Colletes ciliatus, f, left, jugbay,MD

Super cool, Super rare, Super fun. Who would say such a thing about a little brown bee? In this case it is Colletes ciliatus. Here is a bee that was featured in a paper we wrote several years ago as one of the "missing bees" not seen for many years. It has only a few records; all from the MidWest with one specimen from Alexandria (the town across from Washington D.C.) . Then Tim McMahon found one on Dodder at the edge of the marsh in Jug Bay on the Patuxent River in October in Maryland. A little poking and we found another record on Dodder from the MidWest. So, it may be possible that we need to collect more on Dodder which has small blooms and is difficult to collect off of. Afterwards Don Harvey collected a male also on Dodder from the same area. A nice advance of the natural history and perhaps conservation of this rare species. Pictures by Jade Louis...her first for the lab. 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.