Images

This is one of the species that seems to be holding its own in terms of numbers. This worker has a corbicula on its tibia full of a mix of pollen and nectar, it is laying on a piece of black felt. I like the the contrast in textures

Philadelphia Bee Survey, 2012, Pennsylvania, Stephanie Wilson Collector, Morris Arboretum

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Badlands National Park, South Dakota, note the ragged edges to the wing....this is an old worker who has been collecting nectar for a while, eventually it will no longer be able to fly or will have been eaten

From Yellowstone National Park comes the powerful Bombus insularis, and this parasite of other bumblebees is one bad ass bee. collected as part of a high elevation study of the Alpine areas throughout the United States, with the idea that climate change first reaches the tops of things and the bottom of things (oceans that is).

Another male Yosemite Bumble Bee. B. melanopygus is similar to B. bifarius illustrated in the last set of picture, but a bit more higher elevation and bit more arctic in its distributions. There is a softness to the face here that I find most appealing. Collected by Claire Kremen's group in the National Park. Photo by Anders Croft.

Tightly wrapped in fur-like orange hair, this lovely western bumblebee was captured at the far edge of its range in Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Near the Black Hills, an island of Rocky Mountain type habitat in a sea of prairie, the Badlands are receivers perhaps of bees that otherwise would not inhabit prairie habitats. Photo by Brooke Alexander.

And now we present a mystery. Here is a bumble bee collected in northern Virginia in a blue vane trap as part of T'ai Roulston's research group looking at bee populations in restored fields. The question at hand is what species is it? Its a clean, unworn bee, appears to be the size of large worker or perhaps a small queen and it fits some characteristics of B.

A series of pictures of a queen and a male of the northernish bumble bee Bombus vagans. Still a reasonable common component of northern Appalachian systems, its been retreating from its lower elevation and southern edges over the last century.

In the female, Bombus vandykei is almost all Black but here in the male it is almost all yellow. Why? Hard to say, but still a common species out West and that question is still available for study. This fellow is from Yosemite National park collected for a project done by Lauren Ponisio examining the effect of fire diversity on bees (Ponisio et al.

More black bumble bees from Yosemite National Park. Here is the male of Bombus vosnesenskii. This species was described by the relatively prolific Polish Taxonomist Oktawiusz Wincenty Bourmeister-Radoszkowski who pumped out a great many new descriptions of bees in many parts of the world.

One of the common and strikingly dark western bumble bees. This species largely restricted to coastal and Sierra ranges. The current specimen comes from Claire Kremen's study of Yosemite National Park bees. Photographs by Anders Croft.

Bombus griseocollis, Queen , South Dakota, USA, Badlands

Bombus griseocollis, Queen, South Dakota, USA, Badlands

Bombus terricola, male, first Maryland record, July 2012

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Agrilus ruficollis from my backyard. Likely from my moth sheet, but am running through my backlog of pictures and can't recall.

A very small soldier beetle. This beetle is from the genus Malthodes (now identified as Caccodes granicollis...6/14/18) and was collected by Brent Steury near Little Hunting Creek on the George Washington Memorial Parkway lands, operated by the National Park Service.

A relatively common bee of Southern Chile. Seen regularly on Laurence Packer's expedition there in 2017. A lovely male. Photograph by Erick Hernandez.

Dominican Republic

I don't run into the Blue Cohosh often, but want to say that it is fly rather than bee pollinated...but could easily be wrong. Certainly a woodland understory plant that blooms after much of the bee activity is done with. Picture and specimen from Helen Lowe Metzman.