Long-horned bee in a mallow
Melissodes sp.
Long-horned bee · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 21 July 2024
A long-horned bee working a mallow in the July border at the Botanic Garden, dusted with pollen from head to foot. Long-horned bees are solitary ground-nesters of meadows and gardens across the eastern United States, and midsummer in a Brooklyn border is their season.
A bee, not the wasp it was first written up as. The pollen is packed into long hairs on the hind legs, which is a bee's way of carrying it home and something no wasp does, and the body is furred rather than sleek. Black, with pale hairy hind legs and long antennae, it is most likely a Two-spotted Long-horned Bee, though the genus is as far as a photograph safely goes. Mallow pollen is large and sticky, which is why the bee is coated in it.
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