Showing posts with label What is the difference between a bee and a wasp anyway?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label What is the difference between a bee and a wasp anyway?. Show all posts

Friday, October 22, 2010

Bees: A link or two

I'm still working on the whole bee vs. wasp thing. The couple of articles I've read so far say pretty much what I thought: Bees are stubby, wasps are not. This, of course, doesn't account for the sweat bee. So I'm looking.

In the meantime, here's a neat page on Types of Bees, found via bugguide's link section, which I'm still learning to navigate, and here's a nice, two-minute YouTube from the Green Nature site introducing bee types visually:

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Green Bees?

On a recent visit to Bolsa Chica, I spotted these tiny, metallic green wasps (I thought). They were fascinating, flashing in the sun, and I watched them for a while before taking a photograph which I, of course, posted on bugguide. It turns out that they are bees! There is such a thing as a metallic green bee.

Who knew?

Of course, now I want to know what the difference is between bees and wasps. If you'd asked me before, I'd probably have said that bees are chunky, fuzzy creatures and wasps are sleek, non-fuzzy creatures. But that, clearly, is not the difference.  And, since some bees are solitary and some wasps are social, their lifestyle doesn't help much either. Anyone got any ideas? Information? Links?