How many species of bumblebee are there in the world?
There are about 25 British species according to Prys-Jones (19 species of Bombus and 6 species of cuckoo bumblebees). And about 65 species in Europe, and 250 species of bumblebee have been discovered so far worldwide. However we cannot be sure that every species has been found, or that none of the species that have been described have since gone extinct, or that a species described and named in one country is not the same as one described and given a different name in another country. So this is a difficult question that even the experts cannot give a definitive answer on. I have read that there are estimated to be about 45 000 species of Hymenoptera (the name for the family of bees, wasps, ants and sawflies) in Europe alone! Taxonomy is an on-going process, new species are found, old species go extinct, on close examination one existing species is found to be two, or more slightly different species, or two previously separate species are found to be actually just one. For example many
