Would you believe that the vintage ornithology book which included this bee drawing called this fellow a ctenioschelus latreillii? Would you also believe that I could only find a handful of other vintage sources that even mention this insect? The book, the Young Collector’s Handbook of Ants, Bees, Dragon-flies, Earwigs, Crickets and Flies did not have any information on it either. It took finding another vintage source to even learn a little about this bee.
What we have here is a green bee drawing. Another book, published two years later in 1892, described this as a metallic green bee where the males has very long antennae. The head and sides of the thorax of the bee are grey. They were identified as being from South America.
So, I thought I would have a little fun with this insect image. Since this green bee drawing, with its extremely long antennae, is a bit of a mystery, I thought it would be fun to make him green too. So, this is the first of hopefully many posts with more than one version of the original illustration. They are also nice and big so that you can more easily use them in your own projects.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
