Animal
Buff-tailed bumblebee
The buff-tailed bumblebee is a big, fuzzy bee with yellow stripes. It visits flowers for food and lives in a nest with lots of other bees.
The buff-tailed bumblebee is one of the most common bumblebees in Europe. It is large and furry, with golden-yellow bands, and the queen has a buff, or light brown, tail. It lives in nests of up to a few hundred bees, and people raise it to pollinate crops such as greenhouse tomatoes.
Bombus terrestris is a large, short-tongued, social bumblebee native to Europe and nearby regions. Its annual colonies are founded by a single queen. Mass-reared for greenhouse pollination since the 1980s, it has escaped and become invasive in places such as Japan, Chile, Argentina and Tasmania, where it competes with native bees.
Photo: Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the buff-tailed bumblebee
The buff-tailed bumblebee is a big, round, fuzzy bee.
It has golden-yellow stripes. The queen has a light brown tail. The other bees in her family have white tails.
The buff-tailed bumblebee is a large, oval bee covered in thick hair. It has a golden-yellow band behind its head and another across its abdomen, the back part of its body.
Its name comes from the queen's tail, which is buff, a yellow-brown color. Workers and males have white tails, sometimes with a thin buff edge. A queen is about 20 millimeters (2 centimeters) long, and workers are 11 to 17 millimeters. In Britain it is one of the eight most common and widespread bumblebees.
Bombus terrestris is a eusocial bee of the family Apidae. It is a large species with golden yellow bands at the front of the thorax and across the middle of the abdomen. Queens have a buff tail; workers and males have white tails, sometimes with a narrow buff border (the "tea-stain"), which makes workers hard to tell from the white-tailed bumblebee, so recorders often log them as "white/buff-tailed" workers.
The Royal Entomological Society's Insect Week gives queens about 20 millimeters long, workers 11 to 17 millimeters and males about 15 millimeters. Workers vary in size with their role: smaller bees tend the nest and brood, while larger ones forage.
Quick facts
- Group
- Invertebrate
- Length
- 11 to 20 mm
- Lifespan in the wild
- 4 to 6 weeks
Where it lives
Buff-tailed bumblebees come from Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea.
They live in gardens, parks, fields and the countryside. People have also taken them to faraway countries.
The buff-tailed bumblebee is native to Europe and to the lands all around the Mediterranean Sea except Egypt, from Morocco to Turkey, and its range reaches east across Asia as far as the Altai Mountains. In Britain it lives in gardens, parks and the wider countryside almost everywhere except high uplands.
People have carried it around the world to pollinate crops. It now lives wild in New Zealand, where it arrived more than a hundred years ago, and more recently in Japan, Chile, Argentina, the Australian island of Tasmania and parts of Mexico.
Boustani, Rasmont and colleagues (2021, in a Zootaxa survey of the bees of Lebanon) describe a Palearctic range centered on the Mediterranean (every country around it except Egypt), stretching north to about the latitude of Stockholm and east to the Altai Mountains; Fontúrbel and colleagues (2021) summarize it as native to Eurasia and northern Africa. The map shades Europe and the Mediterranean countries of North Africa and western Asia; the eastern part of the range, toward the Altai, is not shaded country by country. In Britain it occupies most habitats apart from high uplands.
Introduced populations are well documented. It was introduced to New Zealand more than a century ago (around 1900, according to Naeem and colleagues). In Japan, imports began in 1992 and the first wild nest was found in 1996 in Hokkaido, where it is now established. It was introduced to Chile for tomato pollination in 1997 and spread into Argentina, and it has spread across Tasmania in about three decades. It has also established in parts of Mexico.
Continents
Its habitat
Where can you find this animal?
- Brought here by people · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Brought here by people · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Brought by people for crop pollination and now living wild: New Zealand (more than a century ago), Japan (Hokkaido, wild nests since 1996), Chile (from 1997) and Argentina (spread from Chile), Tasmania in Australia, and parts of Mexico.
Places: New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Argentina, Australia and Mexico.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94898-8 · checked October 2026
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Native to Europe and to every country around the Mediterranean except Egypt, in gardens, parks, farmland and the wider countryside; the range also stretches east across Asia to the Altai Mountains, which is not shaded country by country.
