Bees and lookalikes

 At the moment, the garden is buzzing with bees. Especially bumblebees. These can be identified from the stripes on their body and the colour of the end of their abdomen. There is a good guide to the common species here

 

Of course, it is not that easy when they are flying around but I often find dead ones either in the sun room or just on the ground which makes it a bit easier to look closely. It is also confused by there being different sizes, with the Queen who is larger being seen first and then smaller male bees of similar patterns. Here are some of the ones I have found in the last week.

2 cuckoo bees and a white-tailed bumble bee

Important note: On submitting this photo to an insect expert, I find I am not very good at identifying bees! So take any species names as guesses...

On the right of the photo is a white-tailed bumblebee which is pretty common in my garden. The two bees to the left are cuckoo bees. They do not bother to make their own nest but lay their eggs in the nest of another bumblebee which then raises the cuckoo grubs as if they were its own. Each type usually resembles the bumblebee that it takes advantage of and looks pretty similar to it. They never have pollen baskets on their legs because they have no young to feed, and they are usually not as hairy as normal bumblebees.

A Drone-fly

The next insect in the photo above looks as though it could be a bee but in fact it is a hoverfly.

I have no idea what the advantage is for this fly to look like a honeybee.

Apologies for the poor photograph, as this seemed to be the only one I have of the orange tip butterfly. This one was taken at Nethy Bridge this weekend. I have seen lots of orange tip butterflies in my garden, and if you can see the orange tips they are male. The females lay their eggs on Honesty, of which I have lots in my garden, and I was about to pull the plants up before they self seed but now I will leave them and see if any little orange caterpillars appear.