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Sticker of Crotch's bumble bee
Bug card No. 1242 of 4,939

Crotch's bumble bee

Bombus crotchii
Name means: “named after the bug scientist George Robert Crotch”

Crotch's bumble bee is a fuzzy black bumble bee with yellow and orange bands. It lives mostly in California and loves hot, dry grassland. Sadly, it has become very rare.

Lives in
Mostly California, plus a little of Mexico and Nevada, in grassland and scrub
Length
1.4 to 1.8 cm (0.55 to 0.71 in)
Top speed
about 16 km/h (9.9 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
It drinks nectar and collects pollen from many flowers, like lupines, sages, poppies and milkweed. Milkweed is its favourite.
For real!Photo of Crotch's bumble bee
Picture by (c) trickykid1, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Crotch's bumble bee about 1.8 cm long (0.71 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 3 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 24 secondsmoves 250 times its own body length every second

How big is Crotch's bumble bee compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is endangered. There are far fewer of these bees than there were just ten years ago.

2

It often builds its nest underground in an old mouse or rat hole.

3

Queens are bigger than the workers, about 2.3 to 2.4 centimetres long.

4

Males have huge eyes that cover most of their face, and yellow hair on their faces.

5

It needs hotter and drier weather than most other bumble bees.

you asked

Most asked questions about Crotch's bumble bee

?Why is Crotch's bumble bee endangered?

Because of bug sprays, a changing climate and new towns and farms built where it used to live.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Bombus crotchii
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Apidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Golden State bumble bee

Where the facts come from

  1. Bombus crotchii (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 (c) trickykid1, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, 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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More from the same group: Bees and bumblebees

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