Slender Waisted. Xylocopa latipes, Giant Black Carpenter Bee, straddling the Staminal Crown of Calotropis gigantea, Crown Flower, Tanjung Mangsit, Senggigi, Lombok, Indonesia
A low buzz and a high flight and there she was again: Xylocopa latipes, Giant Carpenter Bee. I’d tried for a while to get a good photo, but she’s as shy as she is gentle. Black and huge for an insect especially for bees, her body can measure up to about 3.5 cm (= almost 1.4 inches). First a while back I’d noticed her nest high up in the hollow of a Pandan Tree (whose leaves can be used to wrap chicken for the frying pan: delicious!). I wasn’t all that surprised to see her here because Xylocopa (‘Woodcutter”) has a preference for purple or lilac flowers. There’s an abundance on Cape Mangsit of Milkweed Crown Flower, Calotropis gigantea.
This morning was ‘fortuitously’ a bit cloudy, and it’s in that slightly occluded light that this black is best photographed with my relatively simple cameras.
So shedding my white t-shirt – which experience teaches puts them off – I and my camera did our best after the necessary perambulations. I think the black came out quite nicely, and I chose to post this particular lateral view, almost artistic...
Xylocopa is shown here in a view not often seen in internet photos. You can clearly distinguish thorax and abdomen and also her slender petiole. The wing-engine, so to speak, is located in the thorax. So that part of Our Insect is particularly important for it keeps her airborne. Like all engines the thorax has to be kept at the right temperature, and that’s precisely one of the functions of the abdomen. That slim petiole threads several important organs; one of these – beside the ventral nerve cord, the tracheal tubes, and the esophageal tube – is the ‘aorta’. Through it, thorax blood temperature is regulated by blood supplies in the abdomen. In cold climates warm ichor is sent thoraxway; in this hot, sunny climate, cool hemolymph from the abdomen is ‘pumped’ to the thorax to cool her engine. Ah! The marvels of Nature.
Meanwhile I was hot myself, and without a petiole I retraced my climb now down the rocks again to the cool pools of Salt Water that the High Tide was replenishing.
Slender Waisted. Xylocopa latipes, Giant Black Carpenter Bee, straddling the Staminal Crown of Calotropis gigantea, Crown Flower, Tanjung Mangsit, Senggigi, Lombok, Indonesia
A low buzz and a high flight and there she was again: Xylocopa latipes, Giant Carpenter Bee. I’d tried for a while to get a good photo, but she’s as shy as she is gentle. Black and huge for an insect especially for bees, her body can measure up to about 3.5 cm (= almost 1.4 inches). First a while back I’d noticed her nest high up in the hollow of a Pandan Tree (whose leaves can be used to wrap chicken for the frying pan: delicious!). I wasn’t all that surprised to see her here because Xylocopa (‘Woodcutter”) has a preference for purple or lilac flowers. There’s an abundance on Cape Mangsit of Milkweed Crown Flower, Calotropis gigantea.
This morning was ‘fortuitously’ a bit cloudy, and it’s in that slightly occluded light that this black is best photographed with my relatively simple cameras.
So shedding my white t-shirt – which experience teaches puts them off – I and my camera did our best after the necessary perambulations. I think the black came out quite nicely, and I chose to post this particular lateral view, almost artistic...
Xylocopa is shown here in a view not often seen in internet photos. You can clearly distinguish thorax and abdomen and also her slender petiole. The wing-engine, so to speak, is located in the thorax. So that part of Our Insect is particularly important for it keeps her airborne. Like all engines the thorax has to be kept at the right temperature, and that’s precisely one of the functions of the abdomen. That slim petiole threads several important organs; one of these – beside the ventral nerve cord, the tracheal tubes, and the esophageal tube – is the ‘aorta’. Through it, thorax blood temperature is regulated by blood supplies in the abdomen. In cold climates warm ichor is sent thoraxway; in this hot, sunny climate, cool hemolymph from the abdomen is ‘pumped’ to the thorax to cool her engine. Ah! The marvels of Nature.
Meanwhile I was hot myself, and without a petiole I retraced my climb now down the rocks again to the cool pools of Salt Water that the High Tide was replenishing.