Question: how do you tell your bumblebees apart?

Miranda Bane answered on 17 Nov 2016:

You can tell most bees apart by their markings. All of the different species have different patterns and colours. If you google carder bee, red tailed bumblebee and garden bumblebee you will see these differences can be very obvious. Sometimes you need to know which bees are which from the same species. I have to do this in one of my studies. So that I know which bee is which I catch the, at the beginning of the experiment and mark their wings with special colour pens. This doesn’t hurt them but means when I release them I know which is which.