Thursday, March 26, 2009

Bumblebees



Carpenter Bee

Notice the white triangle on his head.






Some call him the Wood Boring Bumblebee.

I've heard they dont sting





In this picture borrowed from Flickr,









the photographer calls the insect a white-faced bumblebee.

I cant really see the white.

He's gathering nectar.

What makes him *white*?


I'm confused.

Are there lots of white-faced bumblebees out there?

I want to be able to identify them.


Any suggestions?

5 comments:

  1. Sorry, no suggestions, but I love bees and am glad you posted about them!

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  2. Well, hello!!

    I know nothing about his subject except that the boys loved to use carpenter bees for batting practice at our farm. No one ever got stung.

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  3. I don't think I want to get close enough to find out...they are lovely at a distance!
    Thanks for coming by! We NEED to get together soon, another lunch is calling our names!
    Blessings....

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  4. Begin dabbling in entomology, perhaps even insect collecting. Get a good book to start with (I recommend Practical Entomology by Rick Imes) and the get better, more detailed ones. One I really liked was How to Know the Insects (forget the author) but it's expensive.

    Like I said, start small! It's really fun....

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  5. This takes me back to the day we had lunch with Congressman Larry McDonald in the early '80's...I think he was entertaining our little redheaded daughter, Anne, and reached out and grabbed a 'white-faced bumblebee' which impressed all of us! Then he said, "Did you know, Annie, white-faced bumblebees don't have stingers!" My husband has used that story multiple times to comfort the families of their loved one who has died when he preached at the funeral: "For the Christian, death is a white-faced bumble bee," he says, "because through Christ's defeat of death for us on the cross we are able to say triumphantly, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where thy victory?' Thanks for the reminder...

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