Do Bumblebees Direct Other Bees in Their Nest to Flowers?

By Michael Mullan

Do bumblebees, like honeybees, guide their nestmates to flowers brimming with nectar and pollen? Honeybees are well known for their waggle dance, an extraordinary behavior that tells other bees the exact direction and distance to rich food sources. But when it comes to bumblebees, things work quite differently. This brief article summarizes some recent research on one of most people favourite insect.

No Waggle Dance—But Other Clues

Bumblebees don’t perform dances or detailed signals about where to find flowers. Instead, their communication is more subtle, encouraging nestmates to forage without telling them exactly where to go.

Watching the Honey Pots

Inside a bumblebee nest, food is stored in small wax containers called honey pots. When nectar is added—especially fresh, high-quality nectar—the hive becomes busier, and more bees take off to forage. This acts as a kind of “colony thermostat”: when resources inside rise, it nudges more bees to look for food, even though no one points them in a specific direction.

Excited Runs and Buzzing Wings

A bumblebee returning from a rewarding trip often performs an “excited run”, dashing around the nest and buzzing her wings more than usual. This lively behavior seems to energize others, triggering them to leave the nest and search for flowers on their own.

The Power of Scents

Bumblebees also rely on pheromones, chemical signals released from glands on their abdomen. When a successful forager comes back, these scents spread through the nest and stir up foraging activity. They may even help other bees recognize floral odors carried back in nectar.

Learning by Watching

Bumblebees are good imitators. If one bee is seen visiting a certain kind of flower, another bee is more likely to choose the same type later. This is called social learning—a kind of “monkey see, monkey do”—but it doesn’t involve direct instructions.

Flowers have electric fields

Even the flowers themselves send signals. Plants and flowers have a negative electric charge, while bees acquire a positive charge as they fly. Bees can detect the electric fields around flowers and can even sense if a flower has been recently visited by another bee, as a landing bee reduces the flower's charge. This helps them decide if a flower is likely to have nectar or not That helps them decide whether a flower is worth the effort, even without a message from another bee.

Sharing?

Unlike honeybees, bumblebees  don’t seem to share. When two bees meet on a flower, they usually compete—often one bee pushes the other away. Only a small fraction of encounters end with both bees feeding together. This suggests that bumblebees prefer to keep their own routes rather than pool information with the group.

The Bottom Line

So, do bumblebees direct other bees to flowers? The answer is no—at least not in the precise way honeybees do. Bumblebees rely on indirect hints: a buzz of excitement, a whiff of pheromones, or the rising level of nectar inside the nest. These cues get others moving, but each bee must find her own flowers.

In the end, bumblebees are more like independent adventurers than team navigators—guided by subtle signals and personal experience, rather than detailed directions from their nestmates.