Melecta pacifica, f, face, Prince Georges county

Melecta pacifica. A new state record for Maryland...captured right outside my Laboratory's front lawn! A few days ago I was watching and collecting bees out of a lovely clay filled bare patch of soil that refuses to grow any grass and is thus a lovely colony of all sorts of interesting nesting bees, wasps, and ants. At one point I noticed a large bee coursing over the colony and my immediate impression was that this was a Melecta and that I should nab that baby. Fortunately my trusty net was at hand and it zig zagged in just the right way. I had been expecting to find this species at some point as its host (Anthophora abrupta) is around, though not common. Just goes to show you how much more we have to do to document simple bee distribution even. We are 100 years behind what we know about bird distributions ... or more. 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.