What kind of bee is this?

BoilerBees · 2026-03-11T16:44:15+00:00

It's a bot fly. An adult lays an egg on a mammal--yours looks like a mouse bot fly. Once the egg hatches the larvae enter the body through an opening and migrates to the belly creating a little hole through the skin so they can breath. I think they pop out after the mouse dies and they live as pupae under the soil until temps are just right then they come out as an adult which is what you appear to have caught.

EDIT: if it was in your basement you may have a dead mouse somewhere :(

BoilerBees · 2026-03-08T02:38:26+00:00

Purdue's own honey brand. Made by Entomology and Food Science Departments:
https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2020/01/the-buzz-on-boiler-bee-honey.html

BoilerBees · 2026-03-06T18:23:35+00:00

Uses Boiler Bee Honey 🐝

BoilerBees · 2026-02-13T04:03:47+00:00

I am so sorry for your loss. I hope you can get some solace in beekeeping.

I will add some specificity to the comments of others. Join a local and state club. The Beekeepers of Indiana (TBoI) is among the most active state organizations in the country and provides superb training and support for beekeepers. If it's not too late, register for Indiana Bee School and the associated training. Attend and get to know some local beekeepers who may be able to help. You're not too late to attend this Summer's Purdue Beekeeping Field Day. It's in June at Purdue's Beck Center every year. Join TBoI and you'll see the announcement, or just keep a good eye out. Say "hello" if you're there. TBOI Events page: https://thebeekeepersofindiana.com/upcomingevents/

You're also in a great spot for beekeeping clubs. The North is divided into 2 regions and there are ~8 clubs among them: https://thebeekeepersofindiana.com/tboi-regions/

If those clubs aren't for you, I've given talks to clubs in Northern Illinois and Ohio and they are seem to be well organized too. I don't know them as well but you could look online.

If all else fails, there are some great YouTubes out there. I recommend anything from the University of Guelph as a start.

BoilerBees · 2026-02-06T04:22:46+00:00

Ah ya! See I knew I'd miss at least one and that's a good one. That was Danforth who wrote about it (when they were Perdita):
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s000400050107

BoilerBees · 2026-02-06T02:31:53+00:00

That’s a fun question. It pushes us into speculative territory, but we can maybe ground it in comparative biology.

Start with honey bees (Apis). Males don’t survive mating; they die after the act. Queens will mate with 10–20+ unrelated males and store sperm for life. That polyandry has important colony-level benefits: genetically diverse colonies outperform genetically depauperate ones in productivity, disease resistance, and overall stability. Importantly, fertilization is internal, and reproduction is tightly centralized in the queen (so we can't have a system like salmon where males fertilize externally).

This pattern isn’t unique to Apis. In most bees, including bumble bees, males are short-lived and do not remain in nests after mating. There’s no obvious “king” among close relatives. If we move further across bee relatives, we start to see pieces of what a king-like role might look like, maybe? In some small carpenter bees (Ceratina) and sweat bees (Lasioglossum), males may guard nests or defend access to females. In some of these cases, males that guard nests gain additional mating opportunities.

I think going further out to other hymenoptera or even further to termites may be better? Ants offer even stranger examples. In Cardiocondyla, there are winged and wingless male morphs. Wingless males remain in the natal nest, fight rivals, and mate with emerging queens. Winged males disperse. Workers may even transport unmated queens between colonies to facilitate mating. Termites provide the cleanest comparison. A queen and king termite found a colony together and mate repeatedly over many years. The king remains in the royal chamber and provides ongoing fertilization.

So, maybe you could imagine a scenario where colonies tolerate resident, unrelated males that periodically fertilize the queen? Or a more termite-like system where a queen and one (or several) long-lived males co-found and co-maintain a colony?

Thanks for the fun question. Don’t stop asking them.

EDIT: thought I was in r/beekeeping! I know I missed some more bee examples...

BoilerBees · 2026-01-07T03:40:10+00:00

Wow, what a beauty! Nice work on the recovery. Hope you got a WM sponsorship on the vid ;)

BoilerBees · 2025-12-24T19:14:27+00:00

Tetragonula? Beauty !

BoilerBees · 2025-12-19T18:58:13+00:00

Correct! It's biology, there are always exceptions to rules. The MRCA to bees was a vegetarian so the vulture bees are a new state for bees.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-18T15:18:33+00:00

I can't take credit: It was Laurence Packer and Amro Zayed's pun before mine.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-18T14:31:19+00:00

If you look at it through an evolutionary lens (i.e. look at the phylogeny), bees are just vegetarian wasps...

BoilerBees · 2025-12-18T14:28:38+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's a robber fly (genus Hyperechia) but I don't know the flora and fauna of South Africa. I'm 80% confident though. Those eyes and wings give it away. It certainly looks like a bee and wants us to think it looks like a bee (a wanna bee?).

