Tag: wildbees
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Not that small
Nomioides minutissimus is one of the smallest bees found in central Europe. And currently my favourite one 🙂
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Guess who
In some species of bees males have expanded fore tarsi, shaped so that they can serve as blindfolds. Their use as such is important part of courtship. Interestingly, expanded forelegs which are used in mating can be found in some distantly related bee species, like in some species of Megachile and Xylocopa, and also in some digger wasps.
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Heriades
Bees from the genus Heriades have a very particular way to collect pollen – they repeatedly hit the surface of a flower with their scopa.
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Sleeping aggregation
Sleeping bees have always fascinated me. Females usually spend nights inside their nests (unless they are cuckoo bees and don’t have one), but males look for various sleeping places. In some species, they like spending the night in a sleeping aggregation of a few (or sometimes quite many) individuals, gathered on a plant stem or inflorescence. They are in plain sight and it’s uncertain what advantages this behaviour has.
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Traveler
Halictus scabiosae and H. sexcinctus are two related species, and quite similar in appearance. There are two particular differences, among others, between them*. First, H. sexcinctus (but not scabiosae) females have acarinarium on their first tergite, which is a cozy place for mites of a specific species, Anoetus halicticola. Second, H. scabiosae increases its range quite fast in recent decades. In Poland this species was first observed in 2020, and a few days ago we published a short note about its further dispersal. It travels fast!
*I don’t know about causal relationship between presence of acarinarium and dispersal, don’t treat the cartoon scenario too seriously 🙂
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One more year
Some bees don’t emerge from their natal nests the next season. Especially in case of desert species, they can skip a year… or several years. As Danforth et al. mention in “The Solitary Bees”, Rozen once kept prepupae of Pararhophites in his desk drawer for five years! And it was not even the record because Amegilla dawsoni can wait for ten years for emergence.
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Hylaeus
There is great paper by Andreas Muller in Alpine Entomology published this year, about food preferences of Hylaeus. Members of this genus were believed to be polylectic, with a few exceptions. As it turned out, many of them are in fact specialized or at least have marked preferences for certain types of pollen.
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Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Do you remember that amazing photo by Karine Aigner, the winner of Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in 2022? Here’s how it was made (at least I think so!
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Non-honey bees 