#bee photographs

[whatnext10]

The Work of Bees Last Fall Leads to Beautiful Flowers Now

The Work of Bees Last Fall Leads to Beautiful Flowers Now discusses the role of last year pollinators in helping to bring us crops and wildflowers this year. It shows readers one of the many types of bees found in Florida.

Eager Bee Last fall before the first frost, the area was crazy alive with bees. There were many different types of them stocking up on nectar and pollen to get them or their hive or nest through the winter. There were lots of flowers, especially blackjacks, that time of year. This was one of many bees that were buzzing around from flower to flower not only eating, but also carrying pollen…

[sixteenseveredhands]

Strange Bedfellows: these unprecedented photos show a leafcutter bee sharing its nest with a wolfspider

I stumbled across these photos while I was looking up information on leafcutter bees, and I just thought that this was too cool not to share. Captured by an amateur photographer named Laurence Sanders, the photos were taken in Queensland, Australia several years ago, and they quickly garnered the attention of both entomologists and arachnologists.

The leafcutter bee (Megachile macularis) can be seen fetching freshly-cut leaves, which she uses to line the inner walls of her nest. The wolfspider moves aside as the bee approaches, allowing her to enter the nest, and then she simply watches as the leaf is positioned along the inner wall.

Once the leaf is in position, they seem to inspect the nest together, sitting side-by-side in the entryway; the bee eventually flies off again to gather more leaves, while the wolfspider climbs back into the burrow.

The leafcutter bee seems completely at ease in the presence of the wolfspider, which is normally a voracious predator, and the wolfspider is equally unfazed by the fact that it shares its burrow with an enormous bee.

The photographer encountered this bizarre scene by accident, and he then captured a series of images over the course of about 2 days (these are just a few of the photos that were taken). During that 2-day period, the bee was seen entering the nest with pieces of foliage dozens of times, gradually constructing the walls and brood chambers of its nest, and the spider was clearly occupying the same burrow, but they did not exhibit any signs of aggression toward one another.

The photos have been examined by various entomologists and arachnologists, and those experts seem ubiquitously surprised by the behavior that the images depict. The curator of entomology at Victoria Museum, Dr. Ken Walker, noted that this may be the very first time that this behavior has ever been documented, while Dr. Robert Raven, an arachnid expert at the Queensland Museum, described it as a "bizarre" situation.

This arrangement is completely unheard of, and the images are a fascinating sight to behold.

Sources & More Info:

Brisbane Times: The Odd Couple: keen eye spies bee and spider bedfellows in 'world-first'

iNaturalist: Megachile macularis

[thomas--bombadil]

Bumble Bee on Bee Balm

[nh-art]

Diligent

[celestialmacros]

Ground-nesting bee time! (Well, all the warm months are, but I see them mostly first thing in the spring before everything grows in.)

Unequal Cellophane Bee female in her nest (Colletes inaequalis)

March 13, 2024

Southeastern Pennsylvania

[die-rosastrasse]

Visit at the UJ Botanical Gardens

Kraków, VI 2024

[blooming-lenses]

bee on a berry flower

2024/05/18

[lindamarieansonsnaps]

[fairytaleprincessart]

[kristo-flowers]

Lavender

[les-bee-ians]

[whatnext10]

Eastern Bumble Bees are Some of the Very Best Pollinators

Big Bumble Last week when I was out there, the roadside in front of the cattle egret rookery was filled with these big eastern bumble bees (Bombus impatiens). The reason being that there were several different types of flowers blooming along the roadside. The rookery is located in a swampy marsh area, and is one of the few places that is still holding water right now, so it’s also one of the few…

[yanushkaa]

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

scenes from my father's garden

[pointandshooter]

photo: David Castenson

[celestialmacros]

A bee that lives in squash flowers!

Pruinose Squash Bee or Eastern Cucurbit Bee (Peponapis pruinosa)

September 4 and August 30, 2024

Southeastern Pennsylvania