Mystery Bee

[jzbdski]

Hi there,

I realize that you probably get hundreds of posts like this every week but we've noticed this large bee in our garden over the last few days which seems very different from all of the others.

I took some pictures and tried to find out from the internet what kind of bee it might be. But to be honest, I'm now more confused than before I started as the patterning and features don't seem to fit in with any of the regular bees I might expect to find.

The bee is a regular visitor but only seems to be interested in one flower (the Liatris in the photos). It also seems to be quite a bit larger than the other bees in the garden (and we have quite a few which all visit different flowers) maybe around 3-4cms in length.

It has a distinctive patterning with an orange band on it's thorax and what initially looked like 4 white bands on it's abdomen with a buff-ish tail, although in one of the pictures it seems as if these white bands take the form of two 'D' shapes.

The antennae appear 'elbowed' (I have better pictures of this) and the hind legs are not uniformly hairy (as I hope you can see in the last picture).

As I said there only seems to be the one bee of this type in the garden.

Here's hoping you can cast some light and help us to identify this bee.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Richard

PS. I've made the images small so that they don't clog up the system but if it helps I can post Higher res images. I also have many others of this Bee.

[JRsbugs]

Hi Richard, welcme to WAB.

It certainly is unusual, by the dark and narrow coloured thorax stripe with the buff tail it would suggest Bombus terrestris if it wasn't for the other bands on the abdomen! It also looks to be very hairy.

It would be helpful perhaps to

1) give your location
2) post a larger resolution pic as they can be enlarged further with a click on the full pic if large enough, you can go to a little over 1mb. If possible a pic showing the hind leg as it looks very chunky but lacking pollen hairs.

It looks foreign to me! We do have a bee expert (eucera) but he hasn't been around lately.

Janet

[Jason Green]

It's Bombus confusus... a joke, by the way

I'm intrigued by this one. I'm thinking Richard may be from overseas somewhere... or coastal.

I'll watch with interest.

[jzbdski]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the swift replies. I'm also glad that someone hasn't said that it's just a really common bee!

We live in Aberdour in Fife and are indeed Coastal (on the Firth of Forth).

I'll post some higher res images when I get home.

I can also report that the Bee makes quite an impressive noise in flight!

Cheers

Richard

[jzbdski]

Ok,

I've uploaded some higher-resolution images.

Apologies if some of these are a little soft or are showing noisy artefacts -due to fading light some of them were shot wide open at 1600 ISO -I think I need to get a better Macro lens !

Also something weird seemed to happen to the Gamma when I uploaded them so they all seem a wee bit dark.

Still, despite the inadequacies, hopefully these will help in the identification process.

Thanks again,

Richard

[JRsbugs]

Thanks for those extra pics.

I think this is a female or queen by the shape of the hind leg even though the pollen hairs are not obvious.

I had thought yesterday it could be a northern island form of Bombus jonellus, hence wanting your location. It could be that, the colouring on the abdomen is showing some yellow and these can be very variable! The charts show yellow on the top of the thorax to the head but they do with B. terrestris too and that has a band similar to this.

BUMBLE BEES

BBCT gallery

Not a certainty though!

[JRsbugs]

The BBCT Gallery has gone to the thumbnail page so you will need to click on the 'rarer bumblebees' then the 'Heath Bumblee' to see examples.

Note the ones with yellow hairs on the face will be males. Note also some with the narrow deep gold thorax band, and the hairiness, I had one this year I thought was B. jonellus and it was very shaggy hairy.

Yours also has a visible pale band at the thorax bottom which the female workers and queens with an orange tail have.

[jzbdski]

Hi Janet,

Thanks again for the quick replies.

I've had a look through the BBCT galleries and elsewhere for Bombus Jonellus and I'm not sure. A lot of the images show the bees as fairly bright yellow, it was the odd black and white nature of the markings (and the sheer size) which first drew our attention. (although I do note that they talk quite a degree of variation).

And the size is another issue, it said somewhere that the Queen of Bombus Jonellus would be around 16mm long and the workers and males 12mm, this bee is more than twice that size.

As for Bombus Terrestris, we have seen quite a number of these in the garden but this beastie looks different (and again is maybe 1.5 x the size of B. Terrestris).

Clearly I'm no expert.

I'm assuming that the lack of hairiness on the hind legs precludes it from being a cuckoo ? (as there were a few cuckoos that seemed to match the banding).

The only other close match i could find on the Natural History Museum identification key was bombus subterraneus (which would seem pretty unlikely as it's supposed to be extinct in the UK).

It's amazing the details you pick up on when you start to look at things more closely !

I'd better go to bed.

Cheers

Richard

[JRsbugs]

If you look at all the examples on the BBCT you will see one has a narrow dark golden thorax band.

Yes they are variable, and the white you are seeing does have a yellow tinge so that does suggest it at least started a sort of yellow, the light often has a habit of making the abdominal bands look paler than what they are (apart from fading).

Size is subjective in the viewers eye I often find, it does look quite big but if a queen it would be bigger than you might think. A queen B. terrestris is huge, but some workers or males can be quite small. As it is on a Liatris flower if you can compare the diameter of the flower head that might give you a better idea of size.

The hind leg of a cuckoo bee (in my experience) doesn't have that broad triangular shape, however some can have quite chunky legs. It sometimes takes a very clear pic to show the leg hairs, and from some angles even the broadest of pollen bearing legs (corbiculum) can look like a cuckoo bee's leg.

Our bee expert has returned so bumping this up might get his attention.

[JRsbugs]

This pic actually shows a lot of hairs on the corbiculum, and on others it looks shiny which you would not expect on a cuckoo bee.