Indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee
Bombus insularis
The indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee is a sneaky bumblebee. Like a cuckoo bird, it lets other bumblebees raise its babies. It is fluffy, with a black head, pale yellow hairs on its chest and yellow on its sides.
Lives in
Canada, Alaska and the northern and western United States
Length
1.6 to 1.9 cm (0.63 to 0.75 in)
the femaleWhat does it eat?
It visits flowers, but it does not collect food for its young. The workers of another bumblebee nest feed its babies.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 3 grains of rice in a row⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 24 seconds⚡moves 230 times its own body length every second
How big is Indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee compared to YOU?
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How fast is it?
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Indiscriminate cuckoo 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
The female sneaks into another bumblebee's nest, gets rid of the queen there and takes over.
2
The workers of that nest then look after her babies as if they were their own.
3
The male is smaller than the female.
4
It lives on the tundra, in the northern forests and in western mountains.
you asked
Most asked questions about Indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee
?Why is it called a cuckoo bumble bee?
Like the cuckoo bird, it lets other bumblebees raise its young.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus insularis
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Bombus insularis (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 USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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