Garden Bumblebee
Bombus hortorum
Summary 4
Bombus hortorum, "garden bumblebee" or "small garden bumblebee".
Body lengths (from different sources):
Queen 17-20mm, worker 11-16mm, male 14-15mm.
Queen 19-22mm.
Queen 17-22mm, worker 11-16mm, male 13-15mm
Tongue length 13.5mm (avg)
Distribution: East of South Island from Canterbury southwards.
Very long tongued species, preferring deep flowers (eg red clover, foxgloves).
Tongue as long as the body, is the longest of all bumblebees. While flying between flowers that are close together, eg foxgloves, the bee often keeps her long tongue extended.
Doesn't bite into the side of flowers like B. terrestris.
Long narrow face.
They are black, with two yellow bands on the thorax (front half of body), a single thin yellow band on the abdomen (rear half of body) and a white tail.
Has a long face/head when viewed from the front.
It usually nests among plant roots and litter just above or just below the soil surface.
Classed with B. ruderatus as sub-genus Megabombus, it is difficult to visually distinguish some individuals of the two species, see http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/bombus/Williams&Hernandez00_ruderatus.pdf.
A suggested visual difference from B ruderatus is that in B. hortorum, the yellow band on the scutellum (the band to the rear of the wings) is much thinner than the yellow band at the front (head end) of the thorax. On B. ruderatus the bands are about the same width.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/bombus/_key_colour_british/ck_widespread.html#hortorum :
The front edge of the white tail is straight, it doesn't encroach on the next band along the sides of the abdomen.
Another suggested difference is that B. hortorum is a large bumblebee, with a fairly 'scruffy' appearance with long hair compared to the even look of B ruderatus.
In the NZGEO article of Oct-Dec 1994 the differences were described as "The yellow waist of ruderatus is more clearly defined than that of hortorum, which blends more gradually with the surrounding black, and ruderatus stripe colour can vary from yellow through to black, but hortorum is always lemon-yellow".
Sources and Credits
- (c) Tony Wills, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), uploaded by Tony Wills
- (c) Donald Hobern, some rights reserved (CC BY), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bombus_hortorum_(14175215671).jpg
- (c) Tony Wills, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), uploaded by Tony Wills
- Adapted by Tony Wills from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_hortorum
More Info
iNaturalist.ca Map
| Subgenus | Megabombus |
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