Bumblebee identification
Join BBCT today and receive a beautiful identification poster as part of your membership pack! Learn how to identify bees and discover more about their fascinating lives. You'll also be directly supporting our conservation work and helping to make a real difference to the fortunes of our furry friends. If you join before the end of June you'll receive the BBCT book Gardening for Bumblebees FREE with your membership pack. Adult membership starts at just £1 per month.
What bee did I see?
There are lots of different types of bee in Britain - around 250 different species, including 24 bumblebees, the honeybee and numerous small solitary species. Was it a bumblebee that you saw?
A
honeybee, a typical bumblebee and a small solitary bee
(from left to right)
It was definitely a bumblebee - now what species was it?
Work through the following online guide, or print off our guide to the commoner garden bumblebees
The Big Six - bumblebees commonly found in gardens
Only six species remain common in gardens throughout the UK (apart from the far north of Scotland). Many other species are now rare or threatened. In fact, two species have become extinct in recent decades, and others may soon follow them if we don't act quickly. If you are fond of bumblebees and you'd like to help them then please join today and help us to protect them.
More than 95% of all sightings are now of the 6 common species, so if you can identify these then you're a long way to becoming a bumblebee expert!
Click on the guide below for a larger printable version
Found your bee?
Please let us know what it was and help us to update our distribution maps. All we need is the ID, date and postcode. Records can be submitted at the Beewatch 2009 pages - it only takes a minute!
Want to know more?
The following guide will help you to confidently identify the 14 bumblebee species most often seen in gardens or when walking in the countryside. Most can be identified from just the colour pattern. You can get a very close look at bumblebees as they visit flowers (they are quite trusting and very placid) but it often helps to catch them in a net and transfer them into a clear plastic tube for an even closer look.
Need a net?
BBCT recommend the excellent nets produced by Watkins and Doncaster. They're what we all use ourselves for fieldwork - well balanced, and with a fine mesh to ensure that the bees aren't harmed.
The Beewatchers Kit shown here includes everything you need for survey work.
Key questions....
1. Is it a 'true' or a cuckoo bumblebee?
Look at the back legs...
Cuckoo bumblebees stopped collecting pollen so long ago that they no longer have pollen baskets - just very hairy legs!
Female 'true' bumblebees have a conspicuous concave area with a shiny surface fringed by long hairs (or they are carrying a big ball of pollen!).
'True' male's legs look similar, but they have what you might describe as an incomplete basket, with a few hairs encroaching onto the surface.
2. Is it a male or a female?
There are several useful clues. The shape of 'pollen baskets' can be useful for true bumblebees (see above).
Males have distinctive long antennae, which are easy to spot with a little practice and some species also have bright yellow faces. They also have a rounded tip to the abdomen (especially when viewed from underneath). They sit lazily on flowers and don't collect pollen. The time of year can also be helpful - males become common in late summer and autumn.
Females have less pronounced antennae, often with a visible 'elbow'. They have a pointed tip to the abdomen (where the sting comes out). They fly busily around, and females of 'true' bumblebees can often be seen collecting pollen.
Male antennae - long and rounded
The underside of a male abdomen - rounded with a 'smiley' opening |
Female antennae - short and elbowed
The underside of a female abdomen - a pointed nobble |
3. What colour is its tail?
White, red, orange or buff - or is the whole bee brown?
- if white, can you see a faint margin of buff hairs between the white and the black?
- The bee below- right has a white tail with a buff margin
4. What other bands can you see?
This bee has two yellow bands. One is at the front of the thorax and the other is part of the way down the abdomen. What colour are they - would you describe them as a dirty/gold yellow or a bright lemon yellow?
You should now be able to identify almost all of the bumblebees you'll ever come across!
The following illustrations are mostly of queen bees, as workers generally have the same colour pattern but are smaller (except the buff-tailed bumblebee). Separate illustrations are shown for species in which the males are different from the females.
Rarer bumblebees that occur in gardens
Three of these species are severely threatened and have declined greatly in abundance (ruderal, brown-banded carder and red-shanked bumblebee). In contrast the tree bumblebee is expanding its range northwards in the UK, having arrived on the south coast from France in 2001. The heath bumblebee is widespread but often overlooked because it is small and superficially similar to the more common garden bumblebee.
Click on the guide below for a larger printable version
Cuckoo bumblebees
In the UK there are 6 species of cuckoo bumblebees (3 illustrated). These were once like other bumblebees, but they have switched to a parasitic existence. The females kill or evict the queen and take over her workers as their own, using them to rear their own offspring. If you live in the south of England, males of the southern cuckoo bumblebee can be among the most common bumblebees in July and August.
Click on the guide below for a larger printable version
Still not found your bee?
There are a further 10 species of bumblebee not illustrated here but which you might see if you visit some of the UK’s wilder places. If you would like to learn how to identify these, or more about bumblebees then why not join BBCT today?
You might also find one of our recommended bumblebee identification books useful.
