2023-05-01 10:26:00
Reader Marianne van den Broek-Boot sent a photo of a bumblebee, asking what species it was. Or maybe even a bee? It was a bumblebee, but it was hard to tell whether it was a field bumblebee or a tree bumblebee.
Both species have an orange thorax, as entomologists call the upper back. The field bumblebee has a variable but often brownish abdomen. The tree bumblebee has a dark abdomen with a white bottom.
Both types are common, including in gardens. Field bumblebees occur in all kinds of landscapes. They are less common in fields for known reasons, but they are one of the first to appear on flower edges. Tree bumblebees must have tree cavities or nest boxes. Originally they lived in forests, nowadays more in gardens and parks where (wild) flowers are not controlled.
Not so picky
In parks and on flower borders you can also encounter bumblebees and garden bumblebees, also common species that like the nectar and pollen of all kinds of flowers, and are not so picky. Earth and garden bumblebees are both black with yellow stripes and a white butt. Garden bumblebees have a double yellow band around their waist, terrestrial bumblebees a single one.
In addition to the four mentioned, there are – apart from dozens of species that have become rare – two general ones: stone bumblebee (black with orange-red rear) and meadow bumblebee (yellow-black with an orange rear). Stone bumblebees nest in both aboveground and underground burrows, meadow bumblebees in aboveground ones. Meadow bumblebees cannot survive on modern meadows, but they can survive on flower meadows. Stone bumblebees often suffice with a berm with some dandelions, trot or deaf nettles.
Finally, there are cuckoo bumblebees that parasitize the offspring of other bumblebees. They lay their eggs in other women’s nests, as cuckoos do with other bird species.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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