Follow the clues

The flowering of the Cassinia has finished. My next go to plant for insect photography is Sweet Bursaria (Bursaria spinosa). Its flowers also attract a whirlwind of insects although of a different kind. There are no Jewel Beetles but Ladybirds abound.

The sighting of a motionless Western Honeybee (Apis mellifera), pictured left can only mean one of two things. Either it is tired and is having a sleep (unlikely) or it is dead having been ambush by a predator. If it is the latter the finger is firmly pointed at a Spectacular Crab Spider (Thomisus spectabilis) as being the perp.

The Spectacular Crab Spider is a noted ambush hunter of bees. It hides amongst flowers until a bee approaches and then pounces and kills it. And it does not just hunt in white flowers. This spider can over time change its colour to yellow to hunt in yellow flowers as well. More than that, as most insect have vision stretching into the ultraviolet the spider can match its UV reflectance with that of the surrounding flowers.

A search of the flowers around the dead bee revealed no lurking spider. But after another 30 minutes of searching the accused was located on another flower bract (pictured above).

I can barely see it. It is lucky I am not a bee.