Bombus terrestris

It has a white tail; fresh workers often show a narrow band of brownish hairs at the base of the tail. Workers are hard to tell from related species.

It is widespread in Europe and across middle and northern Asia, east to northern Mongolia.

It is now considered an invasive species in New Zealand, Japan and throughout South America.

It was deliberately brought to Chile in 1997 to pollinate tomatoes, and since then more than 320,000 colonies have been introduced there.

In South America it spread by some 200 km a year and reached the Atlantic coast of Argentina by the end of 2011.

Nests are large and often contain more than 500 individuals.

In Britain queens fly from February to April and males from July to October, and in mild winters with garden flowers a winter generation can appear.

It nests underground, in old mouse or vole nests.

It visits a wide variety of flowers for pollen and nectar and probably has the widest diet of any British bumble bee.

It is one of the two main bumble bees reared commercially for crop pollination, alongside the North American Bombus impatiens.

Greenhouse tomatoes are the most important crop pollinated by bumble bees: in 2004 about 40,000 hectares were pollinated, a crop worth 12,000 million euros.

Captive nests of non-British forms are used by commercial tomato and fruit growers in Britain, and some young queens and males may escape and breed with wild bees.

Wherever it spreads in South America, the native giant bumble bee Bombus dahlbomii disappears, though the reasons are still unclear.

In Britain it is not regarded as scarce or threatened.