Mis-Remembering - _TNY_5749
This pretty little bee with the fierce-looking spikes on the tip of his abdomen is a male sharp-tailed bee (Coelioxys sp.).
The day before I found this one, I stumbled on a different bee on the very same flower and it turned out to be a banded dark bee (Stelis punctulatissima) - a species that haven't been recorded that far north in Sweden before: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/53131493747/
So, when I found another dark bee on the same flower the next, I figured it was related - but it wasn't.
And a while later, when posting shots here on Flickr, I found another black bee on a yellow flower from the same day so I remembered incorrectly and wrote a description saying it was the bee I found on the same flower - but obviously it wasn't. That one was a masked bee (Hylaeus sp.) and can be found here (together with the incorrect description): www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/53266273012/
Anyways, the sharp-tailed bee here (they are also known as sharp-abdomen bees and sharp-bellied bees) is a cuckoo bee, meaning they parasitize on other solitary bees in the Megachilinae subfamily .
Mis-Remembering - _TNY_5749
This pretty little bee with the fierce-looking spikes on the tip of his abdomen is a male sharp-tailed bee (Coelioxys sp.).
The day before I found this one, I stumbled on a different bee on the very same flower and it turned out to be a banded dark bee (Stelis punctulatissima) - a species that haven't been recorded that far north in Sweden before: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/53131493747/
So, when I found another dark bee on the same flower the next, I figured it was related - but it wasn't.
And a while later, when posting shots here on Flickr, I found another black bee on a yellow flower from the same day so I remembered incorrectly and wrote a description saying it was the bee I found on the same flower - but obviously it wasn't. That one was a masked bee (Hylaeus sp.) and can be found here (together with the incorrect description): www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/53266273012/
Anyways, the sharp-tailed bee here (they are also known as sharp-abdomen bees and sharp-bellied bees) is a cuckoo bee, meaning they parasitize on other solitary bees in the Megachilinae subfamily .