Why bumblebees have become model species in apidology: A brief history and perspectives

Abstract

In recent years, bumblebees have increasingly been used to study various aspects of bee biology, ecology and evolution. They are now broadly accepted as tractable model species, complementary to the domestic honey bees, for fundamental and applied apidology. Here, we provide a brief history of how bumblebee research developed since their domestication and commercialisation for crop pollination in the 1990s. Bumblebees are large social bees that can be kept and trained in the lab year-round. They are easy to manipulate and track individually in their small colonies. These practical advantages have offered new possibilities for experimental bee research, leading to major breakthroughs in different fields such as cognition, navigation, nutrition, host-parasite interactions, and insect declines. Many of these findings have later been confirmed in honey bees and other pollinators. We discuss some exciting directions for future apidology research based on bumblebees.