Buff-Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris): Facts and Life Cycle

What does a buff-tailed bumblebee look like?

The buff-tailed bumblebee is a big, round, densely furry bee. Its body is mostly black, with a dark, rather orange-yellow band across the front of the thorax and a second band near the front of the abdomen. The tip of the abdomen, the “tail”, is pale.

Queens have the buff or dirty-white tail that gives the species its name. Workers usually have a whiter tail, often with a faint buff line where it meets the black, and they can be very hard to separate from workers of the white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) and its close relatives, which have paler, lemon-yellow bands. Males look similar to workers but have longer antennae and no pollen baskets on their hind legs.

Coloring varies across the range, and about nine subspecies are recognized, including the Canary Islands form (B. t. canariensis) and several island forms around the Mediterranean. Many harmless hoverflies mimic bumblebees, but they have only one pair of wings and short antennae.

How big is a buff-tailed bumblebee?

The buff-tailed bumblebee is among the largest bumblebees in Europe. Queens are 20–22 mm (0.8–0.9 in) long, males 14–16 mm (0.55–0.6 in) and workers 11–17 mm (0.4–0.7 in).

Workers vary unusually in size. In one study their weight ranged roughly tenfold, from about 0.07 to 0.75 g, and the largest workers tend to forage while the smallest stay in the nest.

Habitat and range

The buff-tailed bumblebee is native to most of Europe, from Ireland and southern Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, as well as North Africa, the Canary Islands and western Asia. It lives almost anywhere with flowers and nest sites: meadows, farmland, heaths, coastal dunes, woodland edges, parks and gardens, and it does particularly well in towns.

It has also been taken far beyond its home range. Bumblebees from Britain, including this species, were shipped to New Zealand in 1885 to pollinate red clover, and bumblebees of this species, probably from New Zealand, turned up in Tasmania in 1992. Escaped greenhouse colonies have also established in Japan, Chile and Argentina.

Diet and foraging

Buff-tailed bumblebees feed on nectar, for energy, and pollen, which provides protein for the larvae. They visit a huge range of flowers, from willows and dead-nettles in spring to clovers, brambles, thistles and lavender in summer. Workers pack pollen into the pollen baskets on their hind legs, where it shows as bulging orange or yellow loads. Most forage within a few hundred meters of the nest, but they can travel a few kilometers.

The species has a fairly short tongue. To reach nectar in long, tubular flowers, it often bites a hole near the base of the flower and drinks without touching the pollen, a habit called nectar robbing.

Bumblebees are also capable of buzz pollination. A bee grips a flower and vibrates its flight muscles without moving its wings, shaking pollen out of flowers such as tomatoes, blueberries and potatoes that release it only when shaken. Honey bees cannot do this, which is one reason bumblebees are so valuable to growers.

Unlike honey bees, bumblebees do not dance to show nestmates where food is. A successful forager runs excitedly around the nest, spreading a scent that stirs other workers to go out and search, and the smell of the nectar she brings back tells them which flowers to look for. Bees also leave faint scent marks on flowers they have just emptied, and other bumblebees learn to skip them.

Experiments with this species have shown remarkable learning. Workers learn flower colors and scents, can detect the weak electric fields around flowers, and in laboratory tests have learned to pull strings and roll balls to reach a sugar reward, sometimes by watching other bees.

The colony year: from spring queen to autumn

Each colony lives for only one season. In late winter or early spring, often from February in Britain, mated queens wake from hibernation, making this one of the first bumblebees of the year. A queen feeds on early flowers to build up strength, then searches for a nest site, typically an abandoned mouse or vole burrow.

She builds a small clump of wax cells, lays her first eggs and keeps them warm by pressing her body against them and shivering her flight muscles. Beside the brood she builds a wax “honey pot” of nectar to feed on during cold spells. After roughly three to five weeks, depending on temperature, the first small workers emerge and take over foraging, while the queen stays home to lay eggs.

