10 Records

"The Eastern Mystery Bombus. Here is Bombus sandersoni. Rather late on the scene taxonomically...described in 1913 as a subspecies of B. vagans by the Franklin (famous bumble bee dude from the Northeast) and later elevated to species status. It is the trickiest to ID species in the East. The only real characters are a not too short, not too long malar space (space between the eye and mandible) and often a lot of white hairs on T5 of the abdomen...but maybe sometimes not having white hairs to make things tricky. Generally uncommon, generally found in heavily wooded northern and Appalachian regions and frankly irritating in its ambiguity. Also, apparently just not sexy enough for anyone to want to study it, unlike the other generally over studied species of Bumble Bees." (S. Droege, pers. comm.)