Description

Bumble Bee Jasper is a trade name for colorful fibrous calcite found at Mount Papandayan, West Java, Indonesia, and also in areas of Australia. The material is made of radially grown fibrous calcite with a distinctive yellow, orange, and black banding. The orange and yellow colors are mainly caused by finely dispersed realgar (a soft reddish mineral consisting of arsenic sulfide, formerly used as a pigment and in fireworks). The black stain is caused by pyrite and hematite.

Bumble Bee “Jasper” is actually a misnomer, as this stone contains no quartz at all (while actual jasper is a variety of chalcedony, which itself is more or less a “microcrystalline quartz”). It is actually a carbonate mineral in the Trigonal Crystal System. It’s beautiful coloring is displayed in bands of yellow, orange, black and gray, with translucent white to opaque white areas.

Many stones discovered in India are named “Jasper” as that is a word Indian miners are familiar with. And while called that, not all are really a jasper, as in the case of Bumble Bee. Most of the time we will use the known trade name from where they are mined to eliminate confusion when searching for a particular stone type.