Bumbles on Blooms

This spring we called on gardeners to help us record bumblebees on flowers in gardens and parks

This project ran from 12 February to 31 May 2024. Any photos of bumblebees on blooms taken between these dates can be uploaded to our project on iNaturalist until 14 June 2024 – please find instructions below.

This data will help us work out which flowers bumblebees prefer and how we can better provide for them.

Project team

Gemma Golding, Senior Ecologist
Helen Bostock, Senior Wildlife Specialist
Ruth Chitty, Plant Pathologist

Partners

Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Dates

Surveys are open from 12 February 2024 to 31 May 2024. The deadline for adding observations is 14 June 2024.

Why do we need your help in monitoring bumblebees on flowers?

Bumblebees are a key group of wild pollinators, helping to pollinate our garden plants as well as crops such as tomatoes and fruit trees. Like many pollinating insects, bumblebees face the challenges of habitat loss and climate change.

The availability of flowers in spring is especially critical for helping them to establish successful colonies at the start of the season. Bumblebees mostly overwinter in the UK as queens, which emerge from sheltered places such as underground burrows as the weather warms. Flowers are needed to provide nectar; a sugary fuel for powering bees’ flight. Meanwhile, the protein-rich pollen from flowers is fed to the developing larvae of the worker bumblebees.

Bumblebee on comfrey. Photo: Helen Bostock

Bumblebee on hellebore. Photo: Helen Bostock

What are we doing?

So we know that spring flowers are important, but which flowers do bumblebees use?

To help us find the answer, we are inviting gardeners across the UK to become community scientists and help spot bumblebees on flowers this spring.

We know that plants in gardens and parks can complement flowers from the wider countryside for bees, often offering a longer season and wider range than wild flowers alone.

To help us capture this information, we are using a popular wildlife recording tool called iNaturalist. This can be downloaded as an app onto a smartphone and used to capture records when you are out in your garden or local park. Records can then be submitted to our ‘Bumbles on Blooms’ project within iNaturalist.

As an alternative to using the app, you can also add photos to the Bumbles on Blooms project via the iNaturalistUK website.

What difference will this research make?

Information gathered by the Bumbles on Blooms project will help us better understand which garden plants are most visited by bumblebees in spring, helping us improve our RHS Plants for Pollinator lists and give the best advice to gardeners planting for bumblebees. We’re also interested to discover if factors such as flower colour, or how urban or rural the site is, influence bumblebee plant choice.

How to recognise a bumblebee

Bumblebees are one of the more familiar bees we see in gardens. They vary in size from a large pea to a large olive. Here are some distinctive features to look out for.

Rounded body shape – they often look ‘plump’ compared to other types of bee
Very hairy all over the body – other bees can be smooth or hairy but not usually as hairy as bumblebees
On the female bumblebees (queens and workers) you might see pollen baskets on their hind legs – these can be full of pollen, balls of yellow, orange or pink depending on the flowers they’ve been visiting

Hair colour varies depending on species – some are black with white or yellow stripes, some have 3 colour bands in white, black and ginger, while some are ginger all over
Eyes oval-shaped on the sides of their heads – this helps distinguish them from flies which mimic bees as flies have very large round eyes which cover much of their head
A ‘bumbling’ flight – due to their large body size compared to their wings, bumblebees can often fly in a rather haphazard manner, from which we get the expression ‘to bumble around’!

What am I looking for?

Which bumblebee? Not a bee!
Which flower? None
Can I submit this image? No – this is a bee fly (note large eyes) that mimics bumblebees. It is also not on a flower!

Which bumblebee? Buff-tailed bumblebee
Which flower? Crocus
Can I submit this image? Yes

Which bumblebee? White-tailed bumblebee
Which flower? Willow
Can I submit this image? Yes

Which bumblebee? Not a bee!
Which flower? None
Can I submit this image? No – this is a bee fly (note large eyes) that mimics bumblebees. It is also not on a flower!

Which bumblebee? Buff-tailed bumblebee
Which flower? Crocus
Can I submit this image? Yes

Which bumblebee? White-tailed bumblebee
Which flower? Willow
Can I submit this image? Yes

How do I take part?

Here are some steps to getting involved. Thank you for taking part in our Bumbles on Blooms project.

The easiest way to submit your records is with a smartphone. Familiarise yourself with what bumblebees look like and the most common bumblebee mimics, using the image gallery above (‘What am I looking for?’) and this handy video from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

Follow the registration (sign-up) instructions within the app.

Tip: Android users – to help us make the best use of your sightings please take a few seconds to check the settings tab and change Default Licence to CCO or CC-BY. This will ensure we can use your observation for research and are recommended by iNaturalist. iOS (Apple iPhone) users will need to make this change online by logging into the iNaturalistUK website, then going to Settings > Content and Display and choose your licence. To learn about the different license settings and to help you decide which is best for you, read more here.

The best time to see bumblebees is usually between 11am and 5pm, with a minimum temperature of 13°C.

