Dark Armour - _TNY_5547
For the last couple of summer vacation weeks of 2023, we had very little sunshine and an absolutely ridiculous amount of rain. Naturally, I took less bug photos because of this, but here is a cool find.
I went out in my mother-in-law's garden outside Härnösand, Sweden on a rare non-rainy day and saw this odd-looking bee. It wasn't very shy though and allowed me to take several photos of it.
When trying to identify it, I realised that this must be a dark bee (Stellis sp.), but didn't fit with the distribution maps of the four Stelis species of Sweden.
I ventured out on Facebook and immediately got an expert opinion by Alexander Berg who concluded that this had to be a banded dark bee (Stelis punctulatissima).
The cool part is that the species hasn't been recorded so far north in the country before so this is a new species for the province of Ångermanland.
The Swedish name for dark bee is "pansarbi" - meaning "armoured bee". Their armour comes in handy as they are kleptoparasites on primarily my favourite bug - the European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum), a species which I find perennially in that very same garden. I have an album with 60+ shots of these and I'm adding the shots of this one to that album as well as ithe species are so heavily linked.
Have a look at the album here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/albums/72157667862870066
Dark Armour - _TNY_5547
For the last couple of summer vacation weeks of 2023, we had very little sunshine and an absolutely ridiculous amount of rain. Naturally, I took less bug photos because of this, but here is a cool find.
I went out in my mother-in-law's garden outside Härnösand, Sweden on a rare non-rainy day and saw this odd-looking bee. It wasn't very shy though and allowed me to take several photos of it.
When trying to identify it, I realised that this must be a dark bee (Stellis sp.), but didn't fit with the distribution maps of the four Stelis species of Sweden.
I ventured out on Facebook and immediately got an expert opinion by Alexander Berg who concluded that this had to be a banded dark bee (Stelis punctulatissima).
The cool part is that the species hasn't been recorded so far north in the country before so this is a new species for the province of Ångermanland.
The Swedish name for dark bee is "pansarbi" - meaning "armoured bee". Their armour comes in handy as they are kleptoparasites on primarily my favourite bug - the European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum), a species which I find perennially in that very same garden. I have an album with 60+ shots of these and I'm adding the shots of this one to that album as well as ithe species are so heavily linked.
Have a look at the album here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/albums/72157667862870066