Bee of the day #322 is a female Southern Cuckoo bumble bee, Bombus vestalis, nectaring on Caryopteris flowers. Seeing these females late into the season means they're not queens, rather "gynes" (whether this one is mated already is unknown). As with other bumble bees, she will find a nice underground burrow to enter diapause, that process whereby she "hibernates" through the winter until next spring, where she emerges in search of a host nest to take over. (their hosts are the buff-tailed bumble bee, B. terrestris) I wonder if this Vestal bumble bee ( along with other cuckoo bees) are genetically programmed to emerge later in the season, since if they emerge too early, there are no suitably-established nests for them to take over. Consider that a host queen needs around ~ 1 month to build the nest, lay the first batch of brood, take care of them until they emerge, it would be more efficient for the cuckoo to emerge in mid/late spring to maximise the chances of taking over a healthy nest, in saying that, there's a counterargument: the bigger the nest/target, the more chance for the cuckoo to be spotted/killed/kicked out by the host's queen or workers... tradeoffs! 📷Nick Hollands, Kent

Rudbeckia 'Little Susan' 😊 #sundaymorning #sundayyellow #macro #flowers #gardeningx

It's the shame the bee is so deep into the sunflowers, you can't see the large jaw that defines a "leafcutter" bee Bee of the Day #330 is Megachile policaris, a rather common North American native bee with a generalist foraging habit - sunflowers, daisies, asters... any open flower really Look at the underside of her abdomen, those thick hairs are scopae, which she uses for carrying pollen back to her nest*. As pollen accumulates on her body from foraging, she uses her legs to brush it to her body, where the pollen adheres to the hairs on the underside of her abdomen (under a microscope, pollen is very sharp and pointy, which will get stuck on other sharp and pointy things, like bee hairs). Once fully loaded (or she's "satisfied") the female flies back to the nest, brushes it off using her legs and begins the brood-provision-making process * The other forms of pollen transport are in hind leg baskets, as in honey bees, and internal pollen transport, like some masked bees in Australia 📷Roy Beckemeyer, Kansas

Some bee species can look very similar but be completely different behaviourally. 🐝 The Ivy Bee and the Honeybee are good examples of this. If you’re not looking closely you might not realise they are different. They are around the same size, and you can see a lot of both species foraging together on the ivy at this time of the year (see the second image). The best ways to tell them apart are that the Ivy Bee has very clear sharp bands of bright yellow on its abdomen. The Honeybee has hairy eyes while the Ivy Bee has smooth. Honeybees live in colonies with queens and workers. The one pictured here is a sterile female worker who will be collecting pollen to provision the queen’s brood. Thousands of other workers will be out collecting pollen for the same brood. These workers do not reproduce themselves. In contrast, Ivy Bees are solitary, don’t live in colonies, and don’t have queens or workers. The bee pictured here is a female who is independently collecting pollen for her own brood. She has no help in this process, even from the male she mated with.

Colletes hederae♀️🐝💚🍃

A bee's mouth has two specialised functions: chewing (wax, wood, resins) and lapping (honey, nectar as you see here). They are made up of six main parts: 1) Labrum: an "upper lip" that helps seal the oral cavity and guide food inwards 2) Mandibles: the paired jaws for cutting/gripping/moulding and so on - the larger bee below is a Lithurges sp. (Family Megachilidae), so she uses them for biting leaves, handling borod, defence, amongst others 3) Maxillae: a paired structure that sit lateral to the labium, containng a galeae that forms the "outer sheath" of the proboscis, which is a used for liquid feeding 4) Labium (which I often confuse with labrum): the central part of the proboscis contain the "tongue" (formally: "glossa"), which is extended into the nectar below by our Lithurges 5) The labial palps, which are more like accessory organs alongside the glossa that provide sensory feedback & structural support 6) Hypopharynx: another tongue-like internal structure that is associated with opening of salivary ducts and food manipulation So what is our large bee doing here? As she feeds on nectar, it is the galeae, labial palps & glossa that work together to suck up the fluid. Odds are she repeatedly protrudes and retracts it, causing the nectar to adheres to the proboscis' hairy surface before being drawn inward by the mouthparts' pumping apparatus (well, that's how it happens in the European honey bees Apis mellifera anyway) For completeness, the two out-of-focus bees may be the social stingless bees, Tetragonula carbonaria This was bee of the day #322 📷Lisa Warman, Central Queensland