Bumblebees generally visit flowers and these patches of flowers may be up to 1–2 km from their colony. They tend to visit the same patches of flowers every day, as long as they continue to find nectar and pollen there, a habit known as pollinator or flower constancy . While foraging, bumblebees can reach ground speeds of up to 15 m/s (54 km/h). Bumblebees use a combination of colour and spatial relationships to learn which flowers to forage from. They can also detect both the presence and the pattern of electric fields on flowers.
Queen and worker bumblebees can sting. Unlike in honeybees, a bumblebee's stinger lacks barbs, so the bee can sting repeatedly without leaving the stinger in the wound and thereby injuring itself. Bumblebee species are not normally aggressive, but may sting in defense of their nest, or if harmed.
Bumblebees are important pollinators of both crops and wildflowers. Because bumblebees do not overwinter the entire colony, they do not stockpile honey, and therefore are not useful as honey producers. Bumblebees are increasingly cultured for agricultural use as pollinators, among other reasons because they can pollinate plants such as tomato in greenhouses by buzz pollination whereas other pollinators cannot.