Bombus huntii is a species of bumblebee. It is native to western North America, where it occurs in western Canada and the United States as far east as Ontario and Minnesota, and in Mexico as far south as the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt.Hatfield, R., et al. 2015. Bombus huntii. This bee has also been seen in Vermont as of May 3, 2020. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 07 March 2016. It is known commonly as the Hunt bumblebee or Hunt's bumblebee.NatureServe. 2015. Bombus huntii. NatureServe Explorer Version 7.1. Accessed 7 March 2016. This bee's whole genome has been recently sequenced as part of the Beenome100 project.
This bee lives in desert scrub, prairies, and meadows. In the southern part of its range in Mexico it lives in pine ecosystems and it can be found at high elevations, such as the tops of tall volcanoes. The bee is active in summer and fall, and in Mexico it flies throughout much of the year. It nests underground in colonies consisting of a queen, workers, males, and new queens. Colonies only last one-year, with only mated queens overwintering.
Food plants visited by this species include rabbitbrush, thistles, sunflowers, penstemons, phacelias, currants, rudbeckias, and clovers.
This species has experienced declines, but it is still one of the more common bees of western North America.
This bumblebee is susceptible to certain viruses that infect honey bees, such as Black Queen Cell Virus (BQCV)Peng, W., et al. (2011). Host range expansion of honey bee Black Queen Cell Virus in the bumble bee, Bombus huntii. Apidologie, 42, 650–658. and Deformed Wing Virus (DWV).Li, J., et al. (2011). Cross-species infection of deformed wing virus poses a new threat to pollinator conservation. Journal of Economic Entomology, 104(3), 732–739.
Experiments suggest that this and other native species make efficient pollinators of crop plants such as tomatoes, and that commercial rearing would be a viable alternative to introducing non-native bees for the purpose.Strange, J. P. (2015). Bombus huntii, Bombus impatiens, and Bombus vosnesenskii (Hymenoptera: Apidae) pollinate greenhouse-grown tomatoes in western North America. Journal of Economic Entomology, 108(3), 873–879.
References
Further reading
Gardner, K. E., Foster, R. L., & O’Donnell, S. (2007). Experimental analysis of worker division of labor in bumblebee nest thermoregulation (Bombus huntii, Hymenoptera: Apidae). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 61(5), 783–792. Xu, J., et al. (2013). Detoxification and stress response genes expressed in a western North American bumble bee, Bombus huntii (Hymenoptera: Apidae). BMC Genomics, 14(1), 1.