Once
I learned that there are about 24 species of bumblebees in eastern
North America, I wanted to know exactly which kind I had in my
garden. Identification seems like it should be pretty simple --- keys like
this one
break it down to a matter of color pattern. Unfortunately,
once I plugged in all of my choices, the key still said it didn't have
enough data to decide between nine species.
A little more browsing narrowed down the choices. Chances are my
bees are the Common
Eastern Bumblebee. The species is pretty well named since
it's the most common eastern bumblebee.
This post is part of our Bumblebee lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries: |