Bumblebee
Bombus impatiens
Bumblebee · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 12 July 2025
A Common Eastern Bumblebee in the July border at the Botanic Garden, the default bumblebee of most gardens on this side of the country. It nests in the ground across the eastern United States, in old rodent burrows, and forages on almost anything in flower.
A cream-yellow face patch and a single yellow band are usually enough to call it from a black-and-yellow blur without seeing the whole insect. It is also the bumblebee of commerce: reared by the million for pollinating greenhouse tomatoes, which need the buzz a honeybee cannot produce.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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