Bombus pascuorum ?
Found this one in my insect pictures from last year.
I have very little bumble bees this year probably because of the poor summer we're having. There is not yet a picture of it in BF. So I would like to be sure before I enter it.
another view;
and a last one;
I am currently very wary of definitely ID'ing any of these bees, I have so many small to tiny bees it can be difficult!
I have one which I thought was the same and have given it that name, but I need to look further before commiting. There is a bee forum on Yahoo, but they are not usually very user friendly. I haven't looked any further into it, but there should be people there who know more.
This site gives some good pics, and links, Bombus pascuorum could be either of two I have, but I have named the other one B. sylvarum which seem to be in groups with perhaps male and females together, or they are two different types!
http://www.bwars.com/Bombus_pascuorum.htm
http://www.bwars.com/Gallery.htm
My 'named' B. pascuorum is very hairy around the thorax, the whole bee is like a rounded ball of hair, and it always flies alone. I have seen it last year and this year, it tends to feed on species Dahlias a lot. The others feed a lot on species Geranium, they move quickly and are difficult to photograph, in and out in without stopping. The solitary bee seems more clumsy, although it flies away quickly and moves around the flower centre is does spend time on it.
This is the solitary bee which I thought may be B. pascuorum, but it might be something else.
The face view of same bee
This is the other bee I have 'named' Bombus sylvarum,
http://popgen.unimaas.nl/~jlindsey/commanster/Insects/Bees/Bombus.html
The smallest has a yellowish colouring on the abdomen back, the slightly larger ones are more black with paler hairs. They are always together so I assume they are different sexes of the same bee.
This is the smaller one, on a Geranium which is one of those wild ones with thick red stems, it usually grows in the autumn and dies after the next season flowering, has quite small flowers.
The slightly larger ones that feed with the last one on the same flowers. Their thorax hairs are more sparse than the first, solitary bee I posted, they also look to have less hair on the abdomen.
A side view,
You have got me going again on my bee IDs!
Take a look at this site, there are several pic and a description of their breeding etc. They do live in a colony, with males, females and workers. The Queen can be active until October (my pic of the hairy one is 6th October), now I'm wondering if my solitary bee is the Queen, the others males, workers, females, but the smaller one does look like B. sylvarum.
My smaller bees also feed on tubular flowers, I have Penstemon and they feed on those.
This looks like my side view pic, a female,
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Bombus_pascuorum/more_info.html
Look at this face, it looks like the one I have.
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Bombus_pascuorum/ARK012742.html
I'm sorry I got you going again on your bee IDs mission again! I can imagine how demanding it is in concentration and eye-stress by having to compare the tiniest details on numerous pictures. I already got a little dizzy from hovering from one picture to the other comparing and concentrating on tiny details.
But I really do think that my bee and your first one are the same, also in comparing them with the ones in the link. But of course I don't have enough training and experience to take this as a guaranty.
Your second bee also looks like the one you think it is, Bombus sylvarum, in my eyes it looks identical to the one in the site.
The wild geranium is probably Geranium robertianum.
It also pops up here and there in my garden and plant pots. The bee must be really tiny as the flowers of that geranium are quite small.
I also think that Bombus pascuorum is the right name for your last one and their faces do indeed look identical.
I thought it was Geranium robertianum, I checked it a long time ago but wasn't certain, and yes they are small flowers, the bee is tiny.
I think I agree with you on the second bee being B. sylvarum, I also think the 3rd bee is B. pascuorum, but I am unsure about the first one as it is a ball of hair even under it's body and the write-up on arkive.org states the coat tends to be scruffy looking and is short.
If you scroll down the Information is at the bottom, or click the link at the side.
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Bombus_pascuorum/more_info.html
I did a search for 'Common Carder Bee Queen' to see if I could find anything on the Queen, as October would suggest it could be a queen, the rest die off and it's only the queen which overwinters.
I found a site which is looking for recorders of bumblebees, it has charts but I can't fathom out the drawings, they don't look like the real thing, except for a few of them and there are many. I have a lot of different bumblebees so thought I would take them up on the recording, they will try to ID it if you send them a photo. I have sent the smallest one 'B. sylvarum' on their email link as an attachment, also asked if they would ID them I could send 12 at a time in an email. Fingers crossed!
http://www.bumblebeeconservationtrust.co.uk/bumblebees_id.htm
I just looked at their 'join now' link, they want £9 for a year's membership, I hope I don't have to join to record!
Some more interesting links, B. pascuorum, look at the pic at top left, very similar to my small bee,
http://www.bumblebee.org/pasc.htm
Now look at the Cuckoo bee which takes over the nest, B. campestris,
http://www.bumblebee.org/cuckoo.htm
I've looked at the description they give of Bombus pascuorum on the arkive site, but I don't understand why they call its coat 'scruffy', I think the coat of the bee (the picture they give at the top) looks fluffy like mine and yours. That description might be just a subjective interpretation.
