Subject: Colorado bee eater
Location: Front range colorado
August 7, 2015 6:17 pm
Hi. We were loving this flowering bush and so were the honeybees. Unfortunately tonight we noticed lots of dead bees and lots of these insects- can’t find them online anywhere! They blend right in- look like dried up flowers.
Signature: Bonnie
Ambush Bug eats Honeybee
Dear Bonnie,
When we first saw your subject line, we thought you were submitting images of one of the large, predatory Robber Flies in the genus Mallophora, possibly the Belzebul Bee Eater. Your Food Chain image is just as exciting. This is an Ambush Bug in the genus Phymata, probably a Jagged Ambush Bug.
Thank you, Daniel. Very cool! Feel bad for the bees though 😉
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Location: Front Range, Colorado
Life’s a bi$ch in the real world, poor pollinators
I’m happy to find this page online! I’m also in the Colorado front range area and was badly stung by a nasty ambush assassin in summer 2014. My finger swelled to the maximum skin-stretch limit, more painful than any hornet’s sting, by 24 hours the skin was actually breaking. It took nearly 6 weeks for the black, coiled stiff threadlike stinger to be exposed at least 3/8″ into my finger, and dead tissue around it sloughed off. I got ID from anyone until an ex-spouse at a NM Lab did some research. Annually I see tons of the bugs anywhere there’s a blossom, killing bees by the millions to rob their pollen. I smash as many as I can but they’re constant “schtoinkers” so I’ll never wipe them out!