The weather was hot and dry in the last days of July 2015 ...
... when the photographs you'll see in this post were taken. In this opening shot. you are looking at a small moth on the Eryngium campestre plant.
This is the Sphecodes monilicornis ...
... a small bee from the Halictidae family. Females of this species invade the nests of various solitary bees that share the same habitat. They destroy the resident eggs or grubs and replace them with their own eggs.
Nomada fucata, a bee that, at first sight, looks like a wasp is another species that parasitizes the nests of other bees.
Eryngium campestre flowers attract a wide variety of pollinators in summer. This is the Physocephala rufipes, a fly from the Conopidae family.
Here you can see a relatively big wasp. Probably from the genus Ammophila.
This is a shiny cuckoo wasp. I don't know the exact species, but the family is definitely Chrysididae.
These small wasps that for their reproduction parasitize on various bees and wasp species look like little jewels that can come in many colors.
This is a much bigger wasp. Scolia hirta is the name of the species. As adults, they feed on nectar, but the larvae need some meat for their development. The females fill their nests in the ground with paralyzed larvae of the beetles from the Scarabaeidae family, especially the Green rose chafer (Cetonia aurata).
The colorful Longhorn beetle in this photograph is the Chlorophorus varius. It looks like a wasp from a distance. On that same flower, near the Longhorn beetle, you can see a small black beetle from the Mordellidae family.
This is the Xylocopa violacea, a big carpenter bee.
This bee is similarly colored but is considerably smaller.
I don't know the exact species.
Here you can see yet another Sphecodes monilicornis.
These bees are very numerous on the sunny meadows near the sea ...
... so they ended up on quite a few photographs.
Here, the Sphecodes monilicornis bee is blurred in the foreground, while the smaller Yellow-faced bee is flying towards the flower.
Here you can see some threads made by a spider or a caterpillar and made very visible by the layer of dust that covers them.
At one point, while I was walking along the dusty road that leads to the sea ...
... a minuscule lady beetle landed on my arm. This is the Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata lady beetle.
These are the fruits of the honeysuckle plant (Lonicera periclymenum) that grows among the shrubs along the road.
This Pyronia tithonus butterfly ...
... is resting on the blackberry shrub.
When I reached the sea, the tide was low, so I photographed these algae on the rocks in the intertidal zone.
On the way back to the car I came across a group of Mentha Suaveolens plants. On their aromatic flowers, I photographed this bee-killer wasp, the Philanthus triangulum. The adults feed on nectar, but the larvae develop on paralyzed bees provided by the female. The species is commonly known as the European beewolf.
This elegant small wasp was also photographed there. I don't know which species is this.
Here you can see some hairy wasp species. Or a bee. Sometimes is hard to tell.
A bit further on the wild carrot plant (Daucus carota) ...
... I photographed these Graphosoma italicum bugs.
Not far from the car I found two Saddle-backed bush crickets. One was green ...
... the other one was black and yellow with an intensely red head.
As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.
