Little and Large

This tiny bee is the Little blue carpenter bee Ceratina Cyanea feeding on a lavender flower in our garden. This was a new species to me and I had to get some expert help from an online entomology group to identify it, as you can see it is only a few mm long. Although the lavender was alive with them they are in fact solitary bees, they get their common name from their nesting habits, building their nest inside dead stems, preferably brambles and umbellifers (Hogweeds etc), The female burrows along the inside of the stem forming a tube, then works her way back out laying eggs in sealed cells as she goes. These eggs will hatch and the hatchings will stay in the stem over winter emerging in the spring as bees to mate and continue the cycle.

Xylocopa violacea, Violet Carpenter bee

The second bee is the Violet carpenter bee Xylocopa violacea In contrast to Ceratina these are large bees, in fact the largest European species although both are related as members of the family Xylocopinae Xylo = wood Copo = Cut. Xylocopa is one of the commonest bees in our garden in early summer (and one of the loudest). They get their common name from their ablity to bore galleried nests into old wood creating cells from the chewed wood. Unfortunatly they cannot distinguish between dead trees and old timbers on houses and quite often get blamed for damage ( although far more is caused by wasps and hornets). The one in the photograph is quite an old individual as you can see from the damage to the wings and the marks on the back of the scutum ( the plate on the back of the Thorax). When they mate as part of the ritual they approach each other and touch together the orange bands on their antenae, then vibrate their bodies vigorously ( and loudly) before mating.

In terms of Ecology and Biodiversity both these species demonstrate the importance of not always cutting back dead plants and old wood in a garden as the material you remove and destroy may well be full of overwintering insect lavae.

The Ceratina was photographed hand held with a sigma 105mm + 1.4 converter I set the shutter and aperture manually and the ISO to auto iso 220 f10 1/640. The Xylocopa was captured with the 105mm but the camera was setup on a tripod, these bees tend to settle on a flower and spend some time on it allowing you to position a camera. I still used the technique with the auto ISO as I needed to freeze the insect ( they are constanly moving or vibrating) and get a large depth of field. ISO 2000, f18, 1/400sec d. Neither species are in the slighest bit aggressive so getting in close is not a problem