Red-tailed cuckoo bumblebee

It's very good for bumblebees up the Welcombe Hills at the moment. That's despite the rain. In the periods between the cloudbursts the bumblebees, ever industrious, return to the thistles and brambles. Mostly these creatures are fairly quiet but now and again loud buzzing  announces the arrival of a beastie. On this particular occasion the beastie was a Red-tailed cuckoo bumblebee and a whopper it was too. When it settled on Woolly Thistle flowers it showed its beauty as well as its size. As you can see from the pictures I took the shiny black body was topped by a bright red tail.

Cuckoo bumblebees are not 'true' bumblebees. They tend to mimic the colours of the true bumblebees who's nests they lay their eggs in but they don't collect pollen so have hairy back legs and they tend to have opaque wings. There are just 6 species of Cuckoo Bumblebee seen in this country.

True bumblebees have Queens and Workers who do collect pollen and so have bare patches on their hind legs called 'pollen baskets'. The male of the bumblebee though does not collect pollen but has shorter hairs on these legs than the Cuckoo bumblebee.
All that makes bumblebee identification difficult in the field.

That's why I started taking pictures of bees.
If you're interested in bumblebee identification then go to Bumblebee Conservation where there is an excellent guide including a short video to help.