Field Cuckoo Bumble Bee. Bombus compestris. Most bumble bees do what you would suppose. Nest members go out gather pollen and nectar and feed their brethren and sisteren. Queen Mom after getting the nest going stays in the nest for the rest of her life until she comes to a natural end ("natural end": this is what people who write about bumble bees like to say, but, in reality, end of life times for a queen is probably nasty (but, then again, that would be me pretending that I was a queen bumble bee and had human awareness at the same time...which, of course, does not happen)). Back to cuckoos. There are some species of bumble bees that skip all the bother of collecting pollen and nectar and simply go into a hard working, pollen collecting colony; kill the original queen and make her kids raise her own young. This is one of them. Many TV plots lines have this same theme running through them. Oh, this beauty was collected by Peter Šima in Podbanské, Slovakia. Picture taken by Cole Cheng.
