Black-backed bumble bee
Bombus mesomelas
Name means: “black in the middle, because of the black band between its wings”
The black-backed bumble bee is a mountain bumblebee from Europe and western Asia. It has a band of black hair across its back between the wings. It loves warm, sunny mountain slopes.
Lives in
Mountains of Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus and Iran, on sunny slopes
What does it eat?
It drinks nectar and collects pollen from many different kinds of flowers.
How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Black-backed bumble bee about 16 km/h (9.9 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
A car driving in town about 50 km/h (31 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
It often builds its nest underground in an old, empty mouse nest.
2
A colony has only about 50 to 120 bees.
3
The queens wake up from their winter sleep at the end of May.
4
It lives in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians and other big mountain ranges.
5
It has disappeared from Germany. The last one there was seen in 1956.
you asked
Most asked questions about Black-backed bumble bee
?Where does the black-backed bumble bee live?
On sunny mountain slopes in Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus and Iran.
?Where does the black-backed bumble bee nest?
Mostly underground, in old empty mouse nests.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus mesomelas
- Named by
- Gerstaecker, 1869
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Black-backed bumblebee
Where the facts come from
- Bombus mesomelas (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 ChrisMoWiki. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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