looduskalender.ee

The common banded carder bees and tree bumblebees live peacefully together with humans and their nests can be found in the walls of timbered houses, in attics and tree trunk hollows or tree stumps, in moss or grass – always in the ground.   

 

Common carder bee

Põldkimalane

Bombus pascuorum

 

The common carder bees are perhaps the best known – body rust brown, a broad black band on the abdomen and the tip of the abdomen is rust brown.

 

 

Tree bumblebee

Talukimalane

Bombus hypnorum

 

Quite similar in colour to the common carder bee, but the rear tip of the abdomen is white.

 

 

Moss carder bee

Samblakimalane

Bombus muscorum

 

These bumblebees use mouse burrows and bird nests or build their own nests, digging between tree roots. The nest is lined with leaf debris and moss. The moss carder bee and the rare brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis), confusingly similar, are rather seldom encountered.