- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Published on: April 4, 2016
The next time you see a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) packing pollen, check out the color.
Last Saturday on an outing in Vallejo overlooking the Carquinez Straits, we noticed a yellow-faced bumble bee on an Echium candicans (Pride of Madeira) packing red pollen, as brilliant as a sun-ripened strawberry.
It probably picked up the red pollen from the nearby California golden poppies--not from the Echium because Echium pollen is a bluish/lavender.
The yellow-faced bumblebee, so called because of its yellow face, is native to the west coast of North America. In the global line-up, it's one of some 250 species of bumble bees--all within the genera...
Tags: Bombus vosnesenskii (49), Bumble Bees of North America (11), Carquinez Straits (1), Robbin Thorp (282), UC Davis (282), Vallejo (5), yellow-faced bumble bee (31)
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