from Charlie Kroeger [[log in to unmask]] via sci.ag.bee...
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>I am looking for information on Bombus vosnesenskii.

> Can anyone help?

Well, not much help; but, it is a bumblebee of North America whose range
is from British Columbia south to California, Nevada, and Mexico,
including Baja California.

The extreme color variations of bumblebee species are apparent if you
see color plates of the 60 odd species within North and Central America.
B. (Bombus) vosnesenskii looks superficially identical to B.
californicus, and B. vandykei.  If I had a fancy scanner I could include
a .jpg file of the bee in question, but I don't.

To pass along a quote from my source of bumblebee knowledge, "Bumblebee
Economics, by Bernd Heinrich, (ISBN 0-674-08581-7 paperback) Mr.
Heinrich points out this important fact:

"Bees EVOLVED from their wasplike ancestors some 100 million years ago,
while Homo has been on the scene for scarcely 2 million years. Yet, we
consider these creatures to be below us on the evolutionary scale.  If
we reflect, however, that our evolutionary history (yes virginia, as
apes and humans) is exceedingly brief in comparison with theirs (as
bees), and that they have evolved very far along entirely different
lines, then we can see that from the insect's perspective, we may well
be lower.

As I hate to miss an opportunity to editorialize along with a few
scientific facts, I would just say that from our global behavior
patterns as a species, we are obviously some kind of parasitic form of
life that eventually kills it's host, rare among parasites, but true
nonetheless; not a very high form of life at all.

Charles Kroeger

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