18 Saturday Mar 2023
I’ve seen a couple of Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) but didn’t manage to get photos of those, so I was delighted yesterday to find a Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), which was so busy feasting on the pollen of willow catkins that it stayed still for some pics.
31 Wednesday Aug 2022
Posted in insects
≈ Comments Off on Companions
Tags
Bombus lapidarius, Bombus pascuorum, British bees, British bumblebees, Common carder bee, male Red-tailed bumblebee, Red-tailed bumblebee
As our hot dry summer draws to a close, flowers are in short supply so, sometimes, hungry critters just have to share. Here, a male Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), left, shares with a Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum). (Yes, I know the Red-tailed doesn’t actually have a red tail and it certainly doesn’t look like the images I had been searching through when trying to put a name to it, but my friendly local Twitter expert tells me ‘males get sun bleached rather quickly’ and assures me this identification is correct. This is precisely why I don’t really ‘do’ bees!)
07 Monday Mar 2022
During Saturday’s walk I was delighted to spot my first Red-tailed (Bombus lapidarius) and Tree bumblebees (Bombus hypnorum) of the year. The only food source in a 20-square-metre area (except for a few daisies on a patch of grass) was a flowering Mahonia bush, which had attracted not only those two bumblebees but also a Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), as well as several species of fly, bee and hoverfly. It just showed how important flowers are for these early emerging insects.
27 Tuesday Mar 2018
Tags
Bombus lapidarius, British bumblebees, bumblebee, pollinators, Red-tailed bumblebee, signs of spring, willow catkin, willow flower
Isn’t she beautiful? While out walking in a local park I spotted this queen Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) enjoying the pollen of a newly opened willow flower … and I smiled all the way home.
