Hymenoptera Image Gallery

Section Hymenoptera

Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum). Photo: Stefan Schmidt. Det. C. Schmid-Egger.

The Hymenoptera image gallery (snsb-zsm.pictures) shows reliably identified photos of insects from the order Hymenoptera, i.e. bees, wasps, parasitoids, ants, sawflies, etc. The website serves as a reference for the identification of Hymenoptera. The site therefore offers the opportunity to verify your own identifications and to get an overview of the exciting world Hymenoptera. The geographic scope of the website is global and is intended for photos of species covering all families of Hymenoptera.

One of the main goals of the website is to improve the identification quality of Hymenoptera on photos, to increase the value of the the often beautiful and interesting digital photos of Hymenoptera that are produced all over the world, and to allow the images to be used for scientific research. In this way, every experienced natural history photographer can contribute to the scientific usability of her or his photos. It is also to be hoped that our website spurs the interest in the exciting and diverse world of bees, wasps and ants, and all other Hymenoptera.

In the future, the website will include three categories of photos. The starting point and central component of the website are photos of living insects. However, since many species are difficult to photograph alive, we want to gradually present an extensive reference picture library of museum specimens. Since these specimens were reliably identified by specialists, they are particularly suitable as a scientific reference photo library. As a third component, high-resolution photos of whole insect drawers will be presented, based on material from the Zoologische Staatssammlung München, a natural history collection and one of the world’s largest depositories of Hymenoptera.