Andrena barbara, f, back ,Prince Georges Co., MD

Regionally common to sometimes even abundant, this is one of the larger Andrena of the spring. It can occur in almost any habitat, gathering pollen from a wide variety of the hugely abundant pollen and nectar sources that occur in Woodlands and surrounding scrub lands. While it doesn't show that well in these pictures, there is often just a slight glint of violet metallic sheen to its abdominal segments. In the picture of the face of this species, you can see quite well the slight indentations that make up the facial fovea, why these features are important enough to occur in almost every Andrena species is unknown and why they are aligned with small tiny hairs is also unknown. Something for future researchers to investigate. (As if there wasn't enough). Photograph by Greta Forbes. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200 USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.