I've seen a few queen bumblebees this spring, but this is my first Red-banded of the season. The bumblebees you see right now (in this area anyway), are all queens. At the end of the fall, the bumblebee colony dies out, save for the young queens who fly off to find a suitable hibernation site. In early spring, when it is sufficiently warm, they emerge and can be seen seeking a good place to set up a new bumblebee colony. They will use old mouse holes, chipmunk tunnels, holes in walls, bird boxes, anywhere they think is going to provide protection. The queen then gets very busy building a few cells and laying the first batch of eggs, which soon hatch into workers, and from then on the queen does nothing more than lay eggs, she no longer has to forage for food either.

Bumblebee numbers are dropping across NA, and this is a real worry, as these bees are primary pollinators for so many foods, not to mention wildflowers. There is a mistaken belief that these bees are dangerous. They are not. Leave them in peace. They only sting if really threatened, and often not even then, otherwise they are very peaceful. I've worked around colonies of these bees and never been stung. Too often people eradicate these colonies mistakenly believing them to be a "pest". They are not!