Tags
bee, beetle, butterfly, dragonfly, insect, monarch, Morton Arboretum, nature, photography, prairie
There’s always something new to learn even when I thought I knew what I knew! Each time I’ve visited the prairie recently I’ve seen a large black and yellow bumblebee-looking insect sitting on a stick, flying off and returning to the same stick. I initially thought it might be a robber fly for they do similar behavior, at least they did at my house. However, when I looked up robber flies, they looked significantly different. Bigger eyes, stiff proboscis (mouth parts) and only 2 wings.
Robber fly with bee prey
© 2018 Karen A Johnson
So…what was this creature? Turns out it’s a male bumblebee guarding its territory. Since there are many different bumblebee species and each one seems to vary in color, I won’t hazard a guess as to what species this is. It was quite large though and seemed unhappy with me getting too close so I gave it a wide berth.
Bee guarding
© 2018 Karen A Johnson
Bee Landing
© 2018 Karen A Johnson
Here’s some other insects I found as I was searching for my Calico Pennant Dragonfly, from my previous post.
Karen's Nature Art 
Beautiful photos. How wonderful that you live near this fabulous prairie! What plant is showing off those huge pods? Saw a similar plant at AU, across from the Katsen Center; forgot to take a photo. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks, OC! The huge, bumpy pods are common milkweed pods.
So glad that you have Monarchs visiting. I haven’t seen one in my small garden. The invitation is out, Joe Bye Weed, A incarnate (buds showing) & A tuberose, second flowering.
There have been a lot more monarchs than last year coming through, such an encouragement!
beautiful close-ups
Thanks!
beautiful close-ups
Thanks, Sima! It was a beautiful day…
Nice pictures, I really like the dragonfly and the monarchs. I saw a huge yellow swallowtail today. Or at least I think it was a swallowtail. I’ll have to look at my gardening for birds and butterflies book to confirm the species.
You make the insects look adorable!!!
They ARE adorable! 🙂 lol
😀 😀
Excellent pictures! That bumble bee is huge!
Thanks, Clare! Yes, it was! It’s amazing they can even fly…
Karen, I could very well be mistaken, but in the photo that you’ve captioned, “Robber fly with bee prey”, I’m having a few doubts. I am under the impression that one of the ways that you identify carpenter bees is that they have non-fuzzy abdomens, and both of the bee-like creatures in the photo have shiny, black abdomens. So I’d be inclined to think that they were both carpenter bees, but like I said, maybe I’m wrong.
In an article I wrote about Bugguide.net, I included a photo of a robber fly that was identified by the people there (Bugguide.net is like crowd-sourcing insect identification). Here’s the photo of the robber fly at my site: https://trekohio.com/wp-content/uploads/201208_robber-fly_7681369642.jpg
Putting all that aside, I thought it was interesting that a bee would guard a territory. I didn’t realize they did that! And as always, all the photos were great. 🙂
Hi Deb,
Yes, I had no idea male bees guarded territories, but I learned that from Bugguide, coincidentally. If you look up Laphria sp. you’ll see quite a few robber flies that are bumble bee mimics. In my picture you can see the proboscis of the larger one sticking into the smaller bee. I watched them for a while and the larger one was definitely preying on the smaller one. Both actually have fuzzy abdomens, it’s just a trick of the light that makes them look shiny. Carpenter bees are also much larger… I’ve been trying to learn more about bumble bees in general and boy, are they confusing to ID. I’ll add my photo to Bugguide and see if they can ID it further. Thanks for keeping me on my toes!
Hi Deb! Just got a confirmation of the ID for the robber fly in my photo as Laphria thoracica from Bugguide. It is amazing how well they mimic bees, isn’t it?
Karen you might enjoy the Fall colors on my longislanders.wordpress.com!