|
Bombus affinis Cresson, 1863 Bombus affinis var novae-angliae Bequaert, 1920; Bremus affinis (Cresson, 1863)
Life
Insecta
Hymenoptera
Apoidea
Apidae
Bombus
|
| |||||
See | |||||
IDnature guides | |||||
Index | |||||
Williams, Paul H., Robbin W. Thorp, Leif L. Richardson, and Sheila R. Colla. Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wpzr9. - has the best modern color guides for identification of both sexes, microscopic identification characters, range and natural history notes. | |||||
Overview | |||||
Common Name: Rusty-Patch Bumble Bee. Status: Endangered. Reprinted with permission from: Mitchell, T.B. 1962 Bees of the Eastern United States. North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station Technical Bulletin No. 152. ⚒ WORKER: Length 11-16 mm., width of abdomen 5-8 mm.; pattern of pubescence and structure very similar to queen, but pubescence somewhat more copious and elongate, that on tergum 2 more deeply tinged with reddish or rufous. ♂ MALE: Length 13-17.5 mm., breadth of abdomen 5-7 mm.; black, including legs and tegulae, spurs somewhat more reddish-piceous; wings lightly infuscated, veins testaceous to piceous; apical margins of abdominal terga very narrowly yellowish-hyaline; pubescence long and copious in general, largely black on head but with a few pale hairs intermixed on vertex; posterior half of scutum with numerous dark hairs intermixed with light, forming an obscure, interalar band, thorax otherwise largely pale yellowish pubescent; basal segments of legs, including the femora, with long, more or less intermixed light and dark hairs, tibiae rather prominently fringed posteriorly with largely pale pubescence, with some darker, shorter hairs beneath, hind tibiae prominently fringed with elongate hairs, posterior fringe pale in part; abdominal terga 1 and 2 entirely pale pubescent, 3-7 black, in marked contrast; clypeus very finely and densely punctate beneath dense pubescence; labrum broadly truncate, somewhat rounded laterally, surface shining, irregularly and finely punctate; mandibles small and slender apically, distinctly bidentate, outer surface densely covered with yellowish, appressed tomentum, lower margin fringed with elongate, curved, more or less yellowish hairs; malar space smooth and shining, very vaguely and minutely punctate, its median length slightly greater than basal width of mandible, eye nearly five times as long; median area of face very finely and densely punctate, becoming somewhat more shining and sparsely punctate below ocelli, shining and largely impunctate between lateral ocelli and eyes; vertex dull, with very fine and close punctures, these becoming more sparse laterally; segments 1 and 3 of flagellum about equal. segment 2 considerably shorter; outer surface of hind tibiae quite fiat, rather smooth, shining and largely impunctate, somewhat resembling corbicula of female; hind basitarsus slightly and gradually narrowed toward base; sterna 7 and 8 and genital armature resembling those in terricola (fig. 133). DISTRIBUTION: Ontario to New Brunswick, south to North Carolina, April to October. FLOWER RECORDS: Aralia, Aster, Hydrangea, Mains, Robinia, Solidago and Vaccinium. | |||||
Identification | |||||
Extracted from The Bumblebees of Eastern Canada by Laverty (1988).DESCRIPTION: Body size of queen medium to large: worker and male medium. Head broadly rounded: malar space short. about two-thirds as long as wide in female, slightly wider than in male. tongue short. Coloration of queen different from that of worker and male. Some queens and males with yellow pile on posterior margins of vertex. Occasionally workers have brown pile on T1 in addition to T2. Ecology. One of the earliest species to emerge in spring; commonly bites holes in flowers that have corolla tubes. Nests underground. Extracted from A MONOGRAPH OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE BUMBLEBEES (HYMENOPTERA: APIDAE; BOMBINAE) by Millrion, H. (1971). DESCRIPTION. ♛ Queen. Length, 21.0 mm; width at wing bases, 10.0 mm; abdomen, 11.0 mm, width across T2, 10.5 mm; front wing length, 18.0 mm, width 6.5 mm. ⤷ Head: Frontal outline triangularly rounded (excluding mouthparts), distinctly wider than high; vertical region depressed (concave) especially about ocelli, with small to medium irregular punctures except smooth and polished on ocellar half of ocellocular area; ocelli positioned somewhat below supraorbital line in weak arc anteriorly inclined, removed from one another about as much as their diameters, ocellocular line somewhat less than interocellar line; outline of compound eyes narrower above than below, the inner margins of both rather strongly convergent dorsally, each eye slightly less than three times higher than wide; clypeus distinctly broader than high, strongly convex, well covered (rather densely) with small to medium punctures; labrum about 21 times wider than thick, with strong triangulate tubercles rather coarsely punctate above, below broadly shallowly concave and less punctate, directed ventro-mesad, their well-separated inner summits about as far apart as length of F2, the distinct arcuate labral shelf extended slightly laterad of inner tubercle summits; malar space distinctly shorter than distance between (and including) mandibular articulations, irregularly convex and sparsely sculptured; flagellum nearly twice as long as scape, F1 about H times longer than distal width, distinctly longer than F3 and about one-third shorter than F2-3 combined. ⤷ Legs: Meso-basitarsite elongate rectangular, distally shaped as in t. terricola; hind tibial surface shining, weakly alutaceous, longitudinally convex a little anteriad of middle; metabasitarsite twice as long as its widest dimension, posteriorly evenly arcuate from base to distal end, the outer weakly alutaceous surface more deeply concave medially sub-basically, the disto-posterior angle obscurely rounded and in recess to disto-anterior angle. ⤷ Pubescence: Rather short, dense, some hairs longer on face, vertex and on distal abdominal terga; metabasitarsal posterior fringe composed of relatively short arcuate hairs, gradually diminishing in length from base to distal third of segment. ⤷ Color: Head black with only slight admixture of yellowish pile on face and vertex, but with considerable lemon yellow at sides of center on occiput. Thorax (maize) yellow except noticeable intermixture of black hairs across interalar area especially on the mesothoracic disc. Legs black. Abdominal Tl-2 entirely covered with (cadmium) yellow, T3-6 black except sparse scattered yellowish hairs on T3 observable under strong illumination. Wings lightly, uniformly infumated with brown.
