Red-tailed bumblebee

How to recognise it

Queens and workers are jet black with a vivid orange-red tail covering roughly the last third of the abdomen. Males are smaller with the same red tail plus a lemon-yellow collar and face, and look at a glance like a different species entirely.

• Entirely black body with a bright orange-red tail — unmistakable in the female.
• Males add a lemon-yellow collar and facial hair, which causes a great deal of confused reporting.
• Short-tongued: seen on open and shallow flowers rather than deep ones, and frequently robbing the deep ones.
• Nests under stones, paving and rubble, which is where lapidarius comes from.

Body length 11–22 mm (typically 16 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

100–300 individuals

Colony lifespan

One season.

Winter

Mated new queens overwinter alone in soil or under stones.

Castes

Queen, Workers, Males, New queens

Nesting

Burrows in the ground; Existing cavities and tubes

Nests under stones, paving slabs, rubble, dry-stone walls and railway ballast, often quite deep in a cavity. The scientific name records the habit: lapidarius means of stones.

Carries pollen

Corbicula (pollen basket) on the hind leg

On the wing

March to September

Lifecycle

1. 1Queen emergenceQueens emerge in March and April and are conspicuous searching low over walls and stony ground.March to May.
2. 2Colony growthA fairly large colony builds through early summer.
3. 3ReproductionMales appear from midsummer and patrol circuits, scent-marking as they go.

Where it lives and what it does

Habitat

Open grassland, brownfield land, quarries, gardens, coastal cliffs and farmland — anywhere with stony ground and open flowers.

Distribution

Across Europe and into western Asia and North Africa, and one of the most abundant bumblebees on the continent.

Behaviour

Fast and low. Males establish scent-marked patrol circuits, flying the same route repeatedly and depositing pheromone at fixed points along it, waiting for queens — a mating system quite different from the emergence-swarming of some other bees.

Pollination role

An abundant and effective generalist pollinator, strong on open and shallow flowers and on legumes with accessible keels. Its short tongue means the deepest flowers are outside its legitimate reach, and it robs them instead.

High on open and shallow flowers, and reduced on deep ones it chooses to rob.

What it forages on

A short-tongued generalist favouring composites, legumes with shallow keels and open flowers.

Honey

Keeps only a few days of stores

Small wax honeypots holding a few days' stores.

Relationship with people

How people interact with it

Common and conspicuous, and one of the bumblebees people most often ask about because the sexes look so different. Nests under garden paving are frequent and harmless.

Conservation

Widespread and stable, and one of the adaptable generalists rather than one of the declining specialists.