Red Tailed Bumblebee - 29 April 2024

I took these photos a few days ago and since then the weather's been very variable. Today we’re back in winter : gloomy, rainy and cold again.

I decided to post these photos because the insect on the dandelion is a bee, but it didn’t look like one when I first saw it. It didn’t have the characteristic ‘yellow’ band . As you can see it is a very dark bee.

After taking the photo with my phone I made use of one of my favourite tools: Google Lens, and it suggested a few options. I then did an image search on my laptop to try and narrow down the options given.

I believe, though I’m happy to be corrected if wrong, that this bee is a Red Tailed Bumblebee.

I always get surprised when I visit a site to learn what something (plant or insect) might be and they write : ‘this is a common ...' or 'it's widespread…’ Well, I’d never seen or noticed one before. They sometimes also write ‘Conservation Status : Common’. So I breathe a sigh of relief that this type of insect is ‘widespread’ and not rare.

I didn’t find that many distinguishing features of this insect. This site displays a sort of illustrated selection of types of bumble bees. Although in my view it is not as good as ‘seeing’ the real insect, the illustrations clearly showed what I saw. This is a very striking insect because it was huge and dark but it was clearly not a fly.

I am hoping the weather improves soon so I can go out on walks again.

Thank you for reading !