Take bumble bees for example - even their Latin name,
bombus, is delightful.
The Great Yellow Bumblebee (
Bombus distinguendus) was found across the UK until the 1960s, but after suffering a massive decline is now only found in a few places in Scotland's remote northwest, in machair grasslands and other flower-rich areas on the north coast and islands.
The recordings didn't allow for differentiation between bee species, but participant observations indicated most bees monitored were bumble bees (genus
Bombus) or honey bees (Apis mellifera).
the world's largest bumblebee is the
Bombus dahlbomii of South America - the queens are said to look like flying mice.
She hesitated when labeling a few bumblebees as
Bombus neoboreus, a species found in the arctic tundra of Alaska and Canada: "There were several specimens of neoboreus that didn't look quite right," she said.
Bumble bees (
Bombus spp.), the eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica L.), several species of halictids, the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), the mining bee (Svastra atripes Cresson), and the leaf-cutter bee (Megachile brevis Say) were found to be common visitors of partridge pea flowers (Robertson, 1890; Hardin et al., 1972; Thorp and Estes, 1975; Wolfe and Estes, 1992; Williams et at, 2015).
Most of the nutritional information we have for bees comes from studies on the honey bee and more recently bumble bees, due to production of commercially available bumble bee colonies of
Bombus terrestris L.
In Central Europe, Teppner (2005) observed that large bees (
Bombus) are good pollinators of tomatoes, because they can easily vibrate the anthers.
Bombus sp.###11###10###11###23###0.34###0.79###0.36###0.79###7###15###15###15
AFTER receiving calls about wasp nests invading people's homes and bird boxes, The Tree Bee Society found that these weren't wasps at all, but a new species of bee to the UK called
Bombus Hypnorum or the 'Tree Bee'.
Our field studies on Hainan Gesneriaceae also found that
Bombus and Amegilla were the most frequent pollinators, with no bird- and moth-pollinations were observed (Shao-Jun Ling & Ming-Xun Ren, unpublished data).
And on Tuesday, the agency declared the rusty patched bumblebee (
Bombus affinis) an endangered species, making it the first-ever bumblebee in the country, and the first bee of any kind in the 48 contiguous states, to have that unenviable distinction.
Bombus - bumblebees