Andrena Bees
In 2020 I found an Andrena aggregation on mixed use land associated with the housing development I live in. We get to recreate there and the field is cropped annually for hay. For the first two years I have been observing the bees I thought they were some sort of bumble bee. During their spring swarm my wife and I saw what we take as spawning behavior. Small groups of bees would wad up in a little ball and wrestle around. Within 15 to 30 seconds they would break it up and go their separate ways no harm done. I was telling a friend about it and he reminded me that Bumble Bees do not have or tolerate that many queens in such a small area.
I took an incredible number of pictures trying to capture the details needed to identify the bees. Things were still very cool on April 14th in Centralia Wa. and the bees were climbing the grass to get better access to the sun when it finally came out from behind the clouds so they could warm up enough to fly. I was really confused by the way they climbed and crawled around on the grass at the time. Lots of pictures of that in the first observation I posted here. The genetic diversity of the bees I was looking at also confused me. I was just sure more than one species of bee was nesting there. I'm still having trouble convincing my self that these communities are segregated by species. The research literature about nest take overs says nothing that would support any enforcement that way either.
I sent pictures to the State Entomologist, an Entomologist specializing in Western species of Andrena, and every one else I could find. I finally got a reply from a USGS Entomologist who is studying east coast species who gave me the bad news. You have to send in dead bees to get an ID and he didn't know the west coast bees. He referred me here.
I've started making friends with wenatcheeb who has suggested I start a blog to talk about what I'm seeing. Still not sure how that will work. Some of my data collection is video and there is no provision for that here. Just still pictures and audio. It really doesn't quite make it.