Tag Archives: British bumblebees

Beautiful bumbles

27 Thursday Feb 2025

Posted by in insects, spring

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This week we’ve had a couple of blue-sky days and much-wanted sunshine, with more in the forecast. And, though the overnight temperatures and winds are still quite cold, the daytime temperatures have risen just enough to cause some insects to awaken and emerge.

During today’s wander around Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park, I spotted these two beautiful Buff-tailed bumblebee queens, one drawn to willow flowers that are just beginning to open and another with her tongue stuck deep into the bright yellow flowers of a gorse bush. Finally, it feels like Spring is in the air.

Carlines and bumbles

11 Sunday Aug 2024

Posted by in flowers, insects, wildflowers

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240811 carlines (1)

I love Carline thistles, their sculptural structure, the way they glisten in the sunshine, how lovely they look from the time of their bursting buds right through to the dried flowers that often last right through the winter.

240811 carlines (2)

And I’m not the only one who loves them. The flowers, which ‘open in warm, dry weather and close in the cool and wet’ (Flora Britannica), must be full of a particular nectar that appeals to our resident bumblebees (like this Common carder and Buff-tailed) as they love feasting on Carline thistles, and I rarely see other insects on them.

240811 carlines (3)

Early bumblebee

26 Tuesday Mar 2024

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Living up to its name, I found this Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) last Friday alternating between sitting on newly laid woodchip mulch and the adjacent stone wall, basking in the short-lived spring sunshine (we’re now back to grey rainy days). As the Bumblebee Conservation website reports, this bumble is ‘One of the “Big 7” widespread and abundant species, found in a wide range of habitats across the UK’, and is ‘a spring specialist’. If you’re not sure which bumblebee species you’ve seen, the Bumblebee Conservation website also has an excellent online guide that shows clear images of each species’ queens and workers, males and females, as appropriate.

240326 bombus pratorum

A bumblebee and its mimic

11 Monday Mar 2024

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Though there was a cold nor’easterly wind blowing, occasional sunny periods brought out a few insects during my visit to Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park last Friday, and I was lucky enough to spot a couple of Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) queens feeding on Blackthorn blossom.

240311 buff-tailed bumblebee

Even better, on one tree I found one of Britain’s larger hoverflies, one that mimics bumblebees, a Large bearfly (Criorhina ranunculi), one that can often be seen in early Spring on the blossom of willows, Blackthorn and Wild cherry. This hoverfly’s tail end can be white, orange or red in colour (this one’s was reddish); to see these variations, and his superb images of this hoverfly, check out Steven Falk’s Flikr album.

240311 Criorhina ranunculi

A bathing bumble

15 Saturday Apr 2023

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Though it’s often difficult to tell Buff-tailed from White-tailed, I think this is a queen White-tailed bumblebee. I caught her giving herself a good clean, and found her motions both fascinating and relaxing. In this short video, I slowed her movements down to half the actual speed the better to see more clearly what she was doing. What a beautiful creature she is!

Companions

31 Wednesday Aug 2022

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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!)

220831 Bombus lapidarius MALE n Bombus pascuorum

Red-tailed bumblebee

07 Monday Mar 2022

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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.

220307 red-tailed bumble

Queen bumbles

26 Saturday Feb 2022

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Not having been out walking for 12 days until yesterday means my first Springtime sightings are probably a bit behind many people’s. Still, it was an absolute delight yesterday to hear, three times, the buzzing of a bumblebee, and to watch this queen Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) searching amongst the low vegetation for a place – perhaps the abandoned burrow of a vole or shrew – to create a nest for her first brood of the year.

220226 buff-tailed bumblebee