Endangered
Southern Plains bumblebee
Bombus fraternus
Southern Plains bumblebee is a wasp, bee, or ant in the family Apidae (order Hymenoptera) — Bombus fraternus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The southern plains bumblebee is mostly black, with yellow bands across the thorax and abdomen that distinguish it from other bumblebees. Queens and workers have very similar coloration. The female bee’s body is covered in short yellow and black hairs with distinctive flattened, black hairs on the third tergal segment.
Queens range in size from 0.97 to 1.07 inches (25-27 mm) while workers range in size from 0.56 to 0.75 inches (15-19 mm).
Range and habitat
The southern plains bumble bee can be found in the open prairies, meadows, and grasslands of the southeastern coastal plain and throughout the Great Plains from Texas to North Dakota. The southern plains bumble bee is adaptable within open natural and human modified habitats and can be found in intact prairie, within agricultural land, and in urbanized habitat. The southern plains bumble bee occurs in urbanized areas that have suitable floral and nesting resources.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Life history
Life history follows the order: complete metamorphosis in moths and beetles, nymphs in grasshoppers and bugs. This page does not invent a host plant that no source named.
In crisis
This species was uncommon historically, but having faced declines in population. Its estimated abundance is less than 15% of historical numbers.
Southern Plains bumblebee is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Southern Plains bumblebee, Wikidata item Q2444512. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
