American bumblebee
The American bumblebee is a big, furry yellow and black bee with a long tongue. It loves sunflowers and clover and helps plants make seeds by carrying pollen. It used to be the most common bumblebee in the southern United States, but now there are far fewer.
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Fun facts
Its numbers dropped by almost nine tenths in just twenty years.
It often builds its nest above ground in long grass or hay. Some have nested in old bird nests, buckets and even barns.
A bee can find its way home from more than 2 kilometres away.
The queen is the biggest, up to 26 millimetres long.
In late summer a nest can have more than 200 workers.
Most asked questions about American bumblebee
?Why is the American bumblebee in trouble?
Its numbers have fallen by almost 90 percent, so it is now a threatened species.
?How big is the American bumblebee?
Workers are 13 to 19 millimetres long and queens up to 26 millimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus pensylvanicus
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Bombus pensylvanicus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Louise Woodrich. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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