75. Yellow Head Bumble Bee

A number of years ago, Leah started working a lot on Dragonflies and Damselflies and it was quite exciting to see her delve into a new group of organisms and begin to get to know them.  I decided that perhaps I should do the same and trying to learn the Bumble Bees would be fun.  I was completely unprepared for how challenging Bumble Bee identification would be and how interesting this group of insects are.  Couple that with increasing conservation concern for the rapid declines in some species (and rapid increases in others,  as it turns out) it made for an interesting - if challenging area.  One of the challenges is that many of our common species have different colour patterns.  This species for instance, has a number of colour forms and is  one of the species that often has a large area of orange on the abdomen. Others, like the one in the photograph here is black and yellow only, with no orange.   The black and yellow only  colour pattern is increasingly common as you move south, so that it is the predominant colour pattern in the western states.  Yellow Head (Bombus flavifrons) is an early species here, Queens start becoming active in April.   Bumble Bee identification here has been assisted greatly by the arrival of a new book in the past month:

Williams et al. 2014. Bumble Bees of North America-an Identification Guide.  Princeton University Press.  

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