Bees to Meet You!

There are a few species of bees you may see in the Lower Mainland right now. I'm posting some photos of my recent sightings. Can you find these bees?

 This beautiful shaggy bumblebee is Bombus mixtus. The red on its thorax is at the very tip, which helps to identify its species.

This is the yellow-headed bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii), the most common bumble you'll see in the Lower Mainland. When you are taking photos of bees see if you can get a photo of their face, back, and side, especially that back leg. This will help to determine if the back leg has pollen baskets, which would make it a female bee.

 This one is  Bombus flavidus. See how long and narrow her "chin" is? She also has orange on her abdomen. At this time of the year you'll see queens and some workers, but usually not any males yet.

This is a female blue orchard mason bee. Most of the males have mated and departed, but these ladies are pollinating the cherry trees and will soon be ensuring a good crop of apples in our city fruit trees.

These blue orchard bees have hair bellies to carry their pollen, but as you can see, they do also carry a bit of pollen on their butt!

This beautiful golden bee is an Andrena mining bee.

Here's another species of Andrena, much darker and a bit larger than a honey bee.

After the females emerge and mate and start laying eggs in their nests, you will start to see cuckoo bees trying to sneak in the holes to go down the tunnel and lay their eggs. This happens at the hottest time of the day when the females leave the nest to forage for pollen.

This is a Sphecodes cuckoo bee with a blood red abdomen.You'll see her skulking around the nests of true bees.

This is a Nomada cuckoo bee, which even has red eyes.

There are also insects that mimic bees: the wannabees.
 

This is a hoverfly, flower fly syrphid fly that drinks nectar and it's larvae eat aphids.

This furry critter is a bee fly (Bombiliidae). Their larvae prey on bees, wasps and beetles.

These are a few of the bees and wannabees you might see in the Lower Mainland during Earth Week. If you take a photo, crop it in to show as much detail of the insect as you can and then post it to iNaturalist sharing details about what the insect was doing and whether it was on a particular plant.  If the insect can be identified by an expert, it may be a useful scientific observation. These kinds of observations can help us build better habitat for our pollinators and other garden helpers.