Images

Frederick County Maryland, Collected by Richard Orr

Euglossa....the orchid bees, swanky glintlings of the New World tropical forests. The males gather fragrances produced by orchids who are then pollinated by the infatuations of these males.

Taxonomy and Discovery. One would expect based on what we know about things like plants and birds, that we would largely have figured out what species of bees exist in the Eastern United States...Not so, still much to do for the students of bees.

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We have already added the male of this species. As the name implies this species is rufous in its hairs. Check the hairs filled with pollen underneath the abdomen. Collected by Jelle Devalez in the Aegean Islands of Greece. Photography by Brooke Alexander.

Osmia rufohirta - An Osmia from the Grecian Isles that nests in snail shells. Not this specimen as it is a male and does essentially nothing but mate. Lots of reddish hairs on this species as the name implies. Specimen collected by Jelle Devalez.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Another sand loving bee from Cumberland Island, Georgia. Distributed throughout the Southeast. Thistle Droege is the photoshopper and Kamren Jefferson the photographer.

Acadia National Park brings you a common northern Osmia (Osmia simillima)....large and with oddly shortened and modified front legs, which must be important for something. Picture by Sierra Williams, shopping by Elizabeth Garcia.

A somewhat big and somewhat northern Osmia. One of the frustrating things about bees is that entire groups look about the same, such is Osmia.

Terrible specimen, but the only specimen on hand for Osmia subarctica. A male with distinctive upturned gonostyli on its genitalia....as we all kinow..!

A thistle hugging giant of an Osmia..., who can't but love thistles and the several bee species that depend on them. Here is a specialist that depends on pollen from our native thistle plants to provision the cells of its young. Too often our native thistles also are taken out when people spray for introduced bull and Canada Thistles.

A thistle hugging giant of an Osmia..., who can't but love thistles and the several bee species that depend on them. Here is a specialist that depends on pollen from our native thistle plants to provision the cells of its young. Too often our native thistles also are taken out when people spray for introduced bull and Canada Thistles.

Perhaps one of the most colorful Osmia, Osmia versicolor, collected by Jelle Devalez on the Aegean Islands of Greece. Yet another snail shell nester. What would these species do if there were no snail shells and no snails to make them? Photography by Maggie Yuan.

Pompilid Spider Wasp, Central Highlands High Elevation Domincan RepublicPepsis ruficornis. Someone has suggested that this one be called the Woolly Mammoth Spider Wasp

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, Perdita albihirta

Petrified Forest National Monument, AZ

Perdita asteris, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

Fort Matanzas National Monument, Florida - only about 6mm in length, notice characteristic sharp bend in mandibles. Doug Inkley from National Wildlife Federation has given this one the common name Mr Miyagi.