bees
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Pollinators
I took a walk through Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday afternoon. It was very windy, which made photographing flying insects quite a challenge. I saw my first Monarch butterflies of the year, as well as an American Lady. Black Saddlebags dragonfly. Great Northern Bumblebee (amongst a host of small, medium, and large bumblebees I am otherwise…
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All praise to the pollinators!
It’s National Pollinator Week. While honeybees get most of the media attention, there are some 250 different species of bees found in New York City. Recently, a new species of sweat bee was named after being discovered in Prospect Park. Here’s yet another type of local bee. This is a genus Megachile leaf-cutter bee, so…
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Island Bugs
Ah, summer, season of buzzing and flying and biting! The insects are out in force. OK, there’s really not that much biting, per se. Seen last week on Nantucket: One of the green metallic bees, genus Agapostemon, also known as sweat bees, on chicory flower. Note the big bundles of pollen around the legs. A…
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Systems of change
“[…] it is often not easy to assign insects to precise categories because there are so many species and their morphological, behavioral, and genetic differences frequently tend to overlap or intergrade. Often the best we can do is estimate degrees of relationship and/or distinctness and assign them to hypothetical groups as information becomes available. As…
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Brooklyn Bridge Park
Painted skimmer, Libellula semifascianata. (Oh, come now, much more than just semi fascianata!)A ladybug larva demolishing aphids. Perhaps the seven spotted, Coccinella septempunctata. Twice or more as big as the insects below, and a little more lumbering, hence the best shot of the post! This is an Eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica, working the swamp…
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Hymenoptera
We went into Prospect Park on Saturday with a group from the Bee Watchers study. John Ascher of the American Museum of Natural History, whose fingers are visible below, led the expedition — which actually didn’t go very far since there were plenty of plants in bloom near the Boat House, where we began. There…
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Local hymenoptera
The sunflowers at Maize Field, at Bergen & Smith St., are swarming with pollinators these days. Nice comparison between a honey bee, on the left, and a wasp, on the right.
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Other Icelandic Animals
White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus locorum), seen a number of places in Iceland, finally digitally captured in the small garden behind the Parliament building. Besides birds, Iceland doesn’t have a lot of other animals, including invertebrates. The number of bugs is growing, though, as the world warms. Moths were a common sight, in the long diurnal light.…
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Hymenoptera
It’s National Pollinator Week. The membrane-winged insects, order Hymenoptera, encompass the bees, wasps, and ants (the queens and males of the ants have wings but shed them after mating). Unlike the flies, and there a number of flies who mimic bees, hymenoptera have four wings that merge together with a sort of natural velcro, so…
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Honey Bee
I spotted my first Honey Bee of the year yesterday around 1pm. On the sidewalk at the bus stop on 5th Avenue and Union St. Here she is, sticking to the sunny side in the 50 degree day. Daffodils are out; willows are unwrapping their furry buds. You don’t have to consult your Farmer’s Almanac…
Backyard and Beyond 