Day 162: buff-tailed bumblebee

Daily details from the garden to bring you inspiration throughout the year

The garden brings joy in so many guises, but in few more generously than these furry little bears literally bumbling about from flower to flower. The buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) is named after colour of the queen’s bottom fuzz, though the workers have white posteriors – something that can easily cause confusion with those of the white-tailed bumble and, though the buffs are generally bigger and in possession of deeper, orange stripes rather than the latter’s yellow banding, DNA testing is really the only reliable way to differentiate between the two. It’s the largest of our bumblebees (did you know an original name for these creatures was Dumbledore? I may have bored you with this before, in which case, #sorrynotsorry), a welcome visitor to our borders and – for me, at any rate – a much-valued gardening companion.


A year of garden coaching

To find out more about my my 12 month online garden coaching programme, please visit the website, where you can read more details and add your name to the waiting list to be the first to hear when enrolment opens up again for the spring.


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Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, blogger, podcaster, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking the image above.

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