starting on bees

Spring is springing; bees and flies are pollinating the oregon grape. (Even that is wrong. It looks all I have are flies on the oregon grape. Learning that flies can be vegetarian too. The honeybees are feeding on camellia and dandelion and bumblebees on rosemary. Is feeding the right word?) The iNaturalist community is identifying some of my observations as western honeybees,or hover flies, calpytrate flies, tachinid flies. I need to do some homework to take advantage of the community's work. Educate my eye. Learn more of the things to look for.

First I'm going back to my notes on bees, from Thor Hanson's Buzz.

Western Honeybee

domesticated
introduced to US
one bee was identified as female, is that because it was a worker? gathering pollen? From wikipedia article: "Although worker bees are usually infertile females, when some subspecies are stressed they may lay fertile eggs. Since workers are not fully sexually developed, they do not mate with drones and thus can only produce haploid (male) offspring."
drones, male, are 1.5 x size of workers
"Another form of worker policing is aggression toward fertile females. Some studies suggest a queen pheromone which may help workers distinguish worker-laid and queen-laid eggs, but others indicate egg viability as the key factor in eliciting the behavior."

Bumble Bee

short tongued
happy to "chew base of columbine spur or honeysuckle blossom" to get straight at the nectar
queens "insatiable curiosity" for "shady gaps and openings"
some of my IDs have been narrowed to Pyrobombus:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40563907
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40297209 "Based on the location and colouration (yellow face, front of thorax, and single band on abdomen), it's very likely to be a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii). However, there are a couple species which are much rarer, but look similar (e.g. Bombus vandykei). All of them are in subgenus Pyrobombus though." trevorsless
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/73354015 "use observation subfields to show choices"
Black-tailed bumblebee: brown thorax ("orange rump"), hairy, black tail. "The second and third abdominal segments are red in northern populations and black in southern" - Wikipedia
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40562797
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42432483
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42430915

Mining Bees- Genus Andrena
"Species are often brown to black with whitish abdominal hair bands, though other colors are possible, most commonly reddish, but also including metallic blue or green.
Andrena bees can be readily distinguished from most other small bees by the possession of broad velvety areas in between the compound eyes and the antennal bases, called "facial foveae". They also tend to have very long scopal hairs on the hind leg." - Wikipedia

Diggers - Genus Anthothora
"All species are solitary, though many nest in large aggregations.
Males commonly have pale white or yellow facial markings." - Wikipedia
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42209182
Nomad - Genus Nomada
"Kleptoparasitic bees are so named because they enter the nests of a host and lay eggs there, stealing resources that the host has already collected.
As parasites, they lack a pollen-carrying scopa, and are mostly hairless, as they do not collect pollen to feed their offspring.[4] Like non-parasitic bees, adults are known to visit flowers and feed on nectar.
They are often extraordinarily wasp-like in appearance, with red, black, and yellow colors prevailing, and with smoky (infuscated) wings or wing tips. They vary greatly in appearance between species, and can be stripeless, or have yellow or white integumental markings on their abdomen. " - Wikipedia
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42164631
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42169483

Mason

Carpenter

Work in Progress

Posted on March 18, 2020 05:21 PM by