If metal is good for making trains, planes, and automobiles, why not try making an insect out of the stuff? Or at least make a bee that looks as though it were made from metal. Enter the metallic green sweat bee, a tiny native and super-efficient pollinator that looks like it was fashioned from emerald-colored steel.
Yesterday,
I captured a crisp photograph of a metallic green sweat bee putting in a shift
on a sunflower near my house. The image is clear enough to reveal its
pollen-covered legs. Those yellow clumps are the bee's cargo, gathered from the
sunflower's tiny disk florets.
Sweat
bees have adopted the single life, forgoing the crowded social arrangements of
a honeybee hive. Most live solitary lives in little underground nests, although
some species will make their homes in the soft, decaying wood of a punky log.
Each bee has her own nest and provisions her own young.
The
fascinating part is what happens to the pollen they collect. The bee carries it
back to its underground nest, mixes it with nectar, and stocks a little pantry
for its offspring. Those pollen-covered legs are carrying groceries for the
kids.
Metallic
Green Sweat Bee on a Sunflower
—Mitchell
Hegman
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