Gypsy cuckoo bumblebee
The gypsy cuckoo bumblebee is a fluffy black bumblebee with a pale yellow collar and a white tail. It looks like an ordinary bumblebee, but it never builds its own nest. Like a cuckoo bird, it sneaks into another bumblebee family and lets them raise its babies.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It has no worker bees of its own. The family it moves into does all the work.
The female wakes up from her winter sleep a few weeks after other bumblebees, when their nests are already started.
She finds a nest by sniffing out the special smell of the bees that live there.
Once inside, she copies the smell of the nest so the bees accept her as their new queen.
It has no pollen baskets on its back legs. That spot is just covered in thick hair.
Most asked questions about Gypsy cuckoo bumblebee
?Why is it called a cuckoo bumblebee?
Because, like a cuckoo bird, it lays its eggs in someone else's nest and lets them raise the babies.
?How big is the gypsy cuckoo bumblebee?
The females are about 1.5 to 2 centimetres long. The males are a bit smaller.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus bohemicus
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Gypsy's cuckoo bumblebee
Where the facts come from
- Bombus bohemicus (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 Ivar Leidus. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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