Images

Antidium porterae....we recently uploaded somem pictures of the male and here, now, is the female. Collected in Hildalgo County, NM by an A. Melin. Note on the side shot the belly full of pollen attached to the pollen collecting hairs located there.

Anthidiums...in this case A. porterae....pretty spiffy very toothy (in the female) thick, direct flying marked in patterns of yellow over black. What is not to like. This one was collected in the boot heel of New Mexico by C.C. Nicholson. Pictures by Miss Elizabeth Garcia.

Anthidiums...in this case A. porterae....pretty spiffy very toothy (in the female) thick, direct flying marked in patterns of yellow over black. What is not to like. This one was collected in the boot heel of New Mexico by C.C. Nicholson. Pictures by Miss Elizabeth Garcia.

Antidium porterae....we recently uploaded somem pictures of the male and here, now, is the female. Collected in Hildalgo County, NM by an A. Melin. Note on the side shot the belly full of pollen attached to the pollen collecting hairs located there.

Just a quick upload of an Anthidium utahense. There should be a couple more pictures coming. This from Claire Kremen's work in California. Photo by Erick Hernandez.

This bee was collected as part of a survey of Rocky Mountain National Park. The size of a bumblebee, but has all those cream colored markings on its face that Bumblebees never have. A male in this case.

Third in the series, you can see the characters in the forewing that make this an Anthophora....the lack of hair in the interior of the wing cells and the regularly spaced little pappilate mounds with a hair sticking out of them outside of those cells.

Male, Anthophora plumipes, introduced into Maryland from Japan in the 1980s...and now common in the DC region. Likely to be split from A. plumipes back to an earlier synonym A. pilipes due to recent molecular work

Anthophora porterae from the Badlands of South Dakota. This group of bees are the furry teddy bears of the bee world. Collected as part of a large study of the bees of the national park of the same name.

One of the common Anthophora species found in early spring in the olive groves of Greece. They're visiting many spring flowers that provide a lot of nectar and pollen, like Muscari and Asphodelus. This particular specimen was collected by Jelle Devalez who hunts bees in the Aegean islands..

Messy. This Anthophora is just not very common around the MidAtlantic and I can't quite figure out any particular patterns to where it is ...and where it is not. It is also distributionally interesting since it is found on both coasts, but not in the prairies. Very suspicious. There needs to be an investigation. Are these different species?

Here is Anthophora ursina...a male. It has populations in the West and the East but none in the middle of the continent. Which makes one wonder if there are two or one species involved. In the past at least they have been considered different Subspecies. This is not a common bee. I a have seen relatively few individuals, and those from West Virginia.

Black Chokeberry. Yummy bee plant and yummy (though slightly bitter) berry full of antioxidants. Sadly this seems to be a target of deer munching, but its available for planting in your yard and guaranteed to be a good plant in the spring and supply some breakfast berries for your cereal.

Asarum canadense - Wild Ginger. The deep purple/maroon on this bulky little flower tells you that it aims to attract beetles and flies rather than bees. Check out the fine textures to the flower body. To what evolutionary end to the small projects and long white hairs make? Picture and specimen by Helen Lowe Metzman.

Another small Ashmeadiella species (A. aridula) again from Claire Kremen's studies. This one's distributions fills the western states but does not leak into Canada and Mexico. I am sure there are stories to tell here, but I basically know that they are small and nest in holes in wood...often using rosin. Photos by Erick Hernandez.

Here is a bee from the Central Valley of California,part of Claire Kremen's 10 years study of hedgerows as bee repositories in industrial ag lands. Pollen-wise it leans towards composites, and, this is also a bee that can be found all the way to the East Coast... Georgia and North Carolina even. Small so likely often overlooked.

From Santa Rosa Island , one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California and part of the Channel Islands National Park come this tiny Ashmeadiella.

Laphria posticata. A lot going on here, at least for me, first there is a wonderful aesthetic contrast between the mounds of black clay and the robber fly; the crispness of the angled wings and the just imperfectness of the bilateral symmetry combined with the mirroring of the yellow hairs on the thorax in opposition to those of the abdomen.

Here is the Crystal Skipper, (Atrytonopsis quinteri) sent to me by Heather Cayton, from the Outer Banks of North Carolina where its entire range is but 2 barrier islands (one highly developed) where its caterpillars mildly munch on seaside little bluestem.

A widespread western hemisphere group, this is one of many bright green Augochlora species (others can range in the black to purple/blue spectrums), this one is special because it occurs only on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, where it was collected by Sara Prado in agricultural fields...a local pollinator.

One of THE most common bees in Eastern North America and one of the most woodland oriented. This species nests in rotting wood and I have found them overwintering underneath the loose bark of logs on the ground.