Hey Joezilla, If You Have A Minute To Spare...

[Mistwalker]

Hey Joe,

What kind of bees are these? They seem to be nesting in the ground in the edge of the bank on the side of the Tennessee River right on a trail that goes down to the water. They're about 1/2- 5/8 inch long, very active and curious but not aggressive at all as far as I could tell. I stood in the middle of them a few times over the course of two days watching them swarm around and though they'd fly by and look at me mostly they just went about whatever it is they are doing.

.

 

[Dave Behrens]

Possible species of "Ground" or "Digger" bees...don't know, can't find much info on them. Lucky you you don't have to deal with aggressive bees, out here they are pretty much all aggressive.

 

[hung-solo]

Mist

this might be what you are looking for. they are just called ground dwelling bees i guess

http://mcdowellces.blogspot.com/2011/05/hot-topics-ground-dwelling-bees.html

scroll down for ground dwelling bees

http://www.caes.uga.edu/extension/cobb/anr/Documents/Bees.pdf

 

[hung-solo]

Possible species of "Ground" or "Digger" bees...don't know, can't find much info on them. Lucky you you don't have to deal with aggressive bees, out here they are pretty much all aggressive.

is that bc most of yours are africanized? i was told that all bees in the SW US are not africanized. not sure how true that is. here in NC we have a few agressive bees, wasps, etc but not that many.. either way i run lol

 

[Dave Behrens]

is that bc most of yours are africanized? i was told that all bees in the SW US are not africanized. not sure how true that is. here in NC we have a few agressive bees, wasps, etc but not that many.. either way i run lol

The whole "Africanized" thing was blown out of proportion due to media paranoia IMHO. Its really limited mostly to Arizona, NM, and parts of Southern CA, and almost exclusively in remote areas. But we do have "regular" honey-bees, yellow jackets, several species of wasps, huge black death bees(carpenter bees) that chase you, bumblebees etc. We have also started to see spider wasps(wasps that kill and eat spiders) around...I have anyway.

 

[crazyengineer]

I don't know anything about bees, but.....



those are some really good pictures.

 

[Dave Behrens]

Since we are on the subject of bees...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPiK_071rmg...yeah I know it's a hornet.

 

[coaldigger]

Mist....I've got those same type of bees in my yard ! Just started seeing them last summer...I was wondering the same thing ?!

 

[Mistwalker]

Since we are on the subject of bees...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPiK_071rmg...yeah I know it's a hornet.

Could be bad news for their honey bee population

[youtube]kJ8W1hWdiyw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

 

[hung-solo]

Mist....I've got those same type of bees in my yard ! Just started seeing them last summer...I was wondering the same thing ?!

those bees are not aggressive. we have them here in central NC as well.

 

[hung-solo]

Could be bad news for their honey bee population

[youtube]kJ8W1hWdiyw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

i seen this before. crazy! its like having 5 B-52's bomb a court square.. nothing but massacre

 

[hung-solo]

The whole "Africanized" thing was blown out of proportion due to media paranoia IMHO. Its really limited mostly to Arizona, NM, and parts of Southern CA, and almost exclusively in remote areas. But we do have "regular" honey-bees, yellow jackets, several species of wasps, huge black death bees(carpenter bees) that chase you, bumblebees etc. We have also started to see spider wasps(wasps that kill and eat spiders) around...I have anyway.

thanks dave

 

[Mistwalker]

The whole "Africanized" thing was blown out of proportion due to media paranoia IMHO. Its really limited mostly to Arizona, NM, and parts of Southern CA, and almost exclusively in remote areas. But we do have "regular" honey-bees, yellow jackets, several species of wasps, huge black death bees(carpenter bees) that chase you, bumblebees etc. We have also started to see spider wasps(wasps that kill and eat spiders) around...I have anyway.

The media always does that crap to increase their ratings. It sucks that things are such that they are more interested in sesationalism and one-upping eachother than they are in actually informing anyone. I don't watch television at home and I can't even watch news at a friends house without hearing Don Henley singing "Dirty Laundry" in my head.

I started researching the Africanized bees when I found the first odd swarm of honey bees here in my own neighborhood a few years ago when all of the honey bees started disappearing from bee farms. The information I had read said that while Africanized bees produced more honey than European bees, they saw the collection of it as an invasion and tended to relocate so that got my curiosity up. I got two feet from the swarm in a neighbor's pear tree and photographed it. They never bothered me, just buzzed a lot louder when I got too close too them so I backed back off to about three or four feet and just observed them. I'm really not sure if they were European Honey Bees or Africanized bees, but probably European. From what I'm reading it's really hard to tell the differrence just looking at them. A friend who raises bees in Australia said looking at the photos they could easily be Africanised bees.

those bees are not aggressive. we have them here in central NC as well.

Definitely non aggressive. I've stood right by their nest and had them all around me for an hour at a time three days in a row just observing them. They never did more than fly by me checking me out. I was really careful not to step on any or any holes and just stood and watched them go about their business. I find bees, wasps, and hornets fascinating. I've never been stung by anything I didn't endanger first.

i seen this before. crazy! its like having 5 B-52's bomb a court square.. nothing but massacre

Yeah, it is crazy. The first time I saw it was right after I hab been watching what turned out to be a cicada killer flying around in my yard. I had to get good pics of the cicada killer so I could blow them up and was hoping it wasn't a Japanese hornet.

 

[Joezilla]

No Japanese bees in the US, they are an anomally when they take over a whole hive like that.

It is a digger bee. Miner bee more or less. I can't tell from the pics but I'm almost 100% sure its in the genus Andrena.
Check out how old that bee in the second picture is. All the fuzz has sloughed off from moving in and out of the tunnel

 

[Mistwalker]

No Japanese bees in the US, they are an anomally when they take over a whole hive like that.

It is a digger bee. Miner bee more or less. I can't tell from the pics but I'm almost 100% sure its in the genus Andrena.
Check out how old that bee in the second picture is. All the fuzz has sloughed off from moving in and out of the tunnel

Thanks for the reply Joe. I was just curious because I don;t recall seeing that nest last year. There is a lot of kudzu, honeysuckle, and blackberry briers right there, and that's the same exact spot I was taking pics of the Giant Resin Bees last year, but that nest wasn't there then.

 

[bigbadboom]

I was in the Bush a couple of times and saw a blue bee with white stripes ...never knew about them before.

 

[Mistwalker]

I was in the Bush a couple of times and saw a blue bee with white stripes ...never knew about them before.

One thing I've noticed since I got into macro photography is that there is an amazing number of types of bees and wasps out there...and flies too.

 

[bigbadboom]

Thats certainly true. These were definitely bees , they looked like a regular bee except for the colouring , and they had pollen stashes on their legs and were going from flower to flower.

I saw them several times over a period of time a couple of years, in the same forest.

I know theres some native blue bees but these looked EXACTLY like a typical european type bee.Only Blue with white stripes instead of black.