I really enjoy observing my local bees and wasps. I don’t currently know enough about them to be confident IDing anything outside of a handful of very obvious species, but I’d really like to learn more - the problem is that I don’t know enough to know what kinds of resources I ought to look for. …

Are you interested in all of hymenoptera or specific families? There is an introductory textbook or two that cover all hymenoptera, including some material you might be able to find online (e.g. Goulet and Huber, World key to families). However, these can be rather intimidating and I have found tha…

Oh wow, this rabbit hole is starting to look pretty deep. I’m taking a look through Biodiversity & Classification of Wasps now and I’m kind of intimidated! But thank you so much for all the ideas of places to look, and for those broad rules of thumb too. To be honest I don’t know enough about the f…

Thank you! Those pages on bee anatomy are going to be very helpful to have on hand when figuring out how to use some of the keys I’ve found, I think.

This resource is a little deeper dive for Eastern Canada Bees: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237841490_The_Bee_Genera_of_Eastern_Canada also The biology and external morphology of bees ; with a synopsis of the genera of northwestern America 1969 (pdf from OSU available here) technical…

That first one is an interesting read. I don’t think I’ve managed to photograph wing venation closely enough to make the best use of the key in it, but informative nevertheless. There’s so much new terminology to get used to when you’re used to vertebrates, so that reference is very welcome too. Th…

[image] egad13: I don’t think I’ve managed to photograph wing venation closely enough to make the best use of the key in it Unfortunately wing venation is pretty much the foundation of bee identification. It won’t get you to species, but it will get you to genus most of the time (for a few gr…

I might be out of luck for the smaller bees/wasps in my area, then, if only because my camera might not be up to the task of capturing that much detail. I do have a DSLR and macro lens, but older and entry level, and there’s only so much they can do for the really tiny sweat bees or really fast spid…

Even with lots of skill taking macro photos and a reasonably cooperative subject, it is often going to be very challenging to get field photos of small hymenopterans that are identifiable to species. Some genera are quite challenging even for experienced specialists looking at specimens under a micr…

I feel like I can generally tell ants, bees, vespids, and ichneumonoids by gestalt and other groups are uncommon enough that I don’t mind not knowing them. Having more confidence on those groups and others as well as knowing some useful patterns within those groups would be nice though. Just in a q…

The Hymenoptera of the World is a good resource to have. It was a resource book for the Wasp ID Course. All 680 pages can be downloaded with no paywall or membership wall from the The Entomological Society of Canada/La Société d’entomologie du Canada (ESC/SEC) here: https://esc-sec.ca/wp/wp-content/…

Beginner Resources for IDing Hymenoptera?

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Beginner Resources for IDing Hymenoptera?

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