The bumblebee visits many flowers, including many garden plants, as lavender, Hebe, Rhododendron, deadnettles, thistles, and vetches.
The larvae feed on various herbaceous plants, such as nettle, Lamium, thistles and oregano.
He displayed his talent in his late teens at Thistles FC playing with his younger brother Gustav Blaschke who was known as "Ou Reus" which means "Old Giant" in Afrikaans.
Adults feed on flower nectar from various flowers, including Liatris punctata, thistles, asters, and teasel.
regardless of historical verisimilitude (Pepin the Hunchback, for example, is supposed to have been sent to Saint Gall as punishment for his rebellion, and – in a trope owed to Livy's tale of Tarquin and the poppies – earns a promotion to rich Prüm Abbey after advising Charlemagne through an implicit parable of hoeing thistles to execute another group of rebels).
In most of these countries, these thistles are considered noxious weeds, especially in Australia where a biological control program has been set up (using the Rosette Crown Weevil, Trichosirocalus briesei).
The insect can also be very common where there are creeping thistles (Cirsium arvense) or swamp thistles (Cirsium palustre), oregano (Origanum vulgare), Forest scabious (Knautia sylvatica), or hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) which are favourite foodplants of the imagos.
It is a biological pest control agent that was introduced into the United States in 1974 to control exotic thistles, especially in the Cirsium and Carduus genera.