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If you look up at a flower against the sunlight while a bumblebee is
drinking you can just see this. If you want to get a better look you can try
feeding them with a solution of honey or sugar and water in a plastic pipette.
Using a plastic pipette like this is also a good way to measure the length of
the tongue.
In the table of tongue lengths on the right, the measurements were taken from live workers foraging. The bumblebee tongue is an elastic organ, when dissected and measured the length will be longer than those in the table. A pipette marked in millimetres and filled with a water/honey solution was offered to workers. The meniscus was moved up to see how far they would extend their tongue to reach the mixture. This work was done more than ten years ago. Now I would advise a water/sugar mixture to avoid spreading disease.
I get many e mails from
people telling me bumblebees are drilling holes in the wood of their house/shed
etc. the insects doing this are usually carpenter bees, not bumblebees. The
mouthparts of a bumblebee are not strong enough to drill holes in wood, nor can
they bite with any strength.
|
Average tongue lengths measured from foraging bumblebee workers.
| Species |
Tongue length mm |
| Bombus hortorum |
12.0 |
| Bombus lapidarius |
6.0 |
| Bombus pascuorum |
7.6 |
| Bombus pratorum |
6.4 |
| Bombus terrestris/lucorum |
5.8 |
|
Bombus pascuorum queen with tongue sheath
extended forwards. |