In my area, a fairly common Bumble Bee is the Half Black Bombus vagans. I run into it quite a bit and have uploaded several. Nobody wants to ID them for this area though, because I am fairly close to the edge of the range for the very similar perplexus and sandersoni. I was thinking about catchin…

Hi @neylon . On the first question about getting the bee to stay still. Obviously, killing a voucher specimen is the easiest way (so long as it is not under any legal protections). Even with more scare species this is unlikely to have any noticeable impact. The benefit of this is it allows you to sp…

Thanks, the plate is good idea, I might bring a cooler in the field with the plate if I decide to go ahead with this.

I went to a bumblebee workshop activity thing last summer where we were given small plastic containers, pill bottle size, and caught the bees with butterfly nets and put them in those. They still buzz around within the bottles but they can’t fly away and occasionally stop moving.

If you put a bumble bee in the tube and have a cylinder of sponge that fits the tube fairly tightly, you can hold the bee still with the foam without hurting it. That will give you a chance to photograph its head through the tube. Not so much help if you want to photograph its back.

To get back shots a home-made spi-pot would work For those who don’t know, spi-pots are used for photographing spiders genitalia. Get two clear plastic drinks cups, the kind that fit snuggly at the bottom when slotted one inside the other. Cut a large circular hole (but not all the way to the edg…

When I’m doing surveys, I bring a cooler with ice. Catch the bee in a vial, and put it in the cooler. Vagans are small, so they chill quickly. The cold really slows them down. That usually gives me plenty of time to take photos. If they get too active, you can always return them to the cooler for a …

How long do you typically cool off a vagans? And when differentiating between vagans/sandersoni/perplexus, are face shots of the oculo-malar area sufficient for ID, or are more needed? Nice pictures, by the way.

I’m not exactly sure. Probably less than ten minutes. I just set them on top of the ice, not down in it. Something I forgot to mention - when you’re finished, set them in a shaded area, not in direct sun. Sometimes they warm up and fly off pretty quickly, sometimes they walk around for a while first…

Thanks, I’ve taken several pictures of chilled bees, hopefully that will help.

In addition to chilling, carbon dioxide will immobilize most insects. For chilling, keep a solid plate in the freezer so the chilled insect can be placed on it. Carbon dioxide is the gas in sodas, or can be produced by mixing baking powder and water. A bottle with the source, sealed but with a t…

Photographing Bumble Bees

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Photographing Bumble Bees

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