Places: Europe, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Türkiye, Cyprus, Syria and 2 more places.
Source: https://zenodo.org/records/5043220 · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in Netherlands, Germany, UK, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland and 69 more places.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
What it eats
Bumblebees drink sweet nectar from flowers.
They also collect yellow pollen dust. They carry pollen home in little baskets on their back legs.
Buff-tailed bumblebees feed on nectar, a sugary liquid made by flowers, and collect pollen to feed their young. Workers and queens carry pollen home in a pollen basket on each back leg: a shiny hollow ringed with long hairs.
This bee has a short tongue. It likes short, open flowers such as lavender and comfrey. With long, tube-shaped flowers it often cheats: it bites a hole in the side, near the base, and drinks the nectar without pollinating the flower. That is called nectar robbing.
Adults drink nectar and collect pollen to provision the brood; workers and queens carry pollen in corbiculae (pollen baskets) on the hind legs, while males have none. Bombus terrestris is short-tongued and feeds on a wide range of plants but struggles with long, tubular corollas.
Instead, it often bites through the base of long flowers to "rob" nectar without contacting the anthers or stigma. Where it is invasive this matters: in Japan it hinders the pollination of some native plants through nectar robbing, and in Chile it has been documented as a primary nectar robber of the native shrub Fuchsia magellanica.
Did you know?
A bumblebee queen shivers to keep her eggs warm.
A queen bumblebee shivers her flight muscles to warm her eggs, keeping the nest at 25 to 32°C.
Queens incubate brood by shivering their flight muscles, holding it at about 25 to 32°C; workers later fan their wings to cool the nest.
A furry, buzzing body
A bumblebee has six legs, four wings and two feelers.
Its thick, furry hair keeps it warm. Its body has three parts: a head, a middle and a stripy back end.
Like all insects, the bumblebee has a body in three parts: the head, with its eyes and two antennae; the thorax, which carries the wings and six legs; and the abdomen, where the bands and tail are.
Its body is densely covered in hair. Queens shiver their flight muscles to make heat and keep their eggs warm. A bumblebee nest is kept at 25 to 32°C, and on hot days workers fan their wings to cool it down.
The body follows the insect plan: head (compound eyes, antennae and mouthparts), thorax (three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings driven by large flight muscles) and abdomen (the banded tergites and tail). Queens and workers bear pollen baskets on the hind tibiae; males do not.
Bumblebees regulate temperature actively. The queen warms her brood by shivering her flight muscles, and colonies hold the brood at about 25 to 32°C; on hot days workers fan their wings to move cooler air through the nest (Bumblebee Conservation Trust).
Egg, larva, pupa, bee
A bumblebee starts as a tiny egg.
The egg hatches into a wriggly white larva. The larva eats pollen, then wraps itself up and changes into a bee. This change is called metamorphosis.
Like other bumblebees, the buff-tailed bumblebee goes through complete metamorphosis: egg, larva, pupa and adult. The queen lays eggs on a clump of pollen. After four to six days they hatch into white, C-shaped larvae that eat pollen and grow fast.
After two to three weeks, each larva spins a silky cocoon and becomes a pupa. Inside, its body is rebuilt into an adult bee. About two weeks later the new bee bites its way out. At first it is soft and silvery, but within a day its body hardens and its wings dry so it can fly.
Development is holometabolous. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust describes the general bumblebee sequence: eggs laid on a pollen clump or in wax brood cells hatch in four to six days; larvae feed and molt several times for two to three weeks; they then spin cocoons and pupate, the larval tissues being broken down and rebuilt; and adults emerge about two weeks later, hardening and darkening within a day.
In B. terrestris, workers appear roughly six weeks after the nest is founded, and new queens and males are produced towards the end of a three-to-four-month nesting period. New queens are fed up to three times more pollen as larvae, which makes them much larger.
A queen and her colony
Every bumblebee nest starts with one queen.
Her daughters, the workers, help her. They collect food and look after the babies. Only new queens sleep through the winter.
