How to Identify Bumble Bees

Take a photograph of the bumblebee, preferably while it is feeding on a flower and relatively still.

Place the ruler either near the bee or next to the flower you photographed it on and take another photograph.

Examine your photograph and make a note of the size of the bee in millimeters. Bees only grow as larva, so knowing its size is helpful when identifying the species.

Find the closest bees in your guide by stripe pattern and color. Do a quick visual check for obviously similar ones. Examine the pictures in the identification guide of the similar ones and your photograph more closely. Pay particular attention to the color of each segment in the abdomen.

Eliminate any bees that are significantly larger or smaller than your bee, if you have found more than one matching species. Remember that bees of the same species might be different sizes according to their gender and role. A detailed guide provides you with this information. For example, if your bee was 35 millimeters long and the largest -- usually the queen -- bee of a species only reaches 25 millimeters, you can rule that species out.

Check the distribution maps for the remaining bees. It is possible but highly unlikely that your bee belongs to a species not found in your region. You should now have a match.