Coordonnatrice des programmes en Ontario – Programme de rétablissement des bourdons

Cole’s time with WPC began as a graduate student at the University of Toronto, where he researched harmful parasites in bumble bees (he looked at a LOT of bee poop). He has since played a supporting role as a technician in both the field and in our bumble bee Conservation Breeding Lab. As the Ontario Program Coordinator, Cole hopes to demonstrate to others that any conservation engagement – no matter how big or small – can go a long way.