Rock Cuckoo Bumblebee
| Rock Cuckoo Bumblebee | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rock cuckoo bumblebee ("Bombus rupestris") on knapweed |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Bombus rupestris | ||||||||||||
| ( Fabricius , 1793) |
The rock cuckoo bumblebee ( Bombus rupestris , Syn . : Psithyrus rupestris ) is a bumblebee species that lives as a brood parasite .
features
The female is 18 to 22 millimeters long and has a wingspan of 41 to 44 millimeters. The male measures 14 to 16 millimeters with a wingspan of 28 to 31 millimeters.
The rock cuckoo bumblebee is very similar to the queen of the preferred parasitic species, the stone bumblebee . The basic color of the body is black, the last third of the abdomen is red. The wings are dark in color. There is a color variant with a yellow cross band on the thorax behind the head. The rounded head and trunk are short. It lacks the pollen collecting device on the last pair of legs, which is typical of bumblebees, which would be necessary to take care of the larvae themselves.
Occurrence
The rock cuckoo bumblebee lives in Western Europe to Manchuria, occurrences all over Germany.
Reproduction
The rock cuckoo bumblebee mainly parasitizes the stone bumblebee . As a rule, she does not look for a nest of the host people with already flying workers until the beginning of May. Like the other cuckoo bumblebee species, it invades the nest and behaves inconspicuously until it has accepted the smell of its host. The rock cuckoo bumblebee is significantly larger and stronger than a stone bumblebee queen. She fights with this one fight that she almost always wins.
Only sex animals, i.e. drones and queens, hatch from the eggs she lays. The larvae are supplied with pollen and nectar by the workers of the host colony. After mating, the male dies and the female overwinters in a protected hiding place in the ground.
Flight time
The overwintered rock cuckoo bumblebee flies from mid-April to mid-June.
nutrition
The female often feeds on pollen and nectar from dandelions , widow flowers and thistles in spring .
swell
- ↑ a b Bumblebee species: Bombus spec. ( wildbienen.de [accessed on July 6, 2008]).
- ↑ Melanie von Orlow: Kuckuckshummeln . In: www.hymenoptera.de . ( hymenoptera.de [accessed on July 6, 2008]). Cuckoo bumblebees ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
