#wingpop

Subspecies or Species (and what is this bee doing in Delaware)?  (Grammar side bar:  I am guessing that the "?" goes outside the parens?  Good thing my Mom never reads anything I write giving that she was a teacher). Here we have something that meets the definition of Andrena cressonii subspecies kansensis.  In my book (rife with grammatical errors) this seems like a species to me, as it appears to consistently having reddish orange legs and more extensive hair bands than its nominate cousin A. c. cressonii which is less hairy and has no red on its legs (and is common as dirt).  A c. k. is a being of the Midwestern plains (or what is left of them) and I have never seen one in the East until looking at Matt Sarver's collection from Delaware, of all places, where it was collected off of Willow.   Delaware is admittedly a small state that most people hold no opinion about, but it does have A. c. k. to its name.  Photo by Elizabeth Panner.

The Small Carpenter Bee. Ceratina.  Here is our pictorial poster Ceratina:  Ceratina zeteki collected by Sandra Rehan in Panama.  These small bees are world wide, though they scarcely get to Australia with but a single species for some reason (maybe there are more as there are many bees remaining to be discovered in Australia) (369 Ceratina species lounge elsewhere in the world).  Undoubtedly they live in your garden (no shame if you haven't seen any, just humble yourself and  get up close to your flowers on your hands and knees... (possibly you are too ashamed to get on your hands and knees to look at bugs on flowers?  All the more reason to undertake the newly invented humble flower bee watching therapy), look for a tiny bee the size of a grain of rice with an abdomen parallel sided like a little plastic water bottle, shiny, with wee white (sometimes yellow in Asia) marks on its wee face).  (Side note: my apologies to those of you who are paren counters as I have lost track of my parens, I think one has gone missing) There is a little wing interference pop (Small bees partially make up for their smallness by have WIPs) in the background to fume some color into this relatively monochromatic metallic bee.