Osmia texana, f, face, Blandy, VA

Pink Pollen Bee. Meet another lover of thistles. The large and late season Osmia texana. The pink pollen is the pink pollen of thistles (I think one of the non-native ones so maybe other thistles don't have pink pollen?). This bee is part of an experiment run by Dawson Little at Blandy Experiment Station in Virginia (UVA) an undergraduate working with T'ai Roulston and Kate LeCroy. You can't see it well, but this bee is adorned with knobby armatures on the tip of the clypeus and often its massive mandibles, not clear why. Odd to see all the pollen packed into the front legs...also unclear what is going on here. The things you can do if you have six legs. 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.