More Early Bees

Last week it jumped up to almost 70F. It’s dropped quite bit since, but it resulted in a bloom, so to speak of bees. Note the slits in the sides of the Japanese Andromeda/Pieris japonica flowers above.

This Two-spotted Bumble Bee/Bombus bimaculatus is sticking her tongue into the flower opening to suck up that sweet nectar.

But some short-tongued bees cut through the sides of a flower, as with this male Eastern Carpenter Bee/Xylocopa virginica, sidestepping the anthers. This is often called “nectar robbing” because the bees aren’t doing any, or much, pollination as a result.

Here’s an Unequal Cellophane Bee/Colletes inaequalis doing the same. Note that this bee does have pollen stuck to those thorax hairs, but I suspect this is from another type of flower. Because these Pieris flowers, which, like blueberries, are in the Health/Ericaceae family, need bee sonication to release the pollen, and only bee certain species do that, like bumblebees (Bombus).

Here’s another early-emerging bee, some kind of mining bee/Andrena.