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Photo#971583
Is this bumble bee or mimic? - Bombus pensylvanicus

Is this bumble bee or mimic? - Bombus pensylvanicus
Lafayette, Louisiana, USA
August 4, 2014
This bee is smaller in size than the bumble bee that I usually see here. I saw many such bees today.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Looks like Bombus pensylvanic
Looks like Bombus pensylvanicus

 
Yes.B. Pensylvanicus is commo
Yes.B. Pensylvanicus is common bumble bee in this area. I am just confused by the size. I saw about 6-7 bumble bees today and all were smaller in size.

Thanks.

 
Males are often smaller; here
Males are often smaller; here in Seattle we're mostly seeing males of our common late species, and the larger bees we're seeing are nearly all late generation workers. Size varies across colony age.

 
Thank you Dr. Kelsey for clar
Thank you Dr. Kelsey for clarifying :)

 
worker
this looks like a female worker which can be even smaller than the male (watch me be wrong about everything)

 
Yes
A worker

 
Early workers (from the first
Early workers (from the first few eggs the queen lays) can be extremely tiny - smaller than honeybees by a lot. I have a whole range of sizes in my freezer from commercial Bombus impatiens hives that we've used for research, since we can't release them (and shouldn't, lest they bring parasites and the like into the wild). Some of the biggest workers late in a healthy colony's life can be as large as a queen, too.

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