January — Bombus melanopygus
Yellow thorax with a dark band, and an orange-red belt across the middle of the abdomen. She is also called the orange-rumped bumblebee, and she is the earliest bumblebee in the Pacific Northwest — queens fly in February, sometimes late January, weeks before anything else is awake.
She can do that because a bumblebee can shiver. She uncouples her wings from the flight muscles and vibrates them until her thorax is around thirty degrees warmer than the air. That is why she is out working in cold Portland rain that grounds every other bee in this guide.
Every bumblebee you see in late winter is a queen, and she is alone. The colony she was born into died in the fall. She mated, slept out the winter underground, and is now looking for a hole to start a new one in.
Photographed by Jonathan Swanson, in my own backyard, on the pink rhododendron.
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