Author Gary Taylor ◦
This little cutie is Hylaeus (Prosopisteron) “mysterium puella”, one of my first “unknown” species and the girl that not only drew me into the world of the smaller and lesser known native bees, but also taught me so much… Righto, so first up, “mysterium puella” is just the name I’ve given her ‘cos she has no other, in Latin it just means “mystery girl”… (if I was to name her scientifically it would probably be more like erythrofaciem (red face) or erythropictus (red markings). Anyway, as with most Prosopisteron she’s tiny, 1st pic is on a Rosemary flower, 2nd is Salvia, 3rd is Fan flower, 4th is a daisy and the 5th, well we all know that one… (he says in the midst of a total mental blank 😂).
Anyway, when I first saw her she was so skittish and flighty I couldn’t get within a metre of her without her taking off… She was the one that taught me that trying to sneak up on a native bee isn’t the best approach, and that if you’re already there (at the flowers) when the bee turns up, you’re just part of nature and they’re much less bothered (“Make me One with Everything”… as the Buddhist monk said to the dude at the Zen pizza parlour 😅). And what helped was that she also taught me that native bees were highly predictable… she turned up everyday at 20 minutes past twelve… 🙂 Made it easy to be the big slow moving harmless “blue animal” that she shared her garden with…
So you ask, Blue animal? Glad you did, ‘cos that’s another thing she taught me… 😃 I don’t give a rats for fashion, I wear two colours, either khaki or sky blue, both of which blend in with the Aussie outback. Then one day, just when my girl was getting used to me being around, all my blue shirts were on the washing line and I wore a red flannelette one… To her I was a different animal, wouldn’t even let me get close…
But getting back to the naming of “new” bees, when I found this one I was asked to “collect” a specimen for scientific clarification, from there I could have a say in it’s scientific name… A gorgeous little native bee, maybe never seen before, clearly collecting pollen and nectar to raise a family… Is killing it (and possibly therefore any chance of it’s offspring surviving) the best thing to do? I put this point forward and was told “No… there will be plenty of others around…” Really? So why has nobody seen one before?… Decades ago I was mates with one of the curators of the WA museum, they used to have a “joke” saying… “Glad we bagged one before they were all gone…” 😅🥺 Hmmm… Yeah, nah… Dodo, Thylacine, countless others… So I didn’t. And bloody glad, ‘cos I’ve never seen one again (that was six years ago) but at least I don’t have to live with the guilt of suspecting I may have killed the last one just to have it pinned to a board with my name on it… 🙂
Geraldton, Midwest WA
Hylaeus (Prosopisteron) “mysterium puella”, Geraldton WA © Gary Taylor
Hylaeus mysterium puella… | Glad we bagged one before they were all gone…
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