A bumblebee is a large, fuzzy bee with a round body covered in soft hair, usually striped in black and yellow. Unlike honeybees, which live in huge colonies and make honey, bumblebees live in small nests of just a few hundred bees, often underground in abandoned mouse burrows or under garden sheds.

Bumblebees are important pollinators, meaning they carry pollen from flower to flower as they collect nectar, helping plants reproduce. Their fuzzy bodies are perfect for this job: pollen sticks to all that hair as they crawl inside flowers. They can fly in colder weather than most other bees because their thick fur keeps them warm, and they can even vibrate their flight muscles to heat up their bodies before taking off on chilly mornings.

The name captures their appearance and sound: they're big and bumbling, buzzing loudly as they move from flower to flower. Unlike wasps or hornets, bumblebees are generally gentle and rarely sting unless directly threatened. If you sit quietly in a garden, you might watch one land heavily on a flower, its weight bending the stem as it feeds.