What kind of bee is this?
Short answerIt dependsEstablished evidence
Start with size and shape rather than colour. A honey bee is slim, amber-brown and about 12 mm; a bumblebee is round, furry and obviously larger; anything small, dark and fast is probably a solitary bee, of which there are hundreds of species. If it has a narrow waist, no fur and bright flat yellow, it is a wasp — and if it hovers and has one pair of wings and huge eyes, it is a hoverfly pretending.
Where the belief comes from
Almost every picture of a bee shows either a honey bee or a cartoon that is really a bumblebee, so most people have two categories for an animal group with twenty thousand species. The commonest garden bees in Britain — mining bees, mason bees, sweat bees — do not look like either.
Rule out the things that are not bees first
| If it has | It is | The giveaway |
|---|---|---|
| A narrow waist, smooth shiny body, bright flat yellow | A wasp | Bees are furry and thickset; wasps look polished |
| One pair of wings, enormous eyes, hovers and darts | A hoverfly | Hoverflies mimic bees well and cannot sting at all |
| Very furry, loud, visiting flowers at dusk | Possibly a bee-fly or a moth | Bee-flies have a long rigid forward-pointing proboscis |
Then sort by size and shape
- Round, furry, obviously large, audibleA bumblebee. The tail colour — white, buff, red — and the banding narrow it to a species, and a queen in early spring is startlingly bigger than the workers later on.
- Slim, amber to brown, about 12 mm, in numbers on one plantA honey bee. They are much less furry than a bumblebee, and they are the only bee likely to be present in dozens at once.
- Small, dark, quick, often near bare groundA mining bee or a sweat bee. Both are solitary, both nest in soil, and there are hundreds of species — an exact name usually needs a specialist and a hand lens.
- Medium, carrying pollen under the abdomen rather than on the legsA mason or leafcutter bee. The pollen brush on the underside is the single most useful field mark on this list, because no other group does it.
- Very large, shiny, dark blue-blackA carpenter bee. Common across southern Europe, the Americas and Asia; not resident in Britain.
What the season tells you
- A very large bumblebee in February or March is a queen looking for a nest site.
- A dense low-flying swarm over a lawn in April is almost certainly male mining bees, and they cannot sting.
- A bee working ivy in late September in Britain is quite likely the ivy bee, which arrived in 2001 and is spreading.
- Bees leaving neat semicircular holes in rose leaves in midsummer are leafcutters, and the plant is fine.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Work it out for yourself
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