Author Gary Taylor ◦
So, kinda continuing on from my previous post of why European honey bees are detrimental to our gorgeous little native bees, well another reason is that a lot of our little natives truly are little… This little cutie is Hylaeus (Gnathoprosopis)… (yellow legs, looks a lot like euxanthus), female in all but the third pic, that’s her boyfriend, even smaller but showing the typical fuller face markings.
And for those new to natives, that’s one of the distinguishing factors for Hylaeine or “masked” bees… In each species the markings are different, but if the face markings have a noticeable gap between them and look more like the 1980’s rock band eyeliner, it’s female…
If it has full face colours like William Wallace going into battle it’s a male… “FREEDOM!” he whispers quietly to himself… 😄 Shhh… finally got a flower without any bloody Euros on it… Now I just need my girlfriend to turn up 😅… Sorry bud, she’s fighting her own battles, 4th and 5th pics, and here’s the point… Ok, not exactly “fighting” but like Billy Bayou she’s kinda big for her size and she doesn’t take flight fer no derned imposter no matter how big they are 😆 tho’ to bee fair, the Euros aren’t usually aggressive, just clumsy… it’s more like “Oi! Get yer foot off my head ya big oaf!” 😂 But that’s still not the point, the point is, that big oaf (one of many hundreds) will collect more pollen in one day than this gorgeous little native will consume in her lifetime raising a family…
And the 5th pic, crap focus wise, is also what I call a “pirate” pic… It’s when you’re just snapping pics but it’s not ’til you load them that you see in this moment of Euro greets native that it has a tiny ant latched onto it’s antenna too and know that if you hadn’t been so close (or at least got what was there in focus 😂) that could have been a great pic… AAARRGGH! 🤣
Photographs © Gary Taylor
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