Tricoloured bumblebee
The tricoloured bumblebee is a fuzzy bee in three colours: yellow, orange and black. It has a bright orange belt around its middle. It buzzes from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollen for its family.
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Fun facts
The queen keeps her eggs warm by sitting on them and shivering her belly muscles to make heat.
Keeping the eggs warm takes so much energy that the queen may need to visit up to 6000 flowers in a day.
It nests underground, often in an old mouse hole or a small crack in the ground.
A nest rarely has more than 200 bees, and it only lasts one summer.
In autumn the whole family dies except the new queens, who sleep through the winter and start new nests in spring.
Most asked questions about Tricoloured bumblebee
?Where do tricoloured bumblebees nest?
Underground, often in empty mouse holes or small holes in the soil.
?How big is a tricoloured bumblebee?
Workers are about 8 to 13 millimetres long, and the queen is up to 19 millimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bombus ternarius
- Named by
- Say, 1837
- Group
- Bees and bumblebees
- Family
- Apidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Apidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Orange-belted bumblebee
Where the facts come from
- Bombus ternarius (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 Beatriz Moisset. CC BY-SA 2.5, 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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