It may be a male. Male bumbles tend to leave the nest just a few days after hatching and never return. And yes, they do rest and sleep on plants and inside flowers, especially as temperatures begin to drop. Temps inside a flower can be as much as 15-20 degrees higher and they love warmth.

Don't attempt to coax it onto your finger. Amazing how quickly they can respond negatively to the warmth of your finger!

nights have finally cooled significantly ...

the colder night is.. the longer.. in the morning ... it takes the flying bugs.. to get a move on ...

now that its ridiculously hot this afternoon.. i wouldnt be surprised if it is gone ..

storms are supposed to be coming.. maybe that will blow them away ...

an extra day wont matter to the plant ...

ken

I observed exactly the same thing last week. We are cooling at night now, so I assumed it was resting. I have never been bothered by a bumble bee in the garden. They do see to just get on with their work and ignore me. All of August, we seemed to have the worst problem ever with hornets though. They are dive bombing me in the yard all the time. They swarm around the hose and me when I am watering. It has been dry so I do try to water leaves of plants in the veggie garden so they can find water there, but it doesn’t seem to help!

debra

Yep, typical male behavior -- leave it to the women to do the nest work while the men are off napping. LOL!

Just kidding...actually, I did not know bees nap, how interesting!

We were visiting family outside their home with masks on, social distanced. We were sitting on a cement wall along the property line, under a large Maple. The whole time we were talking - maybe 15mins - a solitary bee kept dogging all of us. It would attempt to land on hands or arms, going from one person to the other. I don't appreciate a bee doing more than an initial approach so I got up and kept walking away from it and it would start following someone else. No one was stung, but it almost landed on my hand at one point and then I could see it up close and it looked like a yellow jacket sort of. Not sure. Anyway, I am curious why this bee found us so fascinating. No food or drinks were there. No fragrance. If we were near a nest, I would expect there would be more than one bee?

At the risk of tempting fate, I've never been stung in 40 years gardening at the same property. I'm sure I'm not doing anything special. I usually feel pretty comfortable around bees. I do remember feeling a little freaked out one season when we had paper wasps building nests under our front door canopy over the door and there were a TON of wasps of all kinds all over the garden that year. In small doses, I don't mind wasps, but that year they were every where and I had to try avoiding that bed at certain times of the day.

Unusual bumble bee behavior; unprecedented aggression in the garden. Usually the bumbles are so gentle my grandson can pet their backs.

Similar story to PM's. we were gathered on the patio, which has a stone"sitting wall"

I'd seen some bumble bees in the area but thought nothing of it. Turns out there must be a nest in the stone walls, where some 'guard bees' were on active duty. They started dive bombing the guest sitting right at the wall. Unfortunately, he jumped up and started swatting aggressively.

Within seconds many bees were flying out the chinks in the wall, buzzing the entire group. I made myself stand still but they were all riled up and going at my face, nose and ears.

They even chased me as I ran away from "their" home in the wall to the street. One of them got in a gratuitous sting on my nose. I'll say although it was very painful for about 10 minutes, the reaction was soon gone. That's very different than my experience with honey bees in a hive. When I got stung then I'd get a huge welt that took hours to go away. I even made my doc give me an epipen because my reactions were getting more intense as time went by.

Now I have to figure out how to keep them out of the wall next year. I didn't spray them, even after their attack! We just stay clear. But I miss my patio

That's too bad, Marie. It is difficult to stand still and allow them near your face. I don't know how you do it. I don't. I walk without swinging my arms or having jerky motions away from them and as I get further away I pick up speed, but no running or swatting or yelling. [g]. I haven't had that happen very often either.

We had a vacant raised vegetable bed this year and kept piling grass clippings on the top. And one day I cleared out a patch of fall leaves that I was going to replace with bark mulch in a bed and put those over the top of it. And one bee - started coming near my husband and I and I thought nothing of it and just walked away like I do. It followed me until I got in the house. It stayed at the screen door trying to get at me. And then I went away from the door and sat in a DR chair looking out the window at the bed to see if he was going away. He went back to the bed, then came over to the window and hovered around that spot and kept coming back to it, looking in at me. [g]. This went on for 20 mins. And I would see the bee cruising over that bed. So, all I can think is maybe there was a nest in the bed and we disturbed it. But I found this behavior so interesting. If it was just trying to get us away from the area, it would have stopped when we left, but for it to attempt to find us and pursue us - you wonder if they are actually angry and trying to exact retribution. [g]