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Aedkimalane

 

 

 

 

On seeing a bumblebee with three yellow bands and a white tail we need to bend down quickly to study its head and abdomen carefully at close quarters.

 

The garden bumblebee (B. hortorum) is nearly the same size as the white-tailed bumblebee (B. lucorum), but noticeably more slender than the latter. In addition to the lemon yellow on the collar there is a similarly coloured C-shaped curved band on its thorax, looking as if there were a tiger eye with a black pupil between the wings. The hips of the garden bumblebee are joined by a continuous yellow band; the front edge of the white band on the abdomen is straight.

 

The garden bumblebee has a characteristic elongated head and the longest mouth parts of all our species, reaching down even into the bottom of deep flowers (for instance red clover, cowslip, foxglove, viper’s bugloss, vetch). It often flies from flower to flower without folding the mouth parts. It seldom visits open flower types, such as the inflorescences of dandelions, except to collect pollen. Garden bumblebees scrambling around in deep flowers often wear their back hairs off so that more often than with others shiny bald patches are visible on their abdomen. Determination of the species can be misled by melanism: garden bumblebees have been found in all dark colour varieties, from narrowed yellow bands to all black. Fortunately this is not common in Estonia.

 

The queen of the smaller species, the heath bumblebee (B. jonellus) is comparable in size with a garden bumblebee worker. Only on looking it in the face we can see that the round head is as broad as it is long. Its fur is dense and shorthaired, the colour of the yellow bands varies from lemon yellow to sulphur-coloured. While garden bumblebees prefer to work in gardens and clover fields rich in flowers, the heath bumblebees choose drier natural habitats, for instance flowering heather fields and meadows. In boggy areas neither garden nor heath bumblebees are likely to be seen.

 

An important characteristic is also the colour of the hairs on the hind legs: on the garden bumblebee they are black, on the heath bumblebee red.

 

Have you caught a bumblebee with three yellow bands on a photo? It might be a heath bumblebee of whom we even don’t have any photos!

 

Join the „Meie kimalased – Our bumblebees” group on facebook: LINK

and share your pictures of the bumblebees in your garden with other enthusiasts!