Spiked Bee - _TNY_3179S2
Quite uncharacteristically, this male European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) sat still more than mere seconds on the hairy leaf of a lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina) which allowed me to take more than one photo. This is a composite, stacked from two photos, but Zerene Stacker didn't like combining them into a good-looking image so I did it manually in Photoshop instead.
In this shot, you can quite clearly see a couple of the five spikes which the male has on the end his abdomen and which are used as weapons to chase of anybody not a female of his species form "his" flower. These have nothing to do with a stinger which is a modified ovipositor and thus something that only females have.
Spiked Bee - _TNY_3179S2
Quite uncharacteristically, this male European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) sat still more than mere seconds on the hairy leaf of a lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina) which allowed me to take more than one photo. This is a composite, stacked from two photos, but Zerene Stacker didn't like combining them into a good-looking image so I did it manually in Photoshop instead.
In this shot, you can quite clearly see a couple of the five spikes which the male has on the end his abdomen and which are used as weapons to chase of anybody not a female of his species form "his" flower. These have nothing to do with a stinger which is a modified ovipositor and thus something that only females have.