Head out into your garden or local park to snap photos of bumblebees on open flowers. Follow these tips from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust on how to take the best photos of bumblebees. We will need a minimum of one photo clearly showing the bumblebee on a flower, but ideally, for each record, take two photos from different angles of the bee on the flower, plus a third photo of just the flower it was on.

Visit our project on iNaturalistUK and click ‘Join’. Alternatively, open the iNaturalist app and click ‘Projects’ (a briefcase icon). Using the search (a magnifying glass) type in Bumbles on Blooms and select the project of that name. Click ‘Join’.

With the iNaturalist app on your phone open, click ‘Observe’ (camera icon). Choose either your camera (for spontaneous photos of a bumblebee) or photo library (if you’ve already taken the photos) and select the photos for the record you want to submit.

Under ‘What did you see’, either type the name of the bumblebee if you know it, or use one of the suggestions the app gives you. If in doubt, type Bumble Bees or Bombus and select that. Your phone will automatically populate the date and location, but under other options the app gives you for your record, make sure your Geoprivacy is set to Open and the Captive/Cultivated is set to No (this is because the bumblebee is wild not captive).

Just before pressing ‘Share’, be sure to click on ‘Projects’ (scroll down to bottom in the app). This should bring up a list of projects you have joined. Tap on the slider for Bumbles on Blooms so it shows green.

You will then be asked for three additional pieces of information – the name of the flower the bumblebee was visiting, the primary flower colour, and how urban or rural you would describe the site where you took the photos. You can use the common name or the botanical name for the flower. You can also use iNaturalist to record and identify the flower, or another plant identification app. If you still don’t know, or can’t find a name for the flower, just leave this blank.

IMPORTANT – if you don’t choose the ‘Bumbles on Blooms’ project before submitting your observation, it won’t be shared with us and we can’t use your data in our study!

Note that the project runs between 12 February and 31 May 2024, so only photos of bumblebees on flowers which were taken within those dates will be included in our study.

* Please note that iNaturalist is the Data Controller of the data added to iNaturalist. Please see their privacy policy for information on how your data is stored and handled by iNaturalist. Where permitted under the iNaturalist licence terms, RHS will use data in connection within the RHS ‘Bumbles on Blooms’ project to inform the RHS’ recommendations for plants for pollinators.

Further information for taking part

Below are some great resources put together by Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

Watch this 5-minute video on identifying the most common bumblebees in the UK
Check these top tips for photographing bumblebees

You can track your own and other records submitted to our project on the iNaturalistUK page.

White-tailed bumblebee queen on strawberry tree. Photo: Helen Bostock

Useful links

Learn more about bees in your garden

How to help our declining bees and other pollinators

New research from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford highlighting the importance of early flowers to bumblebees

If you’ve enjoyed being part of our Bumbles on Blooms project and would like to record bumblebees more regularly, consider taking part in Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s BeeWalk scheme.

More on planting for bees and other pollinators:

FAQs

If you get an error message saying your photo couldn’t be added to the project Bumbles on Blooms, this may be because your photo is not of a bumblebee (Bombus). Check in the gallery that it isn’t a bumblebee lookalike!

Don’t worry, just type Bumble Bees or Bombus into the ‘What did you see?’ section and we will double check.

No, just leave the flower name blank if you are unsure. If you can take a nice clear photo just of the flower to add to the record, that will really help us.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to submit this record. We need to see the evidence of the bumblebee actually visiting the flower for it to help inform our research. Also, you are more likely to get a bee in focus when it is still rather than flying off!

No! We’d love to see any photos you can snap of bumblebees on flowers in parks and gardens this spring. Just create a new record for every different type of flower or location you spot them on.

Yes – drop us an email and we’ll be happy to help.

Yes. As an alternative to using the app, you can also add photos to the Bumbles on Blooms project via the iNaturalistUK website by clicking on the ‘Add Observations’ button. You will still need to sign in or sign up to iNaturalist to do this.

Once you have signed up on the website, you can help us make the best use of your sightings by changing Default Licence settings to CCO. This will ensure we can use your observation for research. You can do this by logging into the iNaturalist website and going to Settings > Content and Display and choose your licence. You can read more about this here.

iNaturalist users need to be aged 13 or older, but there is nothing to stop you using your account to share their photos to our project. The kid-safe app Seek from iNaturalist is something you might like to explore with your family, but please note that photos submitted on Seek will not be shared with our Bumbles on Blooms project.

We would ideally like photos that are taken this year within the spring period (12 February to 31 May). However, you are still welcome to add photos from other times of year, as we might use them in future bumblebee studies.

There are no hard definitions, but here are some pointers to help you decide which best describes your space when submitting photos to the Bumbles on Blooms project:

Urban – within a high built-up area such as a large town or city; very low green space
Semi-urban – on the outskirts or within larger towns or villages; there is more built-up space than green space
Urban park – a public park within a town or city
Semi-rural – on the outskirts or within small countryside towns or villages; there is more green space than built-up space
Rural – isolated hamlets surrounded mostly by countryside; very high green space

Get involved

The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.