Hairy yellow and black beetle for ID

[jeremiah]

Hairy yellow and black beetle for ID please.

On ground elder; it stayed on the flower for a long time. I thought at first it was a bumble bee.

[Fauna]

Morning.

Looks like you have one of the Bee Beetles there. Not to sure if its Trichius fasciatus or Trichius rosaceus, hopefully someone with more experience with these will be along soon.

Regards Chris.

[Wild-Woman]

Have a look at this thread from jezlee last year.

Bee Beetle?

[Fauna]

Have had more of a look at this one, it looks like yours is Trichius rosaceus (though, i'm not sure how reliable the markings are in seperating these two?).

Regards Chris...

[jeremiah]

Thank you both.

I looked at google images and couldn't see any difference between the pictures of faciatus and rosaceus(aka zonatus).

I did find this article,
Bee Beetle (Trichius zonatus)
which says that faciatus has a spike on its middle leg tibia where rosaceus just has a bump, but as I don't know which bit is its tibia...

The picture below shows more of the legs:



Is this beetle rare, and if so, should I report it somewhere?

[Jason Green]

Afternoon Jeremiah,

See these:

Trichius rosaceus: BioLib - Trichius rosaceus zonatus - Image
Trichius fasciatus: BioLib - Trichius fasciatus - Image

I think we need a top-down view to appreciate the spine - though it may not be too visible.

Take care,

Jason

[Hedera]

What a beauty! I've never seen one of these.
As for legs: like ours, the bit at the top is the femur, the middle bit is the tibia and the lower bit with foot is the tarsus. They do vary a lot, but with the magic of our macro we can see a lot more!

[jeremiah]

Thanks for the bio-images links - I think I can see the spike / lack of spike though the rosaceus beetle shown has different markings. When I think about it, it isn't surprising that the markings vary such a lot - we don't expect identical friesians, after all.

And I wasn't the one to spot it, either - though the friend who did took some convincing that it wasn't a bumble-bee.

[jeremiah]

Meant to add - I don't have a picture from directly above it, it would have meant cutting off its sunlight and I didn't want to spook it.

[Jason Green]

Ah, of course. Well, I don't think it's at the right angle to go analysing bumps unless I'm looking at it wrongly.

Back over to Chris or other!