I looked again at my first picture and one can see through the hairs because the sun was hitting on it and on can see the underlying shield which is black. When seen from the sides like in your picture it looks a thick mass of woolly hairs.
The abdomen part on their picture has a different colour but it is variable like they say.
What an amazing story about these cuckoo bees!!
And so strange that the males don't seem to have wings on these pictures, nor legs as far as I can see.
Ha ha, now why would males need wings andlegs! Saving on space I think.
Yes, all you say is true, but look at this hairy body of my first bee, taken another time (14th September last year) but it's the same bee. The hairs are thick and all around the body. This may be a Queen, they are usually larger, and that could explain the slower habit. I don't really know what else it could be, I have a pic from early May last year of the same type or same bee too. As the Queen is the only one to live over winter to have it in early May as well as October it must be a queen. They build the nest, lay the eggs and feed them, until they get the first lot of workers hatched.
No reply on the pic I sent yet.
Now here's one of the workers or males, this one is scruffy and I notice these have a bald patch on the middle of the thorax. Others are more thickly coated but not as much as the first bee, perhaps males and workers differ.
At the same time as the last bee, this one with a thicker coat and more colour on the abdomen.
Just to confuse matters, I have this one which may be just washed out of colour, at this angle looks quite hairy.
At this angle you can see it has a red tip to the tail.
The bottoms up view! Now can you see why I am confused?
Oh yes!! now I really understand that the deeper you dig into the matter the more puzzling and confusing it becomes!
and yes your first picture makes it clear what you meant it being one ball of hairs, not what one could interpret as scruffy!
whereas the second one looks so different and clearly scruffy,
perhaps it's from too much hard labour!
Here I give the picture again of the underside view of my bee, the same, and it's also hairy all around. The pictures were taken in the middle of September two years ago.
I have soem around now that look like your last pic, I wonder if it's a second brood as they are larger than the first ones. Today the sun is shining in intervals, all the insects are scurrying to feed. I saw some like your last one, but some that must be the same bee but only about half the size.
The smaller ones feed on very small flowers, on Veronica spicata (?), I'm not sure which Veronica now without checking, but it is tall.
I think I read that this is the only bee here with no stripes on the thorax, what about B. sylastrum, somewhere it mentioned it's only sporadic in the south of England I think.
This tells the story, Ii really do think I have that as well, and some of the smaller bees may be these as the males and workers vary.
http://www.ukbap.org.uk/UKPlans.aspx?ID=156
This is one I took today of one of the larger ones like yours, which I feel sure is B pascuorum. It is much more hairy, but the one I think is the queen is more hairy still!
This message was edited Aug 17, 2007 2:26 PM
That was on a speices Dahlia centre which is quite large, the next one is the other about half the size, not fixed them up yet but will post anyway.
Another today on a small Geranium versicolor flower.
Yes, that 1rst bee looks indeed like mine apart from its coat that has a more yellowish tone, while mine has a more deep burnt sienna colour, but that could be because yours has had more sun.
In my eyes the smaller ones look like they could be a different specie.
They look broader in body structure, also the shape of their wings look very broad.
I have got a reply from the Bumblebee recording scheme! As follows:
"The bee in your photograph is a common carder bumblebee (Bombus pascuorum). This species is very variable ranging from very tiny to fairly large and varying in colour from a blonde shade to a very rich orange or brown. They are very similar to the much rarer moss carder bumblebee (Bombus muscorum) and the brown-banded carder bumblebee (Bombus humilis), but the latter two species do not have a single (by that they mean none!) black hair on their abdomens whereas the common carder bumblebee usually does (again the density of these is variable!). I have never noticed a bee that is so yellow in colour as the one in your photo but will keep a look out from now on!"
I still think there is a possibility it is B. sylvarum it looked identical to the pic on the NL site. They have said I can send pics to them as many as I can in one email to ID all I have, which is great! I will mention this possibilty as it is a rarer one supposed to be only in the south, but I have many insects which are 'supposed' to be only in the south.
I will have to take a close look at the other suspects and see if they have black hairs on the abdomen, this can be tricky!
OK, I have searched B. muscorum and found an extrememoy interesting article which can blow all theories out.
http://www.caithness.org/nature/bees/index.htm
Chart of less common Bumblebees,
http://www.bumblebee.org/uncommonSp.htm
There is a book which I think anyone wanting to ID with updated information should have,
http://www.english-nature.org.uk/news/story.asp?ID=705
A pic Of B. muscorum
http://www.biopix.dk/Photo.asp?Language=sv&PhotoId=46174&Photo=Moshumle-(Bombus-muscorum)
Another interesting article, as I suspected there is likely inbreeding, this would explain the black hairs which can be present on B. muscorum, and the lack of them in B. pascuorum as menitoned on the caithness.org site.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16499688&dopt=Citation
This pic of the Shetland Bumblebee, B. muscorum (there are subspecies!) looks very familiar!
http://www.fugleognatur.dk/english/gallery_uk.asp?mode=ShowLarge&ID=18250
http://www.nature-shetland.co.uk/brc/bees.htm
Read the section at the bottom,
http://www.david.element.ukgateway.net/hymenoptera11.htm
Links to articles for the record,
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/bombus/publications.html
Same site as before, lots of pics of B. muscorum which can each be enlarged, I see yellow on the abdomen!
http://www.biopix.nl/Species.asp?Searchtext=Bombus%20muscorum&Category=Insekter
Posting now, back later for more research!
