A very sad and bizarre day ...

[nottingham]

From your own image but just magnified.

 

[nottingham]

image made a little bit bigger.

 

[Mike a]

Heres that picture I posted so you can see them side by side.

Look at the shape of the abdomen, slightly flattened, the colour of the strips and the fur is very similar. Another give away is the antenna, long and straight not bent.

 

[freethorpe bees]

I've just shown these pics to someone who knows ALOT about this subject. Definitely a mining bee. Just let them get on with their life and enjoy watching them.

Sorry to hear about your colony though.

FB

 

[RoseCottage]

Mike,
Thanks for your thoughts...I find it difficult to make the comparison without also seeing a similar shot of an AMM say a carnolian. Do you have a similar close-up too?

If mining bees then they are in the tightest part of access to our house and so I have some questions:

1. How long will there 50-100 bees around at any given moment?
2. Can I house them in a hive? To avoid killing them?
3. Will they be laying eggs in the same location to hatch this/next year?


Thanks,
Sam

 

[For want of a better word]

Misspickle ?
good name for a mining bee ??

 

[merylvingien]

Looks to be mining bees from the piccies in which case, leave them alone, they cant sting and will be gone in 2 or 3 weeks time.

 

[Mike a]

This is probably the best close up picture I have of what I consider to be a Carni bee that came from an imported AI Queen.

Sadly don't know anyone local to me with any AMM so I don't have any close up pictures, but found this picture instead of really poorly marked AMM queen.

From http://www.sicamm.org/WhatApis.html

 

[drstitson]

"so how do I prove one way or other?:

kill them all and send for morphometry.

reminds me of story of a british team just after WWI who estimated that population of northern elephant seal in california was around 20. as was the way in those days they shot 6 and brought the bodies back to natural history museum.

turned out very interesting though as in the 90s Gabby Dover from Leicester Uni looked at dna fingerprint of those corpses, sampled members of the living population (thriving) and was able to demonstrate that a genetic bottleneck occurred approximately 75 years earlier AND that the population had been around 20. great correlation between science and evidence in the field which showed how well the molecular techniques worked.

 

[drstitson]

"really poorly marked AMM queen"

thats not poorly marked. she's obviously off to a wedding and wearing a jaunty little yellow fascinator.

 

[For want of a better word]

"so how do I prove one way or other?:

kill them all and send for morphometry.

reminds me of story of a british team just after WWI who estimated that population of northern elephant seal in california was around 20. as was the way in those days they shot 6 and brought the bodies back to natural history museum.

turned out very interesting though as in the 90s Gabby Dover from Leicester Uni looked at dna fingerprint of those corpses, sampled members of the living population (thriving) and was able to demonstrate that a genetic bottleneck occurred approximately 75 years earlier AND that the population had been around 20. great correlation between science and evidence in the field which showed how well the molecular techniques worked.

The pocket DNA sequencer with a best match to species decoder is still "work in progress" I'm afraid..... but when I have finished rebuilding a barn, digging a pond, replanting an orchard and doing the children's maths homework etc etc,,,,,.... I will get right on with it !!

 

[drstitson]

icanhopit

you forgot to add "caring for ducklings!!!!"

;-)