Deadly ID

August 08, 2018  •  Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, I received a splendid review book from the Princeton University Press. The Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America's Bees is a wonderfully comprehensive and exquisite look, by expert entomologists Joseph Wilson and Olivia Carril, at many of the 4000-plus species of non-wasp hymenopterans that live in this country and Canada. I've been having a ball working my way through the book, and while I'm nowhere near ready to start IDing the various species I now realize I'm encountering every day, I think this pretty, little metallic colored bee is a member of the family Halictidae, commoners and mostly "medium sized to small beauties [that] are variable in color and shape." Alas, the poor creature will soon shine no more. When it was gathering pollen from the Hydrangea flowers, it wasn't paying sufficient attention to its surrounding and it fell victim to an Assassin Bug, which pierced its abdomen and injected it with a toxic saliva that, say the authors, "dissolves the insides of the bee. The Assassin Bug then feasts on its homemade 'bee juice'". Grim.


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