Working

I show a lot of insect foraging (and incidental pollination) here, but there are other tasks at hand. Scavenging ants.

Bumble at entrance to nest.

Sumac leaflets cut to line nests of leaf-cutter bees.

Too fast for me and my camera, but a leaf-cutter bee carrying a circle of leaf slipped into one of the cracks of this bridge board.

A wooden post is gnawed away at for wood fibers. More on this in soon to come post.

Sculptured Resin Bee/Megachile sculpturalis gathering pine resin to cap brood cells.

Umbrella paper wasps doing paper wasp things: building and maintaining comb; laying eggs; feeding larvae; snacking on larval excretions.

The same nest 16 days later. It hasn’t grown in size, but more of the combs have been used. European Paper Wasp/Polistes dominula nests don’t get very big, but there must be a lot of them out there because this is the most commonly seen wasp around here.

Taking a break from the hunt. In the case of this Astata genus wasp, that means shield and stink bugs.

Cobweb spider-hunting Common Blue Mud Wasp and tree cricket nymph-hunting Mexican Grass-carrying Wasp meet on Partridge Pea plant.