The overwhelming majority of research on wild bumble bees has focused on the social colony stage. Nest-founding queens in the early season are difficult to study because incipient nests are challenging to find in the wild, and the foundress queen's flight period is very short relative to the entire

In western North America, hummingbirds can be observed systematically visiting flowers that lack the typical reddish color, tubular morphology, and dilute nectar of "hummingbird flowers". Curious about this behavior, we asked whether these atypical flowers are energetically profitable for hummingbir