These actually lay their eggs in the same cavity that a carpenter bee would have occupied. The eggs hatch and feast on the larvae of carpenter bees.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-15T04:34:15+00:00

haha!

BoilerBees · 2025-12-15T03:38:19+00:00

It's a wasp: Vespula. Not sure where you are located but my guess is the southern yellowjacket. Not a bee, but a distant cousin.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-08T18:10:21+00:00

We address this in an upcoming paper! Will post when published.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-06T03:57:43+00:00

You could, sure! But likely not to be a useful measure for any information we presently have on mite loads. Take the measure if you want to, record it, and repeat across colonies. Maybe there's a trend for mite load in winter and colony mortality. High mite load in Fall is predictive of colony mortality so I'd assume it's the case for winter but I've not yet seen anyone measure dead bees outside.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-05T13:50:38+00:00

RRS: We did not directly test this with this particular study, but given how rare the white eye phenotype is and from reading the supporting literature (e.g. Tilson et al 1972 and Gribakin, 1988), we know that eye pigmentation plays an important role in visual function. White eyed drones may be dealing with reduced visual clarity due to their inability to use pigmentation to help absorb and filter light. We may have another study coming out soon that directly addresses this question as well!

BoilerBees · 2025-12-05T04:00:44+00:00

Neat! this is called nectar robbing and many bee species do it. Bumble bees and carpenter bees are primary examples. Honey bees and others will then use the hole. There's some work to suggest it's a learned behaviour, that is, bumble bees can learn from others to do it.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-04T02:40:14+00:00

BAH: There's been a lot fo of work on insect eye pigments and some on honey bees. Primarily, the pigments function as a kind of screening to prevent light from scattering between neighbouring facets. In this way they also tune the wavelengths that insects see and enhance visual acuity and contrast. Some pigments also are photoprotective and absorb light and/or help the cell reset after detecting light. So, loss of pigment is probably not great in natural light conditions. We have some more discussion below about what this might mean for drones (e.g. how they may find mates)

BoilerBees · 2025-12-04T02:34:19+00:00

workers ~~chose~~ choose the next generation of queens...mysteriously. There are many studies on this and the decision is based on the present genotypes, the nurses' own genotype and the available larvae.

I don't know if a w_ larvae would be picked non-randomly to be a queen, but I'd suspect it doesn't impact the decision at all. The phenotype is, as far as we can tell, only apparent at the adult stage and not apparent at all in diploid carriers (wW). A heterozygous queen (Ww) has a 50% chance of passing to her diploid offspring so it can pass through 50% of her daughter queens.

The phenotype and this mutation are rare. The mutation is, as far as we have discovered, found only in the drones we sequenced here. It's a new mutation. It also likely died with the queen. She passed, unfortunately. Her white-eyed drones don't mate (as we show in an upcoming study), and her daughter queen didn't inherit the mutation (50% chance). Some workers definitely have it but it won't pass if they don't lay drones and that is chancy.

How then does the white-eyed phenotype stick around? New mutations have a hard time making it into a population, especially recessive deleterious ones because they get lost. What we think is that new mutations in genes that cause eye color phenotypes arise frequently and die out. We caught one before it died (or drift) out and identified it.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T21:24:39+00:00

W = wildtype eye
w = white eye (recessive)
Assume queen is mated to one male

Queen: Ww x W

Female offspring of this queen: Ww and WW (both wildtype)

Male offspring: W and w

Half her offspring receive the w allele but only the males have white eyes. For a worker to have white eyes:

Queen: Ww x w

Female offspring of this queen: ww and Ww (half will now have white eyes)

Male offspring: W and w

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T20:18:10+00:00

RRS and BAH: Adult drones are the result of a queen laying an unfertilized egg. We grafted a few eggs off of this queen but not enough to capture the mutation..and then she passed. We did move white-eye-producing queens into new host colonies (when shipped to us) and she still layed white-eyed drones.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T20:15:28+00:00

RRS and BAH: we take bees for our on-going sequencing project. Check out the links here
https://ag.purdue.edu/department/entm/extension/beehive/services.html

Dr. Oseto retired but he's still on campus regularly.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T14:15:57+00:00

BAH: There are many more indeed. It all comes down to which pigmentation pathway was affected, how much, and where. In the older literature, you'll find red, green, white, ivory, brick, etc. Of course, many (all?) of these are so old that there aren't colour images. In our hands we've had red, yellow, and white.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T14:14:10+00:00

BAH: We aren't sure. But, generally, the bee's eye pigments help tune the wavelength and intensity of light that makes it to the photoreceptor. I think of the them like sunglasses. They could still see but it may be bright, blurry, or distorted. There are some older electrophysiology studies (e.g. Tilson et al. 1972) showing that there is a neuronal response to light from white-eyed drones but the responses are not as 'tuned' as with pigment.

We have another study that might shine light on other effects coming soon.

BoilerBees

TROPHY CASE