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Moss carder bee

Bombus muscorumEusocial, colony dies each autumnKeeps only a few days of stores

A pale gingery carder bee of coastal grassland, machair and marsh, and one of Britain's declining species. It is a long-tongued legume specialist that nests at the surface, cards moss and grass over the nest, and depends on exactly the flower-rich unimproved grassland that has largely gone.

Can it sting?

Can sting and effectively never does. Surface nests mean the commonest disturbance is a mower rather than a person.

How to recognise it

A neat, evenly gingery-brown bumblebee with no black hairs at all on the abdomen — which is the character separating it from the far commoner common carder bee. The thorax is a warm even ginger and the abdomen paler.

  • Evenly gingery with no black hairs on the abdomen — the common carder bee has black flecking.
  • No white tail; the colour simply fades out.
  • Coastal grassland, machair, dune and marsh rather than gardens.
  • Long-tongued, seen head-first in red clover and vetches.

Body length 11–18 mm (typically 15 mm).

Biology

Social organisation

Eusocial, colony dies each autumn

A true colony with a queen and workers, but only for one season: everyone dies in autumn except mated new queens, who overwinter alone. Bumblebees.

Colony size at peak
40–120 individuals
Colony lifespan
One season.
Winter
Mated new queens overwinter alone.
Castes
Queen, Workers, Males, New queens
Nesting
Burrows in the ground

Nests at the surface in tussocky grass and moss, carding surrounding material over the nest as other carder bees do. Surface nests are very vulnerable to mowing and to grazing at the wrong moment.

Carries pollen
Corbicula (pollen basket) on the hind leg
On the wing
April to September

Lifecycle

  1. Late emergenceQueens emerge in late April and May, later than the common carder.April to May.
  2. Colony seasonBuilds through summer on legumes, with a season running to September.
  3. ReproductionReproductives from August.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat
Coastal grassland, machair, sand dune, saltmarsh edge, fen and unimproved damp grassland.
Distribution
Across northern Europe. In Britain, increasingly coastal and northern, with strongholds in the Hebrides, Orkney and Irish coasts.
Behaviour
A long-tongued legume specialist with a late season, which is the combination that has put several British bumblebees in trouble. Its retreat to the coast is a good proxy for where unimproved grassland survives.
Pollination role
An important pollinator of grassland legumes on coastal and machair systems.

High on legumes, and now restricted to a fraction of its former range.

What it forages on
Legumes above all — red clover, bird's-foot trefoil, vetches — plus knapweed and thistles.

Honey

Keeps only a few days of stores

A few days' worth in wax pots.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it
A UK conservation priority species and one of the beneficiaries of the habitat restoration carried out for the short-haired bumblebee reintroduction, which is a useful demonstration that habitat work helps more than its target species.
Conservation
Declining and increasingly coastal. The cause is the same as for the other declining long-tongued species: loss of flower-rich unimproved grassland and of red clover from farming systems.

Sources

  • Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation — Oxford University Press (2010) · Monograph
  • Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

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