Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Garden bumbling

I spent a few minutes in the back garden this afternoon and tried to take e few close-ups of Bumblebees. There was one very tired and worn Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lapidarius (L.), and a rather more lively Common Carder Bee, Bombus pascuorum.

This is the (dying?) Red-tailed Bumblebee photographed. Here is a reasonable shot of the hind leg and the pollen basket:


This is the Carder Bumblebee photographed. The antennae have ten segments in the flagellae, and the hind legs are clearly modified into pollen baskets, each with just with a few pollen grains here (in the second picture), making this one a good sized worker. This one is in quite reasonable condition.



The Bumblebee tongue is amazing:


Here you get another view of the ancillary mouthparts:


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