Last year I posted a video featuring the 'Red-tailed Cuckoo Bumblebee' (Bombus rupestris) available here: [ Ссылка ]
As the name suggests, this is the Bee who's nest the Cuckoo Bee looks to inhabit, although luckily for Bombus lapidaries, the Cuckoo bees will not kill their hosts.
This impressive lady is a Queen. She is large and robust with short, velvety hair and a dark orange-red tail. it being early in the year, the tail is strongly coloured, but they tend to fade with age. The Queen emerges from hibernation several weeks before the males and workers.
Workers are similar in colouring to the queens but considerably smaller, while the males have an additional yellow band on the collar, and a tuft of yellow on the face.
Although she's feeding here, post-hibernation, on my Daphne Perfume Princess, a very valuable early source of nectar, her main task as a social bee, is to find a suitable nest site. With any luck, she'll find one of the Red-tailed Bumblebee nests established in my garden in 2020.
This species has become more widespread across the UK, despite a general decline in numbers and is most commonly found on chalk downland. It will also frequent gardens with good food sources, right through to the Autumn, when this year's Queens, workers and males will die, and next year's Queens will hibernate.
PK
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