Animal · United Kingdom, France, Germany
Buff-tailed bumblebee
Bombus terrestris — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The buff-tailed bumblebee is already out on cold grey mornings, when honeybees are still indoors, because she can warm herself up first. Her nest is usually underground in an old mouse burrow.
Picture credit: Martin Kunz (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Fernando Losada Rodríguez (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the buff-tailed bumblebee live?
Home: meadows, gardens and old mouse burrows.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Poland, Türkiye.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: queen 20–22 mm, workers 11–17 mm. It weighs about 0 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A bumblebee cannot fly with cold muscles, because they only work properly at around 30 degrees. So she unhooks her wings from the flight muscles and lets those muscles shiver against each other without moving the wings at all. The muscles burn sugar and turn it into heat, and you can hear the humming before she lifts off. On a morning at 13 degrees this warm-up takes about five minutes. Her thick fur holds the heat in, which is why she works in the mountains, in drizzle and very early in the year. She uses the same muscles to shake flowers so that stubborn pollen falls out. Her colony is small by bee standards, usually a few hundred workers in an old mouse burrow, and it lasts a single summer.
Find it on the globe
Buff-tailed bumblebee is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is a buff-tailed bumblebee?
The queen reaches 20 to 22 mm, workers 11 to 17 mm and males around 14 to 16 mm. She is one of the largest bumblebees in Europe, and the queen's tail tip is the creamy colour that gives her the name.
Where does the colony live?
Nearly always underground, in an abandoned mouse or vole burrow beneath a hedge, a lawn or a garden shed. The species is at home in Europe, North Africa and western Asia and has been taken to other continents for greenhouse work.
How does a bumblebee warm itself up?
It shivers its flight muscles without flapping, rather like you shivering in the cold. The chest then heats up to around 30 degrees, and only when it is that warm can the bumblebee take off.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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