But they have very strong muscles in their body that enable them to fly. Bumblebees look for food as far away as 2km from the burrow, but usually it is between 500 and 700m. Bumblebees have special back legs to help them collect pollen from the flowers. They have hairs on these legs that form ' pollen baskets '. Bumblebees are able to scrape pollen from their bodies into these baskets using 'combs' on their front legs and so return to the burrow laden with pollen.
Bumblebees help flowers to reproduce.
Their hairy bodies collect the sticky pollen from one flower and carry it to another. The pollen grains fall off the bee's body and may enable the flower to produce seeds if it is the same species . This is known as ' pollination '. If a flower is too long for the bumblebee to reach the nectar, it may bite a hole in the base of the flower and suck the sticky sweet nectar. Only the newly hatched queen bumblebees survive the winters by hibernating .