Long-horned bee

A male long-horned bee, possibly in the genus Melissodes, drinks nectar from a sunflower. The long-horned bees, or Eucerini, are a large tribe of solitary bees that dig nests; like most solitary bees the actual nesting habits varies from species to species, but none of them build the huge nests we associate with honey bees. And none of them have the same complex social structure with queens, workers, and drones. The Eucerini get their name from the extremely long antennae of the males: the word itself means “true horn”.

I see large crowds of these bees on sunflowers near me, especially in mid to late summer. The males hang out and drink nectar, and wait for a chance to mate with females who stop by for a break in their constant pollen-gathering. They start early and work at it all day: I walked past some at about 8:30am this morning and there were several females with heavily-loaded pollen baskets. A few miner bees and tiny sweat bees as well.

I took this shot yesterday afternoon. It’s at a 1:1 magnification ratio, so just the macro lens without any tubes. The flash, a Canon 430EX II, is mounted on a bracket I put together, and shot through a diffuser made out of an old yogurt cup and Rosco diffusion paper. Unfortunately, right after I finished with these bees and started walking to the next place I hoped to find bees, the off-camera cord I had the flash mounted on literally ripped off of its threaded mounting post, and bungeed down onto the street. No damage, I think, since the coil-cord slowed its fall, but it’s making me seriously rethink the value of using the cord’s hotshoe as a mount: obviously there’s too much flex and stress with the flash’s center of gravity so much higher than where it’s secured.

The identification of this bee proves difficult. I got several clear shots of the wing venation, an important characteristic to select between the hundreds of species of bees in New England, and one or two showing the color and texture of the thorax very nicely. With this, I used the bee genera guide at discoverlife.org to narrow it down to a few species in several genera that don’t really look like perfect fits — different proportions and eye color, for example — or one eleven species in the genus Melissodes, which I think this probably is. The guides at discoverlife.org are highly detailed keys that need more knowledge than I actually have, not to mentioned a mounted specimen and a microscope, to take full advantage of, but it’s still extremely useful in drilling down with the right shots. Once I repair my rig, I plan to go back to these flowers at night to shoot them sleeping — the males really don’t seem to leave — and hopefully get a few other details that will help confirm the ID.