⤷ Legs: Similar to those of the queen. ⤷ Pubescence: Closely compares with that of the queen but somewhat looser. ⤷ Color: Head black without noticeable intermixture of any yellow. Thorax yellow except metapleurum black and interalar area with considerable intermixture of black, predominantly so on the disc (often with rather well-defined complete interalar black band). Wings somewhat paler than those in the queen. Abdomen as in the queen except basal two-thirds of T2 orange rufous to ferruginous, T3-4 black as in the queen (but sometimes with varying amounts of coppery or rusty red - variable), remainder of abdomen as in the queen.
⤷ Head: Frontal outline ovoid triangular (excluding mouthparts), about as wide as high; compound eye little more than twice as high as broad, more broadly rounded below than above, its inner margin weakly concave outwardly, slightly more so above; vertex nearly flat, covered with small to medium irregular punctures, the ocellocular area smooth and polished except the ocular one-third with weak separated punctations; ocelli located transversely on supraorbital line, each slightly closer together than their diameters, interocellar and ocellocular lines equal; malar space equal to distance between (and including) mandibular articulations, its surface weakly irregularly convex and sparsely punctate; labrum subrectangular, about 2 times wider than thick, its ventral margin arcuate, its surface moderately pubescent, without prominent callosities; flagellum twice as long as scape, F1 distinctly shorter than F3 but noticeably longer than F2 which is H times longer than its distal width. ⤷ Legs: Mesobasitarsus elongate subrectangular, nearly 3* times longer than the greatest distal width; outer hind tibial surface moderately convex longitudinally a little anteriorad of middle, microscopically alutaceous, covered with reclining pubescence except on median distal half; metabasitarsite little more than 3 times as long as its greatest width, its outer surface strongly longitudinally concave, covered with well-separated recumbent hairs, the posterior fringe rather short, longest beyond base to distad of middle thence gradually declining to short more numerous hairs on distal third. ⤷ Pubescence: somewhat longer and definitely looser than that of female, especially on face and vertex. Genitalia, seventh and eighth abdominal sterna (PL X). ⤷ Color: Similar to that of worker on head and thorax except the yellow is more drab; legs black, the hind tibial posterior fringe with some pale tinge; abdominal Tl drab yellow, T2 mostly very pale burnt sienna except drab yellow laterally and narrowly mid-posteriorly, T3-7 mostly black except some pile laterally on T4-7 with pale tinge. Re-described from hypotypes. Queen, St. Paul, Minnesota], May 1, 1939, R. Dawson H. Milliron; worker, Columbus, 0hio], Aug. 13, 1947, H. E. Milliron; male, Hocking County], Salt Creek Township, Ohio, Aug. 26, 1945, Edward S. Thomas [all HEM]. ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗ COMMENTS: Evidently this is the most constant species of the genus Bombus (s.s.) in the Western Hemisphere. The queen appears chromatically most often as re-described here, except that sometimes an indefinite black interalar band is often apparent, and on many specimens a conspicuous circular black patch occurs on the mesothoracic disc; abdominal T2 is usually entirely yellow but on some specimens the proximal two-thirds is of a dull burnt sienna, as on many workers; it is uncommon for the queen to show any rusty or coppery red on any of the normally entirely black abdominal T3-5.1 have not seen a melanic of this species. In this connection, the queen with abdominal T2 entirely black, save for a sprinkling of yellow at extreme base, reported by Bequaert and Plath (1925: 279) as belonging to this species, could not be located by me despite an intensive search for it at Cambridge, Mass., or elsewhere, and it is highly probable that a misidentification was involved, this specimen being more likely a queen of Pyrobombus (P.) impatiens (Cr.), an adventive into the affinis nest whose "entire" collection was reported upon (loc. cit.).
| |||||
Names | |||||
Scientific source: | |||||
Geographic distribution | |||||
TYPE. Cresson (1916: 110) lectotype. (Examined at the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.)TYPE LOCALITY. Canada (Ontario). Number of specimens at hand: 271. IN FLIGHT: April to mid-October, the workers appearing in early June, and the males about mid-July. DISTRIBUTION: (vertical), sea level to ca. 6000 ft; (horizontal), southern Quebec and Ontario in Canada, and Maine to Georgia, northwest to the Dakotas in the United States. FLORAL VISITATIONS: Angelica, Asclepias, Aster, Cha-maedaphne, Cirsium, Epilobium, Eupatorium, Lythrum, Malus, Medicago, Robinia, Solidago, Spiraea, Vactinium, and Veronica, Lutz and Cockerell (1920) also reported Ceanothus, Parnassia, and Ribes, and Frison (1926a) recorded the species visiting Carduus and Impatiens. Plath (1934) gave Berberis, Delphinium, Hypericum, Kalmia, Linaria, Rhododendron, and Rosa. Mitchell (1963) added Aralia and Hydrangea. | |||||
Natural history | |||||
Host to B. ashtoni confirmed by breeding.
| |||||
References | |||||
Williams, Paul H., Robbin W. Thorp, Leif L. Richardson, and Sheila R. Colla. Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wpzr9.
| |||||
Top
Updated: 2024-10-10 07:46:28 gmt © Designed by The Polistes Corporation |