Frequently asked questions about bumblebee species and names

Questions about bumblebee species and names

What is a cuckoo bumblebee?
How many species of bumblebee are there in the world?
What are the common names of bumblebees, and why bother with Latin names?
What is the taxonomic classification of bumblebees?
Which UK bumblebees are endangered?
How did the bumblebee get its name?

How many species of bumblebee are there in the world?

There are about 25 British species according to Prys-Jones (19 species of Bombus and 6 species of cuckoo bumblebees). And about 65 species in Europe, and 250 species of bumblebee have been discovered so far worldwide. However we cannot be sure that every species has been found, or that none of the species that have been described have since gone extinct, or that a species described and named in one country is not the same as one described and given a different name in another country. So this is a difficult question that even the experts cannot give a definitive answer on. I have read that there are estimated to be about 45 000 species of Hymenoptera (the name for the family of bees, wasps, ants and sawflies) in Europe alone! Taxonomy is an on-going process, new species are found, old species go extinct, on close examination one existing species is found to be two, or more slightly different species, or two previously separate species are found to be actually just one. For example many years ago Bombus terrestris and B. lucorum were thought to be the same species. And just recently it has been recognised that a bumblebee that was previously known as B. lucorum and was found to inhabit colder areas in the NW UK is actually a separate species and has been given the name B. magnus. It differs slightly from B. lucorum in that the yellow band on the thorax curves round the wing base in B. magnus, but is shorter and doesn't curve, or hardly curves in B. lucorum. That this has happened only in the last few years to a well-known species in a highly populated, well-studied country indicates the difficulty of answering the question.

Things are made even more difficult by the lack of funding that taxonomy receives. TV programmes, magazines, books and charities go on about conservation, biodiversity, ecological hot spots and all the other buzz words, and how we should save this or that area. But most of the time we don't even know what is there to save. We may know about the presence or absence of the bigger furry or feathery things (but probably less than the "experts" would like to admit on the population size, status and viability) but that's about all. The back rooms of museums are full of specimen jars of breathtakingly wonderful insects, spiders and other non furry things that are known to be new to science but have never been even given a name or described, and it is probably years till they will be. The museums don't have the money and they don't have the staff. So if you want your name to live on forever fund taxonomy and have a beautiful beetle, bee or insect of your choice named after you!

The UK is probably the world's most studied and documented area yet only about 30% of the insects can be identified as there are no documentation on the other 70%. And the in the Hymenoptera, (the bee, ant, wasp and sawfly family of insects) which is a well-studied and economically important family, only about half of the UK species can be identified. Imagine what these numbers must be like for a poorer country without the long history of interest in natural history, the vast army of amateur entomologists, and the huge and increasing number of gardeners who are realising that insects can be "a good thing".

What is the taxonomic classification of bumblebees?

How did the bumblebee get its name?

In the dictionary bumble has two meanings.
1. To move or act in a clumsy, unsteady or incompetent way.
2. To make a low humming or droning sound.
Bumble is thought to come from the Middle English word bomblen which means to boom.

What is a cuckoo bumblebee?

A cuckoo bumblebee, like the bird it is named after, lays its eggs in another bumblebee’s nest and leaves the workers of that nest to rear the young. Of course the eggs she lays are either queens or males, and the cuckoo queens emerge from hibernation in late spring or early summer, much later than ordinary bumblebee queens. So by the time the cuckoo queens have emerged the bumblebee queens will have already established their nests. The cuckoo differs physically from ordinary queen bumblebee in that she has no pollen basket on her rear legs, does not exude wax from between her abdominal segments, is slightly less hairy than ordinary bumblebees, and all species have shortish tongues. Cuckoos have a much harder body than normal bumblebees, and because no wax is exuded there are no weak points between the abdominal segments, so if there is a fight between a cuckoo and another worker or queen it is almost impossible for the queen or worker to force her sting into the cuckoo body. Apart from that cuckoo bumblebees usually have the same pattern of hair colour as the bumblebees' nests they lay in.

It is thought that the cuckoo queens locate an established nest by smell. She may go right in and sting the existing queen to death then lay eggs, or she may sneak in the nest and hide for a few days until she smells the same as the nest, then lay her eggs. Whatever method she uses it spells the beginning of the end for the nest because the cuckoo larva consume resources but contribute nothing to the nest. To see images visit the cuckoo page.