Bumblebee Identification
Once
I learned that there are about 24 species of bumblebees in eastern
North America, I wanted to know exactly which kind I had in my
garden. Identification seems like it should be pretty simple --- keys like
this one
break it down to a matter of color pattern. Unfortunately,
once I plugged in all of my choices, the key still said it didn't have
enough data to decide between nine species.
A little more browsing narrowed down the choices. Chances are my
bees are the Common
Eastern Bumblebee. The species is pretty well named since
it's the most common eastern bumblebee. 
| This post is part of our Bumblebee lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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