Description
This is the sex that earned the name. A male long-horned bee — genus Melissodes — on Douglas aster at Oaks Bottom, with one antenna swept forward almost the full length of his body.
Here is a detail most people never learn about bees: males carry thirteen segments in each antenna and females carry twelve. That single extra segment is standard equipment across an enormous range of bee species, and in almost all of them it goes completely unnoticed. In the long-horned bees, evolution took that one-segment difference and ran with it until the result was impossible to miss.
They are not decorative. Those antennae are dense with olfactory receptors tuned to the pheromone of a receptive female, and a male who detects her a half-second before his rivals is the male who reproduces. It is the same competitive logic that built a hummingbird’s throat, expressed in a completely different currency.
Look at the flower he is standing on, too. The disc florets underneath him are already turning brown. Douglas aster is one of the last significant blooms of the Willamette Valley year, and this photograph was made near the end of it.
What you will receive: a high-resolution JPEG, 4096 x 2368 pixels — sharp enough to print at full photo quality up to about 13 × 8 inches at 300 DPI, and considerably larger for wall display. Delivered as an instant download the moment your order is complete.
License: Personal use only. Print it for your own home, use it as a wallpaper or screen background, enjoy it yourself. Not licensed for commercial use, resale, redistribution, or AI training. © Jonathan Swanson / JonSwan Productions. All rights reserved.