Great Basin Bumble Bee Images

Great Basin Bumble Bee Images, Facts and Information:

Bombus centralis

• Great Basin Bumble Bees are medium-sized, fuzzy bees with robust bodies, rounded abdomens, and dense yellow and black hair bands. Their wings are transparent to smoky brown, and queens are larger than workers or males.
• Great Basin Bumble Bees are found throughout the western United States, from California and Oregon east to Colorado and New Mexico, and north into British Columbia and Alberta. They inhabit open meadows, grasslands, high desert plateaus, and mountain foothills. Great Basin Bumble Bees are often seen visiting wildflowers for nectar and pollen.
• Great Basin Bumble Bees feed on nectar and collect pollen to provision their colonies. They are important pollinators of native plants and agricultural crops.
• Queens emerge from overwintering in spring and establish new colonies in abandoned rodent burrows or grassy hummocks. Workers appear by early summer, followed by males and new queens later in the season. Colonies die out in fall, leaving only fertilized queens to overwinter.
• Great Basin Bumble Bees are active, social insects that communicate through scent and vibration within the colony.
• A group of bumble bees can be called a “colony” or a “hive” of bees.

I hope you enjoy my Great Basin Bumble Bee photos.