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Photo#465443
Something.. - Physocephala - male

Something.. - Physocephala - Male
Perry County, Pennsylvania, USA
October 16, 2010
This was found in my container of dead bumble bee specimens. The container contains old specimens, and a few fairly recent ones including the deceased queen from the colony I raised over the summer (who died prematurely, may I add)

Whatever it is, it's far too big to have squeezed into the container and died. I think it came out of one of the dead bees.
Size estimate is around 1 cm. I can't find a ruler so I can't be more accurate.

Enlarge the photo to view more detail. It appears to have a proboscis and some sort of sensory appendage. Wings are evident but appear malformed

Images of this individual: tag all
Something.. - Physocephala - male Something.. - Physocephala

This one poses an intriguing ID puzzle
Going by gestalt...the first candidate species that came to my mind were P. marginatus or P. sagittaria, which are both in range. The overall color, relatively good-sized humeral dashes, and the red & white apical bands at the apex of the 1st abdominal segment seemed to support those two choices.

However, those both typically have scutellum red as well as a large yellow area at the center of their otherwise brown cheeks. Neither of those characters fits this specimen very well...just perhaps in the vaguest degree. And if it were one of those two species, the most dependable character for separating them would be the hyaline vs. darkened state of the discal cell of the wing...which seems nearly hopeless to verify here.

Actually, the relatively uniform color of the cheek, and all that golden dust on the distal part of the abdomen reminds me of P. texana. That species is said to range far to the east coast, though I have a hard time wrapping my head around that idea. The easternmost BugGuide post for it is from Illinois.

But P. texana has pale facial grooves, and this specimen appears to have dark facial grooves, which also rules out P. furcillata. (P. furcillata also has uniformly black cheeks and a very short 1st antennal segment...both absent here.)

The only remaining alternative, given the Pennsylvania locale, is P. tibialis. But the large humeral spots and comparatively pale cheek would seem to rule that out as well...unless those characters might have potentially developed here in the event that this (apparently teneral) specimen had had the opportunity to "cure" in its normal setting.

Wow...what a mess!! :-) The upshot is that this is likely P. marginata or P. sagittaria, but too hard to place beyond that.

Moved
Moved from Flies. Aculeate Hymenoptera are the only known hosts of conopines. The wings are malformed because it is teneral. It must have just pupated from inside one of your bees. These are important images because they show us more about the life history of conopids.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Conopid, maybe?


Their larvae are internal parasites of bumblebees (among other hosts).

Let's see what the experts have to say.

 
Thanks, Ken
After reading about them on the info page, it doesn't sound like it could have been inside my queen, since it says they are usually parasitized while outside the nest. My queen was captive since April and never left the nest

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