Appearance
The queen is black with a yellow collar, another yellow band on the first tergite and red colouration on the tail. The male has a wider yellow collar, yellow colouration on both terga 1 and 2 and, as the queen, a red tail. The workers are similar to the queen, but often with less yellow colouration; usually the abdominal, yellow band is more or less missing. The head of the bumblebee is rounded, and the proboscis is short. The bumblebee is quite small; the queen has a body length of 15–17 millimetres, the worker 10–14 millimetres and the male 11–13 millimetres.
Distribution
It is found in most of Europe, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. It is, however, uncommon in the south of the Iberian peninsula, Italy and the Balkans. On the steppes of southern Russia and Ukraine it is totally absent. In Asia it is found in the mountains of northern Turkey, northern Iran and, uncommonly, in Siberia west of the Yenisei.It is common in most of the mainland United Kingdom; however less so in north-west of Scotland. It is absent from most Scottish islands, Orkney and Shetland.
Behavior
A second generation is common in warmer climates, often established in existing, but declining nests. Colonies rarely contain more than 100 individuals. It is a pollen storer, that is, it stores pollen in wax pots or empty cells and feeds each larva individually, rather than storing the pollen in pockets in the larval cells.It feeds on flowering plants with short corollae, as white clover, thistles, sage, lavender, Asteraceae, cotoneaster and allium.
Habitat
Its habitat is very wide ranging, including fields, parks, scrubland and sparse forest.References:
Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.
