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Tag Archives: Andrena bees

Andrena haemorrhoa

17 Wednesday May 2023

Posted by sconzani in insects

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Andrena bees, Andrena haemorrhoa, British bees, Early mining bee, mining bees, Orange-tailed mining bee

Bee-cause I hardly ever manage to identify bees to species, I just had to share this one that was a first for me and has been identified. My local go-to guy for bee identification, Liam from Buglife Cymru, says this is a ‘nice distinctive one with the orange thorax and black abdomen with bright orange tail. Also orange hind legs beneath the pollen brush’. Meet Andrena haemorrhoa, in this case a female specimen. When I recorded it, the common name came up as Orange-tailed mining bee, though the Naturespot website calls it the Early mining bee. Same same, but different.

230517 Andrena haemorrhoa

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A rare sighting

10 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by sconzani in insects

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Andrena bees, bee parasites, British bees, British insects, male Stylops emerging from bee, parasitic relationships, Stylops

These photos had the entomologists on Twitter getting excited when I first posted them Monday evening. Though I didn’t realise it at the time, what I was seeing was a parasite emerging from the back of the bee’s body. The parasite is a Stylops, a species that has a rather gruesome but incredibly fascinating lifestyle.

210310 bee parasite (1)

The female Stylops lives permanently in the body of its host, often, as here, one of the Andrena species of bee. Her head and thorax poke out of the bee’s abdomen so she can release male-attracting pheromones and mate. I managed to photograph these and blogged about them in April 2020 (Wild word: stylopised). When the resulting larvae emerge, they pop out onto flowers the bee is feeding on, so they can then hitch a ride with another bee, burrow into it, and start the process all over again.

210310 bee parasite (2)

Some of the Stylops larvae are male, with wings. They do not have mouth parts for feeding as their only purpose is to find a female and mate. It is one of those emerging winged males that can be seen in my photos and, apparently, this process is rarely seen. Unfortunately, someone came walking along the path where I was watching this bee and I had to move to one side to allow them to pass at a safe distance. When I looked back, the bee had disappeared.

If you want to read more about the Stylops, there’s an interesting article on the Royal Entomological Society website – the male Stylops has the distinction of appearing as the emblem on the society’s official seal and logo.

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97/366 Wild word : stylopised

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature

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Tags

Andrena bees, bee parasites, British bees, British insects, stylopised, Stylops

Stylopised: Entomology; (of a bee or other insect) parasitised by a stylops (Oxford Dictionary).

200406 Stylopised Andrena bee (1)

As with most tales about parasites, this one is both extremely fascinating and more than a little revolting. My photos here show a mining bee, one of the Andrena species, possibly Andrena scotica (thanks to local entomologist Liam Olds for that identification). The bee has been stylopised – the two small orange-ish bumps protruding from its abdomen are parasites, females of the Stylops family of Twisted-wing flies (though, due to the strangeness of these insects, there is some dispute about whether they’re really part of the fly family at all). Though the male flies do hatch and fly around, the females spend their entire life inside their host – the males inseminate them in situ and the females lay their eggs inside their host. Once the eggs have hatched into grubs, those grubs leave the host and wait on a leaf or flower for an unsuspecting bee to arrive, climb aboard and burrow into the bee, and the cycle begins again.

200406 Stylopised Andrena bee (2)

I had never heard of these Stylops parasites until I saw an incredible close-up image of them on Twitter last week, and then just happened to photograph them myself while out walking on Saturday. If you’re on Twitter, Ed Phillips’ amazing photo can be seen here  and you can read more about Stylops on the Royal Entomological Society’s website.

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About me

sconzani

sconzani

I'm a writer and photographer; researcher and blogger; birder and nature lover; countryside rambler and city strider; volunteer and biodiversity recorder.

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