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Sticker of Southern Plains bumble bee
Bug card No. 4000 of 4,939

Southern Plains bumble bee

Bombus fraternus
Eats: Nectar and pollenBees and bumblebeesGardens and meadows6 legs

The Southern Plains bumble bee is a big black bumblebee with yellow bands across its body. Unlike most fluffy bumblebees, the hairs on its tail end lie flat. It buzzes over open prairies and meadows, visiting all sorts of flowers.

Lives in
United States east of the Rocky Mountains, into northern Mexico
Length
1.5 to 2.5 cm (0.59 to 0.98 in)
Top speed
about 19 km/h (12 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Can sting

Watch out! Read about its close cousin on Venom Wiki →

What does it eat?
It drinks nectar and collects pollen from many kinds of flowers, such as milkweed, blanket flower, bee balm and goldenrod.
For real!Photo of Southern Plains bumble bee
Picture by Pollinator ( talk ) ( Uploads ). CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Southern Plains bumble bee about 2.5 cm long (0.98 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 4 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 20 secondsmoves 210 times its own body length every second

How big is Southern Plains bumble bee compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is endangered. Today there are fewer than 15 out of every 100 bees there used to be.

2

The queens are the biggest, at about 2.5 to 2.7 centimetres long.

3

The males have much bigger eyes than the females and very long feelers.

4

It visits flowers from at least 20 different plant families.

you asked

Most asked questions about Southern Plains bumble bee

?Is the Southern Plains bumble bee endangered?

Yes. There are far fewer of them than there used to be, less than 15 percent.

?Where does the Southern Plains bumble bee live?

In open prairies and meadows of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, especially the southern Great Plains.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Bombus fraternus
Named by
F. Smith, 1854
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Apidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Southern Plains bumblebee

Where the facts come from

  1. Bombus fraternus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Pollinator ( talk ) ( Uploads ). CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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