Another site which is good for ID, it has pop-up links to pics and drawings when you go to the relevant page, it is in my Favourites but got lost!
http://www.brisc.org.uk/bbident.php
More info, B. sylvarum pic which has a silver thorax,
http://www.buglife.org.uk/conservation/currentprojects/bigbumblebeehunt/bumblebeesuperfacts.htm
http://www.earthlife.net/insects/socbees.html
http://www.wildbienen.de/b-muscor.htm
http://www.wildebijen.nl/mos_hommel.html
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2005/jun/05_100.shtml
This message was edited Aug 20, 2007 1:43 PM
Didn't manage yet to go through all these interesting sites as it really takes up a lot of time. I think I better give up any attempts to become a good determinator of insects, also because I do not naturally have a scientifical approach of nature's creatures. It is overwhelming complicated at least with these species.
One of the things I read in the interesting article you mention of the caithness org. :
'though any specimen with plentiful black hairs on the sides of the abdomen will be pascuorum'. I think mine has quite a lot of black hairs in the bands of its abdomen so that would be one more reason to assume it is B.pascuorum, but I have learned my lesson not to jump to conclusions and will leave this open.
Yesterday I had the visit of a very deeply fox-red Bumble bee on my butterfly bush, what a valuable plant this is for so many insects!
The pictures are not very sharp because of the wind.
another angle;
What a beauty that is!
I felt just like you did once I realised how complicated it can become, but I can't let it go, I just proceed with caution. I hate it when I can't get good pics of very small insects, my son has offered to buy me a better camera! Another learning experience ahead, it will be a DSLR, not as light as this one but not very heavy. I wonder how I will cope in the shrubs with a larger camera, but I must try!
There is always a challenge ahead, don't give up entirely, it can be fun and rewarding not to mention educational.......and don't forget the enjoyment!
Thanks for the encouraging words! I think I will stick for the moment to the more easy ones.
That's great you'll have a real good camera!
Recently, I lost mine, must have slipped from my shoulder without me noticing. I thought I would never see it again as it must have dropped beside a busy road with loads of cyclists and pedestrians passing by all the time.
As I couldn't bear the idea I would be without a camera I bought another one already the next day, a more powerful one, not a DSLR which is beyond my reach for the moment.
One day later a lady called me with a french accent to tell me she had found my camera and would like to send it to me by post.
I couldn't believe I had been so lucky that an honest person had found it. I am so grateful to her!
The result of this is that I now have two camera's.
You must have had your telephone number on the camera, you were lucky! There are honest people around, but we don't expect honesty now do we.
I don't remember which camera you had, it did have a good macro I do remember, a Canon? I'm getting a Nikon D40X, the prices have recently dropped and this one gets a great read-up, plus they have a refund of £90 until the end of the month. Still waiting to hear from my son though, I had thought I would get the Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ18 (not out yet) but found some rotten close ups from people who had been to the convention. I also found the sensor is only 1/8 size of a DSLR.
I have spent a lot of time sorting my bumblebee pics, today I sent one lot of 12 pics for ID, 7 bees, more to go yet! A big job with over 300 pics but I am selecting one or two of each.
I have around 100 pics of B. pascuorum, some may be B. muscorum but I doubt they could be positively ID'd without a specimen, not doing that! Yesterday, for a while, the sun shone and there was a few around without any black hairs to my eye, can't see any in the pics either but they were difficult to photograph.
This message was edited Aug 21, 2007 6:54 PM
What a fluffy, woolly ball of hair!
Yes, luckily I had a little visit-card in the camera case with my name, address and tel. But the lady even had to do some research, like she told me because the letters were worn out and hardly legible!
My old camera I got back is a Canon Ixus 700. I was and am very happy with it as it is so easy to use and has an excellent macro-mode. It has 7.1 Mp.
The new one is a Canon Power shot G7 with 10 Mp.; more heavy and a bit clumsy to handle. Also more complicated, I still have to learn how to handle it. In the macro-mode I can come as close as 1cm to the object and still zoom in. It has costed me 500 €.
In a way I like my old one better; it is much more simple to use but who knows that might change...
This message was edited Aug 21, 2007 9:58 PM
I have found one of my above bees! The red-tailed one, I was looking for a fly and followed another link (where I have been before), look what I found!
http://www.insectpix.net/Anthophora_furcata_new.htm
They even mention the red tail as being able to distinguish Anthophora furcata from Bombus pascuorum. See how easy it is to think they may be the same bee, even more so when we are told they are very variable! I somehow thought that one was too different.
Yes, I can see that's really the one!
How good it can be to be stubborn in these matters!
