Buff-tailed Bumblebee

The buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) is a large, furry bee of Europe and western Asia, easy to recognize by its buff-colored tail. It is reared commercially in millions to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Buff-tailed Bumblebee in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Ecdysozoa lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

Tomatoes and some other flowers release pollen only when vibrated. A bumblebee grips the flower and shivers its flight muscles at high frequency, shaking the pollen out. Honeybees cannot do this, so bumblebees are prized for greenhouse crops.

Bumblebees warm their flight muscles by shivering, so they can forage in cool, damp weather when other bees stay in. The colonies are annual, started by a lone queen in spring.

Escaped commercial bees have established in Tasmania and Patagonia, where they compete with native bees and may spread pathogens. Pesticides and loss of flower-rich habitat are further threats to bumblebees. See Western Honeybee.

• Western Honeybee — the managed honeybee
• Biodiversity — pollinator declines