Over the last week in April and the first in May, I tidied up the flower borders, removing dead flower stems, leaves and other plant debris. It is much better to leave all the dead material on the gardens over the winter as it provides cover and protection for a huge variety of organisms so they can make it through the winter.
Cutting the dead stems with garden scissors I came close to clipping a very sleepy Western Toad whose mottled brown and black camouflage suit blended totally with the surrounding soil and leaf litter. Later, when looking for it, I thought I saw a leaf move, only to discover it was the toad.
In another wetter area, hidden under dead leaves in a shallow depression, I uncovered a long-toed salamander. Everywhere I looked there were spiders and beetles of different kinds scuttling from their hideouts in one patch of dead debris to another.
Then, the highlight of my day was finding a spectacular yellow, black and orange hairy creature walking across the soil investigating the base of the newly appearing delphinium stems. I tentatively identified it as a queen bumblebee called Bombus vancouverensis (historically included in B. bifarius). My identification was confirmed by a couple of my long-time entomology friends, who told me that she would be searching for a place to build a nest.
My queen had bright yellow spots alternating with black spots on her thorax, almost resembling a checkerboard, whereas in most photos of them, their spots appear creamier white. On her abdomen there was a lovely band of yellow hairs and a tail band of red-orange hairs. Some colour variants of this species may only have a black tail band.
She makes her first nest by scraping a shallow depression on the surface of the soil or digging slightly underground. She may also nest in dead hollow plant stems or even use one of the many rodent’s nests I found.
After emerging in early spring, each queen produces a eusocial colony of workers who help her expand her colony exponentially. The bees forage for nectar and use buzz pollination to gather pollen.
Later in the summer the colony enters a reproductive phase when sexual offspring are produced. These leave the nest to mate with non-nestmates preferably. Workers die off in the fall whereas inseminated young queens hibernate until the following spring.
