#inktober aka #beetober day 7, passport. Why not picture a bee which is crossing many country borders recently? Halictus scabiosae, a species expanding its range with impressive speed, according to some sources even 50 km/year.
Tag: wildbees
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Inktober #5 – binoculars
Today’s #inktober word is #binoculars. Well, that was easy one 🙂
Binocular microscope is very useful tool when you want to identify bees. Many bee species are, unfortunately, hard or impossible to identify to species without looking at them in magnification. That’s one of the reasons why entomological work involves much catching and killing. However, field identification of bees is increasingly more popular (thanks to, among others, many wildlife photographers and citizen scientists), and I believe it will be more and more developed, as new diagnostic traits visible in live specimens will be sought, allowing to identify more species without killing or even catching. Fingers crossed 🙂
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Inktober #4 – exotic
#inktober, #beetober or #inktobee day 4: exotic
Exotic species are those which are not native for a given area but were introduced (puorposefully or accidentally) by humans. In Europe, we have at least one such species: Megachile sculpturalis, which was once a guest on this fanpage. Today I chose the European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) which is not exotic for me – in Poland it is common native species – but was introduced to North America and is considered invasive alien species there.
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Inktober #3 – boots
This bee is mostly described as having trousers not boots on her legs but I decided that’s close enough
Genus Dasypoda – Pantaloon bee in English, Hosenbiene in German, obrostka in Polish, all these names (including scientific one) refer to extremely hairy hindlegs of females. And how is this genus called in your language?PS I invented another # for #beetober: #inktobee
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Inktober #2 – discover
Each year new bee species are described. There are also discoveries of new species for a country or region. On the cartoon you can see the ivy bee (Colletes hederae), whom you might remember from my older blog posts. This species is currently expanding its range in Europe, and discovered in the areas where it has never been seen previously. But there is also a quite interesting story of its discovery as a new species. It was described as late as 1993, even though it is a species living not in remote tropical areas, but in well-studied areas of Europe. It simply was thought to be a strange, late-flying individuals of other Colletes species, with a soft spot for ivy. Thanks to Schmidt and Westrich it was raised to the range of species.
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Inktober #1 – backpack
I decided to take part in #inkober2024 and to make it a #beetober on my blog. The first drawing is a bit cheated, as I’m in a train and have only a gel pen with me, so it’s not exactly ink drawing.
Topic of day 1 is: backpack. What can it have in common with bees? Some do carry tiny backpacks, thanks to the curious scientists who want to know where they are going! Larger species, like honeybee or bumblebees, can be equipped with little transponders which allow to track their movements with the radar. Scientists can follow each individual bee and see where and when it forages. Crazy, isn’t it? 🙂f you want to see how bee backpacks look in real life, check this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237085202_Unravelling_the_mechanisms_of_trapline_foraging_in_bees
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Crossing the road
Road verges are often buzzing with pollinators. If they are rarely mowed, or even consist of sown flowers, they provide food for bees, butterflies and others. But living by a road has its disadvantages. One of them is a risk of being hit by car when crossing the road. I don’t know whether costs or benefits of flowering road verges for pollinators prevail, the review I read on the topic was inconclusive. Anyway, I would not sow flowers on the highway median strip.
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Geocaching
I just read in some paper that female bees cache pollen and nectar for their offspring. Usually underground, of course.
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Specialists
Another cartoon about pollen specialist bees, that is, species where females collect pollen exclusively from a certain group of plant species. Viper’s bugloss mason bees (Hoplitis adunca and H. anthocopoides) are examples of such specialists. They both are native to Europe and some neighbouring regions but H. anthocopoides can now be found also in North America where it was introduced.
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So similar and yet so different
Some bee species look very similar to each other, so much that sometimes it is difficult to tell them apart even by professionals. It’s interesting that sometimes they look alike but differ in their biology. For example, Andrena afzeliella and Andrena ovatula, thought to be one species until recently, have distinct food preferences. The former prefers flowers of Fabaceae but likes many different species of this family, the latter’s diet is restricted to bushes belonging to this family, like gorse.
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Go to sleep early
Young bumblebee queens spend a few days feeding and looking for a male to mate. Then, they don’t wait for winter to come but dig a hibernaculum and go to sleep – sometimes as early as June!
Non-honey bees 