Great Frustration

A great frustration for Crumby is identifying loose bees to the lowest possible taxa from photos. So when Crumby finds a dead bee, yippee! This particular bee is dead or paralyzed. Crumby found her on a Maximilian sunflower blossom. She was inert, stricken down perhaps by spider poison or perhaps a heart attack. The only other vermin present on the blossom was a Oncerometopus nigriclavus. Hmm. Perhaps this bee is a victim of gas warfare.

Whatever got her, Crumby has her now. If she revives, Crumby shall set her free. But until that time, Crumby is fixing to take pictures of this bee through the microscope.

Well now. Crumby is in possession of a good many line drawings. A common characteristic of those line drawings is that they depict the wing venation of a bee tribe, genera, subgroup or whatnot. From comparing this bee to those line drawings, Crumby was able to figure out that none of the line drawings corresponded to his bee.

Great! For a while Crumby expressed his frustration by cursing in Pig Latin. For example, sucker in Pig Latin is, as everyone knows, uckersa. God is odga. Now you know God’s secret name. Odga! That’s pronounced with a long a.

OK. All this cussing is getting me nowhere. Hold it. Besides just two submarginal cells, this bee features a curved basal vein. Maybe it’s one of those odd Halictids with just the two submarginal cells.

Hark! All that spelled , Crumby now feels like this bee is a Dufourea, a genus not represented on the Brackenridge bee list. Goodness!