English Bumblebees

I'm in England at the moment staying at my mum's house in Mickleover, Derbyshire. Spring has arrived here after an unusually hard winter and my mum's back garden is in full bloom with daffodils, grape hyacinth, primulas, and other spring flowers. It's difficult for flowers not to do well with long sunny days and the odd rain shower to keep everything well watered. There are also birds and insects everywhere. What's really surprised me though is the large number of bumblebees in the garden (and the complete lack of any honeybees). There are bumblebees everywhere and several different species to boot. All of them are huge.

I've had a bit of fun trying to take photos of the bees and work out what they are all called. There is a good website that helps with identification. The website also mentions cuckoo bumblebees which I'd never heard of before. This is a figure showing the most common bumblebees (click to enlarge):

The bumblebees in the back garden were tricky to photograph as they never stayed put for long, but here are my attempts....... 

This is the bee that I've seen the most of and I'm pretty sure it's a queen Buff Tailed bumblebee:

Here's another Buff Tail that got trapped in the house. It's out of focus but the different coloured bands are visible and its buff coloured behind is clear. This bee's body was over an inch long:

There are also smaller bumblebees with white tails. I'm thinking these are either worker Buff Tails or queen White Tails:

 

I haven't seen them as often but there are also black bumblebees with red rear ends. I didn't manage to get a photo of one but here's an example that I've stolen from the web:

There was also this one which I assumed was another Buff Tail but when I looked more closely at the photo and saw the yellow band bridging the abdomen and thorax I wondered whether it was a queen Garden Bumblebee?:

That's it for now.....