Wild bees in North Dakota – ID needed!

September 1st, 2010

Very quickly:

While on the road in North Dakota we were lucky enough to catch some very late sunflowers for beautiful shots of foraging honeybees.

We also saw quite a few of these other bees, but have no idea what they are. Can anybody help?

(click photo to enlarge)

Posted in Bienenbilder, Bienenfilm 8 Comments »

8 Responses to “Wild bees in North Dakota – ID needed!”

  1. 1 Arno Gerkowski
    September 2nd, 2010 at 07:22

    Here’s the email-adress of Bernd Heinrich, Prof.emeritus university of Vermont, a specialist in bumble-bees. May be he can help you or give you a contact to a bee-specialist:

    Bernd(dot)Heinrich(at)uvm(dot)edu

    Good luck

    Arno

  2. 2 Rusty
    September 2nd, 2010 at 18:32

    Some kind of bumble bee, I’m sure. We have similar looking ones here in Washington.

  3. 3 Willem
    September 2nd, 2010 at 22:07

    Bombus impatiens perhaps? Now I’m getting curious :-)

  4. 4 kerstin
    September 3rd, 2010 at 04:50

    Thanks! Seems there is little doubt about Bombus.

    I know that these are not the world’s best pictures for a proper identification. But I still hope for some definitive answer from the hive. Wonder if these are common. They certainly are tough – it was a very windy and not at all warm day.

  5. 5 Nils
    September 14th, 2010 at 08:00

    Hi Kerstin,

    It very much looks like Bombus impatiens. We collected bumble bees throughout the US over the past years, so I can tell you it’s a very common specie sin the Dakotas. Close relatives (B. bimaculatus and B. griseocollis) look similar, but you would need a good picture of the second abdominal tergite to be sure. If it’s orange it’s almost vertainly B. griseocollis. Do you remember how many yellow stripes there were on the back of the bee?

    Nils

  6. 6 Nils
    September 14th, 2010 at 08:12

    On second thought, B. impatiens was rather rare all the way up in North Dakota; and I do see a bit of orange on the abdomen on the second photo. So for what it’s worth, I’d say it’s Bombus griseocollis. ;-)

  7. 7 kerstin
    September 16th, 2010 at 15:49

    Hi Nils,
    thanks!
    I checked the other pictures, but none shows the abdomen properly… As for the orange – I am not sure. But we have seen many of these ‘Bombusses’, so I would tend to the more common species as well. So Bombus griseocollis it is.

    What kind of research were you doing when collecting the bumble bees in the US? Sounds interesting.
    I heard from one of our beekeepers, that the Varroa mite now affects the bumble bees, too, and that two bumble species have already gone extinct because of the new (for them) parasite. Would you know anything about this?

  8. 8 More than Honey » Blog Archive » North Dakotan Bombus spec.
    September 16th, 2010 at 16:00

    [...] colleague just sent me his picture of the mystery-Bombus’ back end. Does this give anybody any new [...]

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