Super cool, Super rare, Super fun. Â
Who would say such a thing about a little brown bee? Â In this case it is Colletes ciliatus. Â Here is a bee that was featured in a paper we wrote several years ago as one of the "missing bees" not seen for many years. Â It has only a few records; all from the MidWest with one specimen from Alexandria (the town across from Washington D.C.) . Â Then Tim McMahon found one on Dodder at the edge of the marsh in Jug Bay on the Patuxent River in October in Maryland. Â A little poking and we found another record on Dodder from the MidWest. Â So, it may be possible that we need to collect more on Dodder which has small blooms and is difficult to collect off of. Â Afterwards Don Harvey collected a male also on Dodder from the same area. A nice advance of the natural history and perhaps conservation of this rare species. Â Pictures by Jade Louis...her first for the lab. Â
