The darkest day of the year calls for a super bright image. Here is a Heriades resin bee on a California poppy, shot around the last solstice.~~~~~~~#resinbee #heriades #caiforniapoppy #eschscholziacalifornica #natgeoyourshot #mat_macro_bees https://www.instagram.com/p/BrrNhH5BXDK/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=k0oney5bcuyi

Watching these little solitary bees foraging the flowers I planted just for them really fills me with joy !

Small resin bee (Heriades spp.) ambling along the flowers of an anise hyssop plant (Agastache foeniculum). These bees are closely related to mason and leafcutter bees, and much like their cousins, they can be coaxed to board a bee hotel. In some places with their preferred plants they can be exceptionally numerous. Fast and erratic fliers, when in large numbers these bees can form what could easily be mistaken as a "swarm of gnats." #bees #insects #pollinators #heriades #resinbee #smallresinbee #wildbee #bug #macrophotography #macro_x #macroworld_tr #insects_of_our_world #kings_insects #macro_mood #macro_perfection #beesofinstagram #hyssop #macroclique #mat_macro #buzz #blackbee

Resin bee (Heriades spp.) on butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa). Generalist bees the Heriades are, but with a sweet tooth for milkweed. #bees #bugs #insects #pollinators #milkweed #asclepiastuberosa #heriades #orange #flowers #resinbee

Her glossy ebony plates have arrays of machined divots, each uniquely sized, but in relationship with the surrounding pits such that spacing and sizes array in flowering topographies of power functions that mates art and form in a perfect union. Add bands of thick ermine hairs, accenting strands of hair with a well pool of a black eye so removed from our reality that you now know that aliens commingle. Oh, this little being was found outside the sound stage of Wolf Trap Park in Virginia.

Heriades resin bee on Eryngium agavifolium. ~~~~~~~~~#heriades #resinbee #eryngiumagavifolium #pollinators #mat_macro_bees

Many of the bees of the world are small, here is yet another one, Heriades carinata. This species nests in tiny little holes, often those made by wood boring/powder post beetles. It carries its pollen underneath its abdomen and is long and slim, so that it can inhabit these tiny holes to lay a series of eggs in a series of cells filled with pollen and nectar. Photography by Hannah Sutton.