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Xylocopa virginica male face
USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA
2015-05-18
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- Xylocopa virginica, m, face, talbot, md_2015-05-17-16.49.24 ZS PMax
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
About this work
Giant Flying Eye - The male of Xylocopa virginica or Virginia Carpenter Bee. Any bee with this much "eye" is clearly doing something different visually. In this case the males are guarding nesting territories and the associated females and their young and defending them from other males. You will note this when you go out on your deck and a "bumblebee" starts flying around you, sorry, but it is just this male who has a difficult time differentiating sizes, but it is a magnificent motion detector. It is also completely harmless and has no sting, like all male Hymenoptera. While the females have stings they are pretty pathetic compared to social insects such as honeybees and paper wasps, and you actually have to grab one to make it sting you. Collected at the Pickering Creek Audubon Society BioBlitz this past weekend.
