Rusty patched bumblebee
The rusty patched bumblebee is a big, fluffy black and yellow bee. The workers have a rusty orange patch on their back, which gave it its name. Sadly it has become very rare, and people are working hard to protect it.
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Fun facts
In 2017 it became the first bee in the mainland United States to be put on the list of endangered animals.
It often builds its nest underground in an old mouse or rat hole. Once a nest was even found inside an old armchair left outside.
The queen is the biggest, up to 22 millimetres long.
Its tongue is shorter than that of any other bumblebee.
It can cope with colder weather than most other bumblebees.
Most asked questions about Rusty patched bumblebee
?Why is the rusty patched bumblebee endangered?
It has disappeared from most of the places where it used to live. It needs flowers, nest sites and winter hideouts close together, which makes it easy to lose.
?How big is the rusty patched bumblebee?
Workers are 10 to 16 millimetres long and queens about 2 centimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus affinis
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Rusty patched bumble bee
Where the facts come from
- Bombus affinis (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 USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA. Public domain, 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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