Bug FAQIndiscriminate Cuckoo Bumble Bee
Bombus insularis · Order: Hymenoptera · Family: Apidae
The female Indiscriminate Cuckoo Bumble Bee measures about 1.6 to 1.9 cm long and just under a centimetre wide. It has a black head with yellow hair tufts, a thorax covered in long pale yellow hairs, and a black abdomen with yellow sides. It lives in tundra, taiga, western mountains and some coastal areas across northern and western North America, including Canada, Alaska, the northern United States and several western states.
Source: Wikipedia
How to recognize it
Head is black with yellow hair tufts; thorax has long pale yellow hairs; abdomen is black with yellow along the sides.
Source: Wikipedia
Size
Females are 1.6 to 1.9 cm long and just under 1 cm wide.
Source: Wikipedia
Where it is found in the US
Recorded in 26 of 51 states and DC. Most records: California, Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Oregon, Utah, Montana.
Darker = more records. Counts are museum and citizen-science records, not population size.
Source: GBIF
Status: native in North America; native in United States; native in Canada. Source: iNaturalist
Months it is reported in the US
Source: GBIF
More photos
Same family (Apidae)
Sources
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_insularis
Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · ITIS · Wikipedia
Text written 2026-10-22 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-22.