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Sticker of Colorado black-notched bumble bee
Bug card No. 0969 of 4,939

Colorado black-notched bumble bee

Bombus bifarius
Name means: “two-form, because people once thought it came in two colour patterns”

This bumblebee lives high up in the mountains of western North America. It is small and fluffy, with short, even hair and a red patch on its tail end. Like other bumblebees, it lives in a family with a queen and many workers.

Lives in
Mountains of western North America, mostly Colorado and Utah, in mountain meadows
Length
0.8 to 1.4 cm (0.31 to 0.55 in)
Top speed
about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
Flying, estimate
What does it eat?
It drinks sweet nectar from flowers and carries pollen home in little baskets on its back legs.
For real!Photo of Colorado black-notched bumble bee
Picture by xpda. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Colorado black-notched bumble bee about 1.4 cm long (0.55 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 27 secondsmoves 280 times its own body length every second

How big is Colorado black-notched bumble bee compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its other name, two-form bumblebee, is a mistake. Scientists thought it came in a red-tailed and a black-tailed form, but the black-tailed ones turned out to be a different species.

2

Scientists only proved in 2020 that the two look-alike bumblebees are really separate species.

3

Its queens are bigger than the workers, up to about 19 millimetres long.

4

The pollen baskets on its back legs are orange-brown.

you asked

Most asked questions about Colorado black-notched bumble bee

?Where does the Colorado black-notched bumble bee live?

In the mountains of western North America, mostly in Colorado and Utah.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Bombus bifarius
Named by
Cresson, 1878
Group
Bees and bumblebees
Family
Apidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Two-form bumblebee

Where the facts come from

  1. Bombus bifarius (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 xpda. CC BY-SA 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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