bumblebee

UK/ˈbʌmbəlˌbiː/US/ˈbʌmbəlˌbiː/

nounB1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,734 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: bumblebees

A bumblebee is a large hairy bee with a loud hum. A bumblebee on the lavender.

It can fly in colder weather than a honeybee because the hair holds warmth. A bumblebee colony lasts one season and only the new queens survive the winter.

Definitions of bumblebee

1nounbumblebeeA large hairy bee with a loud hum.B1
“A bumblebee was working the same patch of clover all afternoon.”

bumblebee is an insect.

Where it comes from

Bumble plus bee, from an old verb meaning to boom or buzz; it replaced the earlier humbul-be.

Middle English
humbul-be
English, today
bumblebee

1520s from bumble + bee, replacing Middle English humbul-be. Merged with Middle English bombeln (“to boom, buzz”), in the late 14th century. The name of the drink is a Ukrainian джміль.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

bumblebee in the wild

European bumblebees have also been introduced to New Zealand and Tasmania.
Bumblebee
Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals.
Bumblebee
A bumblebee is a flying insect of the genus Bombus.
Bumblebee (disambiguation)
The Hummel logo is a stylized bumblebee, as Hummel is German for "bumblebee".
Hummel International
Cuckoo bumblebees are members of the subgenus Psithyrus in the bumblebee genus Bombus.
Psithyrus

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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