Identification | Distribution

The Yellow-banded Bumble Bee is a northeastern bee whose workers have a characteristic fringe of brownish-yellow hairs on their fifth abdominal segment. This bee was once commonly distributed throughout the east and upper Midwest of the United States and throughout most of southern Canada, but has steeply declined in recent years. The Yellow-banded Bumble Bee is an excellent pollinator of potatoes, alfalfa, plants in the rose family (such as raspberries), and cranberry, as well as a wide variety of wildflowers and other crops.

In order to properly identify bumble bees, you need to first determine whether the bee you are examining is male or female. There are three different types of bumble bees you will encounter: workers, queens, and males. Both queens and workers are female. In most cases, queens and workers have similar coloration and physical features, except that queens are much larger. Males can differ in coloration from females of the same species, as well as other physical characteristics. Once you have determined the sex of your bee, you will want to identify whether it is a Yellow-banded Bumble Bee or another species of bee.

Is it a Yellow-banded Bumble Bee?
Yellow-banded Bumble Bee (Bombus terricola) queens and workers have yellow on the front part of the thorax and the second and third abdominal segments. Otherwise their hair is primarily black including that on the legs and the base of the abdomen, with the exception of a fringe of brownish yellow hairs on the fifth abdominal segment. Their hair is nearly entirely black on the head. Coloration on the males is similar to the females except male B. terricola have pale yellowish hair on the front of the face and the top of the head. Similar bees that could occur in the same region are B. pensylvanicus and B. auricomus.

Yellow-banded Bumble Bee males have pale, yellowish on the front of their faces, with intermixed black hairs on the sides, and and mostly black hairs around the antennae. The top of the head has pale yellowish hairs intermixed with black, especially laterally. Their hair is pale yellowish on the front of the thorax and black over the posterior two-thirds of thorax. The second and third abdominal segments have bright yellow hair. Abdominal segments 1, 5 and 6 have mostly black hair with some pale hairs on segments 5 and 6.

Females of B. pensylvanicus and B. auricomus have long faces in contrast to the round face of B. terricola.  Females of B. pensylvanicus and B. auricomus have black only on the last two abdominal segments as opposed to B. terricola having the last three abdominal segments black with a fringe of brown hairs on segment 5. While male B. terricola have a prominent patch of yellow hair of the front of their faces, male B. auricomus and B. pensylvanicus have mostly black hair on the front of their faces. In addition, B. auricomus males have much larger eyes than B. terricola males.

For an online key, photographs of Yellow-banded bumble bee specimens and extensive identification information, visit the Discoverlife website.

DISTRIBUTION

Historic distribution of Bombus terricola	Current distribution of Bombus terricola
In the past, the Yellow-banded bumble bee was common and widespread across the northeast; map from Milliron 1971, A monograph of the western hemisphere bumblebees.	Where it was once common, the Yellow-banded bumble bee has not been found, or has been found only in very small numbers; map adapted from Milliron 1971, A monograph of the western hemisphere bumblebees.

Until recently, the Yellow-banded Bumble Bee was commonly found east of the Rockies in the northern United States and into southern Canada, from eastern Montana and Alberta, across the northern states and southern portion of the Canadian provinces through to the east coast, with a southern extension along the Appalachian mountains in the eastern U.S. That U.S. states where the Yellow-banded bumble bee was formerly found include: Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia, and portions of Ohio, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina. The Yellow-banded Bumble Bee has not been seen in most parts of its range in the U.S. since 1999, with the exception of records in a few locations in Wisconsin in 2007 and a single location in Pennsylvania in 2006. This bee has not been seen in many years in Tennessee, New York, Maine and Vermont, although it commonly occurred in these states in the past.

Please contact us if you have any information on the current or recent distribution of the Yellow-banded Bumble Bee. If you do research on bumble bees, have incidental bumble bees in your collection, or have student insect collections from the past few years, it would help us to know if you have or have not seen these bees. It is as important for us to document where these bees were formerly common, but not recently collected, as it is to document where they were collected.

Download a WANTED poster (pdf, ~2.3 MB) for the Yellow-banded Bumble Bee

View the status review for B. affinis, B. terricola and B. occidentalis on our Red List of Pollinator Insects. Note, this status review is currently being updated with more recent information.

Much of the content for this page was developed from a status review, co-authored by professor emeritus Robbin Thorp (U.C. Davis Department of Entomology), Elaine Evans, and Scott Hoffman Black (Xerces). Bee illustrations were provided by Elaine Evans.

Funding for our efforts to conserve bumble bees in decline has been generously provided by the CS Fund and Xerces Society members.