The colony grows through spring and summer, usually to a few hundred bees. In summer it switches to producing males and new queens. Late in the season, conflict breaks out as workers begin laying their own eggs, which develop into males, and the old queen dies. New queens mate, usually with a single male, feed heavily to build fat reserves and dig into loose soil to hibernate alone. The workers, the males and the old nest all die in autumn.

In parts of southern Britain and other mild areas, some colonies now remain active through winter, feeding on winter-flowering garden plants. For how long each type of bee lives, see how long do bees live?

Flight and keeping warm

Buff-tailed bumblebees can fly on cool days when many other insects cannot. Their flight muscles must be at least about 30 °C (86 °F) before they can take off, so a bee warms up by shivering, contracting the muscles while the wings stay still. The thick coat of hair then helps hold the heat in.

This allows queens to forage on chilly spring mornings and workers to keep collecting food in poor weather. The old claim that bumblebees “should not be able to fly” is a myth; the real aerodynamics are explained in how do bumblebees fly?

Stinging and defense

Queens and workers have a smooth sting that they can use more than once, while males have no sting at all. Buff-tailed bumblebees are peaceful on flowers and rarely sting unless grabbed, trodden on or disturbed at the nest. A disturbed bee may first raise a middle leg toward the threat or buzz loudly as a warning. More on the real risk is in do bumblebees sting?

Predators, parasites and cuckoos

Birds catch bumblebees, and in Europe badgers dig up nests to eat the brood. Bee moth caterpillars can destroy nests from within, and parasitic conopid flies lay eggs inside foraging bees.

The species also has a cuckoo. The vestal cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus vestalis) does not build its own nest. Its female invades a buff-tailed bumblebee colony, takes over from the resident queen and tricks the workers into raising her young. Gut parasites and viruses, some of them shared with honey bees, are a further burden.

Conservation status and wild bumblebee declines

The buff-tailed bumblebee is assessed as Least Concern by the IUCN in its European assessment, and it remains abundant across most of its range. Its adaptability, long foraging range and success in gardens help it cope with changes that have hit other bumblebees hard.

Many of its relatives are less fortunate. Loss of flower-rich meadows, pesticide use, disease and climate change have caused serious declines, and in 2025 the IUCN classed 15 of Europe’s bumblebee species as threatened. The wider picture is covered in are bees endangered?

Greenhouses and invasions abroad

Since 1987, the buff-tailed bumblebee has been bred commercially, first in Belgium, to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes, a job previously done by hand. More than a million colonies are now produced each year for growers in Europe and beyond, and they also pollinate peppers, strawberries and other crops. Unlike the western honey bee, it produces no honey harvest; its value is pollination.

Escaped commercial bees have caused problems abroad. In Japan the species is officially listed as an invasive alien species because it competes with native bumblebees for flowers and nest sites. It was introduced to Chile in 1998, crossed into Argentina and has spread rapidly through Patagonia, where it is linked to the collapse of the giant Patagonian bumblebee (Bombus dahlbomii), now listed as Endangered, partly through the spread of parasites. Australia bans live imports to the mainland, and North American growers use the native common eastern bumblebee instead.

Myths and facts

“Science says bumblebees cannot fly.” This famous claim came from a rough 1930s calculation that treated a bee’s wing like a fixed airplane wing. Flapping insect wings work differently, creating swirling vortices of air that give far more lift than a rigid wing, and bumblebees fly perfectly well.

“Bumblebees are just big, furry honey bees.” They are relatives in the same family, but they live very differently. A honey bee colony has tens of thousands of bees and survives the winter on its honey, while a buff-tailed bumblebee colony has a few hundred bees, stores only a few days of nectar and dies out every autumn except for its new queens.

“A bumblebee nest keeps going year after year.” The colony itself never survives the winter; only its mated young queens do, hibernating elsewhere. A queen sometimes starts her nest in the same spot the following spring, but it is a fresh colony founded by one queen working alone.