#megachilinae

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Flat-tailed Leafcutter Bee, Megachile mendica (by me)

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World's largest bee, missing for 38 years, found in Indonesia | The Guardian

As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous. But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas.

A search team of North American and Australian biologists found a single female Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) living inside a termites’ nest in a tree, more than two metres off the ground.

“It was absolutely breathtaking to see this ‘flying bulldog’ of an insect that we weren’t sure existed any more,” said Clay Bolt, a specialist photographer who obtained the first images of the species alive. “To actually see how beautiful and big the species is in life, to hear the sound of its giant wings thrumming as it flew past my head, was just incredible.”

The giant bee – the female can measure nearly 4cm in length – first became known to science in 1858 when the British explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace discovered it on the tropical Indonesian island of Bacan. He described the female bee as “a large, black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag beetle”.

Despite its size, the bee remained elusive, with almost nothing known about the female’s secretive life cycle involving making nests of tree resin inside active arboreal termite mounds.

The bee was not seen again by scientists until 1981, when Adam Messer, an American entomologist, rediscovered it on three Indonesian islands. He observed how the bee used its giant mandibles to gather resin and wood for its termite-proof nests. Search teams failed to find the bee again, but the rediscovery of a sole female raises hopes that the region’s forests still harbour this species.

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Hoplitis albifrons, f, right, Mariposa CA, 2017-07-13-15.55 (via USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab)

Dark Bee. Some bees are all black, black hairs, black integument (skin), little reflection. This makes for somewhat eerie photography, a gothic presentation of a species that does not care what we think. Northern and mountain in distribution across both sides of the continent. This one from way up in Yosemite National Park in California. Collected by Claire Kremen's bee team and photographed by Anders Croft.

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Mason bee at work. by Solvin Zankl, Germany: Highly commended, behaviour: invertebrates - Zankl captured a two-coloured mason bee building the roof of its nest. Zankl knew the bee was memorising landmarks around the nest so it could find it again. So as not to disorientate it, he edged his equipment closer each time it left. After two hours, the bee was using his equipment as a landmark. Two-coloured mason bees use snail shells for egg laying. They pack the shell with pollen and nectar for their larvae, then seal it with grass and sticky saliva. Humans sometimes consider snails pests, but this species could not survive without them. Location: Near Witzenhausen, Hesse, Germany - Photograph: Solvin Zankl/Wildlife photographer of the year

click image link for more Wildlife photographer of the year 2023 – preview

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_Coelioxys yanonis_ #Megachilinae #cleptoparasitic #bee female #ヤノトガリハナバチ ♂ スミスハキリバチやツルガハキリバチの巣に労働寄生する。

[hisj]

_Coelioxys yanonis_ #Megachilinae #cleptoparasitic #bee male #ヤノトガリハナバチ ♂ ♂♀共に小楯板に独特の突起が目立つ。♂の腹部先端にはそれに呼応したような形状の突起がある。

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New bee arrives for first time in the UK | The Guardian

The bee is common in the UK’s European neighbours but has been discovered for the first time in this country, in a small park in Greenwich, London.

“I always have half an eye open, but I certainly didn’t expect that,” said David Notton, an insect expert at the Natural History Museum, who made the discovery in June. “It’s quite a big bee, so, if it was new, I thought someone else would have already spotted it.”

DNA tests confirmed the identity of the bee - Hoplitis adunca - and Notton gave it a common name based on the plant it exclusively feeds on, a blue-flowering plant in the borage family called viper’s bugloss.

Mason bees are solitary insects which nest in hollows in wood or plant stems and use mud to make walled compartments for their eggs. About 50 viper’s bugloss mason bees are now in Greenwich, making use of nesting boxes in the park provided by the Land Trust.

The viper’s bugloss mason bee is an expert traveller, because it can nest in holes in vehicles and freight, and Notton said that was a likely way it had arrived in London.

But he does not expect it to become widespread in the UK: “It needs a hot microclimate and it is at the edge of its [temperature] range” in southern England. However, he said places such as Dungeness, Rye and Salisbury Plain, where viper’s bugloss is common, could be settled by the bee in future.

Notton has also recently discovered a new-to-the-UK digger wasp and spider wasp, with the academic papers confirming the finds due soon. “It’s been a very good year,” he said.

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Megachile pruina, f, charlotte county, fl, side_2016-08-24-13.44 (via USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab)

What a lovely leaf-cutter from the coastal dunes of Florida. I particularly like the stubtle metallic glints on the top of the abdomen. What a fantastic finish this would make to tricky out your yet black car. This species was collected by Anthony Abbate as part of his ongoing survey of Dune bee species. How vulnerable are these bees to sea level rise? A lot, pilgrim, a lot.