Identifying Bees of the UK - Early Bumblebee

Identifying Bees of the UK

Early Bumblebee - Bombus pratorum

Callum Brooks

Above: Early Bumblebee

Within Great Britain there are a number of bumblebees that people have often seen, but not yet identified and the Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) could easily fall into that category, especially for someone who’s just starting to learn bee identification. The Early Bumblebee is one of Britain’s commonest bees and as the name ‘Early’ suggests, this is one of the first bumblebees to emerge from hibernation each year. The Early Bumblebee is usually associated with garden and woodland habitats, but this species is generally not too fussy and it can be found across a wide range of habitats in the UK.

When it comes to identifying an Early Bumblebee, the first thing you should look out for is a relatively small bumblebee (Queens around 13mm forewing length) with an orange-red tail and lemon-yellow bands on its body. A useful comparison for size is the Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum), as the queen Early Bumblebee is similar in size and the workers and males are slightly smaller. The castes of this species typically have a fluffy body pile, but there are a few ways to tell queens, workers and males apart. Queens, as mentioned are around the size of a Common Carder Bee and they have two distinct lemon-yellow bands (one on thorax, the other on the abdomen) and an orange-red tail. The workers are slightly smaller (10mm forewing length) and the main difference is that the lemon-yellow band on the abdomen is reduced or even absent. Males of this species are similar in size to workers, but they are often extensively yellow and have distinctive yellow facial hairs. In comparison to other bumblebees, all castes are small and fluffy and the only species that could potentially be mistaken with an Early Bumblebee is the Red-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius). However, this species is noticeably larger than the Early Bumblebee (queens around 17mm forewing length) and their tail is more crimson red in colour.

The queen Early Bumblebee typically emerges from hibernation around March of each year and it’s one of the first bumblebees to appear throughout its range, however this does vary by latitude and in the north queens are likely to be seen later in the year. In the south this species is bivoltine, meaning that it produces a second generation using the queens produced in the first generation and in the north it’s typically univoltine and only produces one brood. The workers and males of this species can be spotted from April onwards and all castes can persist into September and it can even occasionally be active over winter.

The Early Bumblebee will visit a wide variety of flowers for nectar and pollen (Over 140 different species), however it’s considered to be an especially important pollinator for soft fruit, such as raspberries and blackberries. This species will regularly use nectar robbing to feed on deeper flowers, such as comfreys and it does this by biting through the corolla, which then provides access to the valuable nectar inside. The flowers visited by the Early Bumblebee will vary throughout the year and freshly emerged spring queens will feed on sallows, Prunus species and Colt’s foot, whilst the summer queens prefer brambles, Raspberry and clovers. The workers also visit a large variety of flowers, but they do show a preference for comfreys, garden crane’s-bills and Raspberry. Males are often seen visiting the same flowers as workers and they can be identified by their frenetic foraging behaviour.

Nesting for the Early Bumblebee typically occurs underground in old rodent burrows, however old bird nests, holes in trees and bird-boxes have also been observed as nesting sites. Usually, these nests are fairly small in size and home to no more than 100 workers. The Forest Cuckoo Bumblebee (Bombus sylvestris) is also well known for attacking the nests of this species and taking them over.

Callum Brooks. July 2021.