#Black bees with white stripes on tail how to#

Accompanying this long face is a very long tongue, the longest of any bumblebee species. The face is also noticeably longer than other bumblebees and is often described as ‘horse-shaped’. Unlike White-tailed Bumblebees, this bumblebee has an extra yellow band on the thorax which essentially forms a double midriff band one band at the bottom of the thorax and one at the top of the abdomen. This bumblebee can be confused with the White-tailed Bumblebee but two key features help to identify this species the face and yellow banding. Nests tend to be quite small and generally produce less than 100 workers. The Garden Bumblebee may choose to nest underground or amongst dense vegetation. Males are often extensively yellow on the head, thorax and abdomen © Louise Hislop.Queens have lemon-yellow bands with a white tail © Louise Hislop.Like all male bumblebees, males lack the shiny pollen baskets of females on the back legs. Males also have distinctive yellow-haired faces and a tuft of yellow hair on top of the head. Out later in summer, the males are often extensively yellow with a white tail. Despite the name, workers of Buff-tailed bumblebees have white tails and so are difficult to separate from worker White-tailed Bumblebees. Workers resemble smaller versions of the queens. The colour of the bands are lemony yellow rather than the darker rusty-yellow of Buff-tailed Bumblebees. It is never tawny or off-white like that of queen Buff-tailed Bumblebees. Queens have a clean-white tail, a lemon-yellow collar behind the head and a lemon band on the abdomen. The White-tailed Bumblebee is actually a group of three species that can only be separated confidently by DNA! However, this aggregation can still be recorded as “ Bombus lucorum sensu lato”. White-tailed Bumblebees nest underground and are often found in old rodent burrows. White-tailed Bumblebee Bombus lucorum agg.

These bumblebees can be seen on the wing from spring through to the end of summer, with the emergence of males and new queens marking the end of nests.

While they can appear similar, these species can be identified by taking a closer look at key features such as the banding and hair colour.

#Black bees with white stripes on tail how to#

This post will cover how to identify the most common white-tailed bumblebees in the North East. Your ‘White-tailed bumblebee’ can in fact be one of several species of bumblebee with a white-tail. Male White-tailed Bumblebee © Louise HislopĪ black-and-yellow striped bumblebee paired with a white tail is the iconic image of a bumblebee.