In early spring a queen comes out of her winter sleep, feeds on flowers and finds a nest, often an old mouse or vole hole underground. She raises the first workers herself. Then the workers take over collecting food, and the queen stays home laying eggs. A nest can grow to around 350 workers.
Late in the season the nest produces males and new queens. They mate, the old nest dies, and only the new queens hibernate. In southern Britain and some cities, buff-tailed bumblebees can even keep nests going all winter, feeding on winter flowers.
Colonies are annual. A mated queen emerges from hibernation, typically from February in Britain, founds a nest (usually underground in an old rodent hole), and rears the first workers alone. Nests can reach about 350 workers; workers live about four to six weeks and are constantly replaced.
Males leave the nest to find queens from other colonies and never return. In autumn the colony dies, and only mated young queens overwinter. In southern parts of the UK and in cities further north, B. terrestris can be winter-active: nests founded in October to November are supplied by workers foraging on Mahonia and other winter-flowering plants (Bumblebee Conservation Trust).
Did you know?
Some bumblebees bite holes in flowers to sip the nectar.
Buff-tailed bumblebees have short tongues, so they sometimes bite a hole in the base of a long flower to drink its nectar. This is called nectar robbing.
Short-tongued B. terrestris often robs nectar by biting through the base of long corollas, bypassing the flower's anthers and stigma.
A helper and a problem
Buff-tailed bumblebees are very common in Europe.
Farmers use them to help tomatoes grow. But in some faraway places, escaped bumblebees can make life hard for the bees that already live there.
In its native Europe the buff-tailed bumblebee is common and widespread. It is such a good pollinator that millions of colonies are raised every year to pollinate crops in greenhouses around the world.
But when these bees escape in places where they don't belong, they can cause trouble. In Japan they compete with native bumblebees for flowers and nest sites and can spread parasites, and in Chile and Argentina they have spread quickly into wild places. Japan now bans importing and keeping them except in netted greenhouses, and Argentina has banned bringing them in.
The species has no global IUCN Red List assessment; the Bumblebee Conservation Trust counts it among the "Big Eight" common and widespread British bumblebees. Since the 1980s millions of colonies a year have been produced for greenhouse pollination worldwide, and more than 320,000 colonies were introduced to Chile alone after 1997.
Where it is introduced, it can harm native species. In Japan it competes with native Bombus for nest sites and flowers, interferes with their reproduction (cross-species mating produces inviable offspring), and carries the parasitic mite Locustacarus buchneri; import, transport and keeping are prohibited under the Invasive Alien Species Act, and agricultural use is allowed only in netted greenhouses. Argentina banned its introduction, but it spread there from Chile, and models suggest it may reach other South American countries.
Did you know?
Some buff-tailed bumblebees keep busy all winter.
In southern Britain and some cities, buff-tailed bumblebee nests can keep going through winter, with workers visiting winter flowers.
Winter-active colonies founded in October to November forage on Mahonia and other winter-flowering plants in southern Britain and some northern cities (Bumblebee Conservation Trust).
Amazing facts
-
Some bumblebees bite holes in flowers to sip the nectar.
Buff-tailed bumblebees have short tongues, so they sometimes bite a hole in the base of a long flower to drink its nectar. This is called nectar robbing.
Short-tongued B. terrestris often robs nectar by biting through the base of long corollas, bypassing the flower's anthers and stigma.
-
A bumblebee queen shivers to keep her eggs warm.
A queen bumblebee shivers her flight muscles to warm her eggs, keeping the nest at 25 to 32°C.
Queens incubate brood by shivering their flight muscles, holding it at about 25 to 32°C; workers later fan their wings to cool the nest.
-
Some buff-tailed bumblebees keep busy all winter.
In southern Britain and some cities, buff-tailed bumblebee nests can keep going through winter, with workers visiting winter flowers.
Winter-active colonies founded in October to November forage on Mahonia and other winter-flowering plants in southern Britain and some northern cities (Bumblebee Conservation Trust).
Words to know
- colony
- a group of insects that live and work together in one nest
- queen
- the female bee that starts a nest and lays the eggs
- metamorphosis
- the big change in body shape from larva to adult
- pupa
- the resting stage when a larva changes into an adult
- pollen
- a yellow dust made by flowers, which bees eat and carry
- nectar robbing
- taking a flower's nectar through a hole, without pollinating it
- invasive species
- a living thing moved by people that harms its new home
Discovery challenge
-
Which bumblebee has the light brown (buff) tail?
