HEY WANNA SEE A COUPLE FUCKED UP MUTANT BEES?
so i've mentioned in the past that while i don't go out of my way to catch bees, they often end up in the pest monitoring trap samples that i process for work. since i hate seeing cute animals go to waste i've made a project out of pinning and identifying them whenever possible. one of the more common bees that i see around this time of years are the tiny & shiny genus Ceratina:
(not my photos, but the rest in this post are mine)
(fun fact they're actually most closely related to the giant carpenter bees you're probably more familiar with)
okay so for reference here's a couple examples of standard male Ceratina faces:
kinda silly looking! but now check out this freak i found this week:
note that not only are the eyes nearly wrapping around the face but the ocelli are totally missing and the antennal insertions have merged into a weird giant pit in the middle of his face. sadly he's a little beat up and one of the antennae was broken off along with some leg parts.
but okay if you think that's weird, check out this NEXT guy:
what the fuck! that smaller antenna isn't broken off like the previous guy it's just... like that. i have absolutely no explanation for either of these oddities.
honestly Ceratina are so common that i'd almost gotten to the point of not bothering to keep them when they show up in my traps but i'm really glad i took a closer look and spotted these freaks. have not attempted to ID either to species yet.
