Nature & Environment

Queen bumblebees have the ability to breath underwater, study finds

By T.K. Randall
March 11, 2026 ·  3 comments

Image: Bees
Credit: Tashkoskim / CC BY-SA 4.0 (adapted) A question that is often asked is how certain types of insects survive when it's very wet, especially those that live or hibernate underground for months at a time.

In the case of the queen bumblebee, it turns out, the answer is surprisingly simple - according to a new study, these insects seem to possess the ability to literally breathe underwater.

This is a particularly critical skill for queen bumblebees, as being the only member of their hive to survive the winter, they spend months underground (a period of dormancy known as diapause).

When it's particularly wet - something certainly not unusual for the winter months - the queen bee can find herself completely submerged in water.To learn more, researchers from the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa took several queen bumblebees and placed them in a recreation of the conditions of their winter diapause.

By analyzing the gases moving in and out of their bodies, the team was able to determine that the insects were still able to produce carbon dioxide through breathing while submerged, albeit at a reduced rate.

When taken out of the water, the bees also seemed to recover remarkably quickly.

"This study reveals that diapausing bumblebee queens survive and recover from prolonged flooding through a combination of underwater respiration and anaerobic metabolism in a state of profound metabolic depression," the study authors wrote.

Source: Phys.org | Comments (3)

Tags: Bees