Which buff-tailed bumblebees have the buff tail that gives the species its name?
In Bombus terrestris, which caste has a fully buff tail?
- The queen
- The males
- Every worker
Show the answer
The queen
Only the queen has the light brown tail. The others have white tails.
Queens have buff tails; workers and males have white tails, sometimes with a thin buff edge.
Queens are fully buff-tailed; workers and males are white-tailed, sometimes with a narrow buff border.
-
What is the right order for a bee growing up?
What are the stages of a bumblebee's life cycle, in order?
Which sequence describes bumblebee metamorphosis?
- Egg, larva, pupa, adult
- Adult, egg, pupa, larva
- Larva, egg, adult, pupa
Show the answer
Egg, larva, pupa, adult
Egg, then larva, then pupa, then bee!
Eggs hatch into larvae, larvae spin cocoons and become pupae, and adults come out.
Complete (holometabolous) metamorphosis: egg, larva, pupa, adult.
-
Why does this bumblebee bite holes in long flowers?
Why does the buff-tailed bumblebee sometimes bite holes in long flowers?
What explains nectar robbing by B. terrestris?
- Its tongue is too short to reach the nectar
- It wants to build a nest
- It is looking for water
Show the answer
Its tongue is too short to reach the nectar
Its tongue is short, so it bites a hole to reach the sweet nectar.
It has a short tongue, so it bites through the base of long flowers to drink the nectar.
It is short-tongued and struggles with long tubular flowers, so it bites through the corolla base.
-
Who survives the winter in a bumblebee family?
Which bumblebees usually survive the winter?
In most bumblebee colonies, who overwinters?
- Only new queens
- The whole nest
- Only the males
Show the answer
Only new queens
Only new queens sleep through the winter. In spring, each starts a new nest.
The old nest dies in autumn, and only new queens hibernate. In southern Britain some nests keep going in winter.
Usually only mated young queens hibernate; B. terrestris can be winter-active in southern Britain and some cities.
Places where you might see it
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Watch
Country
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom, or UK, lies on islands off the northwest coast of Europe. It is made up of four parts, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and about 69.5 million people live there. Its capital is London.
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Watch
Country
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Most of its land is steep mountains and forest, Mount Fuji is its tallest peak, and about 124 million people live there, many of them in big cities such as Tokyo.
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Describe a bumblebee's body parts and the difference between queens, workers and males.
- Put the stages of complete metamorphosis in order: egg, larva, pupa, adult.
- Explain how a bumblebee colony grows and ends each year.
- Discuss why a useful pollinator can become a problem when moved to new countries.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might a bee with a short tongue bite holes in long flowers? Is that cheating?
- Why do you think only new queens survive the winter?
- Should farmers in other countries use bees from Europe to pollinate their crops? What could go wrong?
Try at home or in class
- Watch bees on garden flowers from a safe distance (never touch them) and count which flowers they visit most.
- Draw and label the four stages of a bumblebee's life cycle in a circle with arrows.
Key vocabulary: colony, queen, metamorphosis, pupa, pollen, nectar robbing, invasive species
Where these facts come from
- Bombus (Bombus) terrestris, in The bees of Lebanon (Boustani, Rasmont et al., Zootaxa 4976, 2021) , Zenodo / Biodiversity Literature Repository
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Buff-tailed bumblebee , Bumblebee Conservation Trust
- Bumblebee lifecycle , Bumblebee Conservation Trust
- Buff-tailed Bumblebee , Insect Week (Royal Entomological Society)
- Bombus terrestris (Invasive Species of Japan) , National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
- Invasion dynamics of the European bumblebee Bombus terrestris in the southern part of South America (Fontúrbel et al., 2021) , Scientific Reports
- Habitat suitability for the invasion of Bombus terrestris in East Asian countries (Naeem et al., 2018) , Scientific Reports
- Morphological variation in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) after three decades of an island invasion (Kardum Hjort et al., 2023) , Journal of Insect Science (PubMed abstract)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 28, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.