woolly legged bee

I got some great Damien shots, but I could not bring myself to throw this effort away, I am quite sure that the Damien shots can be repeated, but not so with this customer. I hope you agree with the break from plan, you just have to go with the flow sometimes.

I was doing Damien tripod shots shots when this big lumbering bee stumbled by, so quickly went to hand held. I estimated close to an inch long. It was slow moving and spent about five seconds at each bloom which gave me just enough time for a quick effort at focusing and a shot. More time or a pre-focused shot would have been nice, but not an option as this bee was only doing the higher blooms on the rubble/compost mound, out of tripod reach.

I managed four shots while it was in range, two of which were discarded for inferior focus. The two remaining shots were not brilliant, but under the conditions, I was happy. What struck me apart from the size, was that it appeared to have something stuck to its rear legs. Back in the lab, this appears to be long hairs on the legs, probably for collecting pollen. See how the fur boots are only on one side of the leg, for combing pollen off the body, so it seems.

The size of the bee did not seem to inhibit its ability to feed, whereas the smaller bees actually reject a bloom if it is not opened sufficient for the bee to enter. This bee did not land, but hovered in front of the bloom, steadying itself with its front legs holding the bloom, as can be seen in both images. But the small size of the bloom meant that there would be no pollen to comb with those fancy boots.

I deemed it necessary to do a combo shot as the two shots showed different aspects of the bee that I wanted to demonstrate in my blip. The left bee shows the very hairy legs hanging down to good effect, but the abdomen patterns are obscured by the beating wings. The right shot shows the abdomen clearer and what looks like a red mark on the back, but cannot be positive. I will spend some time researching this impressive insect.

Different blooms, feet apart but the backgrounds were very similar and so I was able to blend them together with just one small cheat. Can you spot it?

Both images show the unusual hooked antenna, again which were not visible until the lab work was done. This should help in identification.

The combination work was very tedious but I thought it went very well and you will have to look very closely to see how it was done. I have not seen this particular species of bee here before, so no future shots are planned for it.

Dave