Buff-tailed bumblebee
The buff-tailed bumblebee is a big, fluffy bumblebee with black and yellow stripes. The queen has a creamy buff tip on her tail, while the workers have white tails. It is one of the most common bumblebees in Europe.
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Fun facts
Farmers put boxes of these bumblebees in greenhouses so they can pollinate the plants.
It often makes its nest underground, for example in an old mouse hole.
One nest usually has 300 to 400 bees.
Workers learn which flower colours have the most food and remember them.
Only the young queen survives winter. In spring she starts a brand new nest all by herself.
Most asked questions about Buff-tailed bumblebee
?How big is a buff-tailed bumblebee?
Workers are 1.1 to 1.7 centimetres long, and the queen is about 2 to 2.2 centimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus terrestris
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Large earth bumblebee
Where the facts come from
- Bombus terrestris (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Marco Almbauer. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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