Can someone please identify this ... bee?

And after doing this fine psychological analysis, certainly based on a lifetime experience of humankind, you came back just to lecture me?

I contacted two specialists to get their opinion on the photo. One was a bumblebee expert from the Natural History Museum. He immediately said that it wasn't a bumblebee and therefor he wouldn't be much help.

The other individual is the Chairperson for the UK Bees Wasps and Ants Recording Society. His response provided a bit more detail but still didn't reach any precise conclusion. His input is as follows:


It would really help if you had more photo's of this bee, of if you could provide a more precise geographic location where it was seen. Have other bees with these markings been seen and just not photographed, or is this the only known individual of this type?

Of critical import is whether those yellow spots are simply pollen splotches or if they are anatomical. It seems impossible to be certain from the photo alone.

What we can say for certain however is that several skilled individuals from this board and at least a couple of academic specialists can not readily identify this bee from the photograph. So whatever it is, it's unusual. Or it could be just a regular old Andrena covered in pollen splotches

It's not easy to be certain from the photo, but I'm pretty sure it's got a double-wing and is very "Bee Like" in every other structure, so I'm gonna go with Bee over Fly on this one.

aha, now that's science. and without any drama.

Thanks Ros.

It's an Anthidium Vigintiduopunctatum but it's not what we are looking for.

ah ... These are not the bees we are looking for ... ;-)

Hi Bissgets,

More input from the specialist:

He is apparently certain that this is Andrena, and that no Andrena (even an undiscovered one) can have markings like that. Therefor they must be pollen splotches.

A more precise identification of the Andrena species is not possible from this photograph. I think a lot of these bees need to be physically examined in order to differentiate their specie.

Perhaps the moisture on the bee along with the movement of the wings causes the pollen to liquify and be daubed onto those particular spots like paint. I'm not sure, but that's probably as close as we're going to get with just a single photo.

Does that help?

Best Regards,

Dear all ... I have to apologize to all of you who put a considerable and admirable effort in identifying this "bee" - because I haven' been sincere.

The photo of a bee - Andrena rufomaculata female - has been photoshopped.

It all started with a sad story of the bee orchid, Ophrys apifera, a rare self-pollinating orchid. Please, bear with me for a while.

Members of Ophrys genus attract pollinators not with promise of food, but by promise of - sex. They emit pheromones similar to pheromones of females of pollinators and their labellums are similar in color and shape to those females (for example, O. bomybliflora resembles a bumblebee; others resemble wasps, flys, and even spiders).

The bee orchid, Ophrys apifera, also used to have and attract a pollinator (probably an Andrena, or Eucera or even Tetralonia sp.) - but this pollinator all but dissapeared from its range; and the flower had to resort to self-pollinating.

However, the bee orchid still has an image of a female of the pollinating species 'painted' on its labellum ...

http://www2.arnes.si/~bzwitt/flora/images/orchidaceae/ophrys_apifera_PID1336-2.jpg

Finding a bee orchid earlier this summer sparked my ineterst in this "missing bee" - and a recent xkcd comic (http://xkcd.com/1259/) then inspired me to perpetrate this ... fraud.

The photo I have posted is an Andrena rufomaculata altered in such a way as to resemble the color pattern on a labellum of this unfortunate bee orchid.

It is a humble attempt at reconstruction of an extinct bee (well, at least locally extinct).

And i couldn't help myself and tried to deceive you all (or, maybe, if you would identify the bee, even find the missing O. apifera pollinator, which would be a great story too!).

I am sorry for abusing your time and knowledge.

And thank you for being so cooperative, helpful and insightful. I sincerely hope there are no (or at least not many) hard feelings.

That wasn't very nice Bissgets. Besides being rude it's a bad way to explore a subject you are interested in and it destroys any online integrity you have associated with your userid.

You would have been better off just giving us the full background and asking if anyone could find a record of such a bee in historical files. We might even have had success with that, who knows.

By the way, orchids like that do not always produce perfect copies of their bees, they are often just similar enough to get the response they need, so a bee that looks exactly like that orchid may never have existed at all.

Now you'd best go change your userid and hope nobody ever figures out who you really are or all future online interactions will be ignored.

Wow . . . Timur playing his usual pompous jackass role, and trying to start a bitch fight in a thread about entomology; FM and Roswell attempting to give a reasonable answer, and all the while, it was a fake! Now that's entertainment! Who knew bugses could be so much fun ?

See what you've been missing

Pompous? That's new to me.

No way I could ever win a fight against the clique..

FM trying to give a reasonable answer? In this case I cannot see how, given that the experts cited by Ros said the same as I did..

But right, bugs can be fun, except for the bugged, maybe..

The clique, huh?

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the Man come and take you away . . .



Poor abused Timur . . . my heart goes out to ya, Bubba.

So where's Harold got to?

That's so easy, isn't it?

Yes . . . and entertaining too!

Im still kind of unanaswered at how those Dipteran style wings got on a "twopair" winged creature? Was that photoshopped too?, or am I hallucinating?

What cracks me up here is that Timur continues to attempt to suggest that you were wrong, and he was right--evidence being that Roswell agreed with him--even though the OP admits to having photoshopped the image ! ! !

It passeth understanding. As for the wings, i'm clueless, and have never claimed any expertise in such a subject.

any arthropod'l do, as long as it fossilizes.
But that kid gave me an idea about photoshopping and "rearranging" things to stump the kiddies. Evil, but clever.

You might work up some stuff to sell to the Discovery Institute, too. There could be some easy money in your future.

it was here all along... http://ponpet.blog.siol.net/2013/09/