Yellow-faced bee on St. John's Wort
Hylaeus sp.
Yellow-faced bee · Arverne Preserve · 20 June 2026
A yellow-faced bee on St John's Wort in the dune scrub at Arverne - not the wasp I first took it for, but a small, black, almost hairless bee with the yellow markings on the face and at the shoulders that name the group. Yellow-faced bees nest in hollow stems and beetle holes, and the sandy scrub here has both.
St John's Wort flowers are almost all stamens, a dense yellow starburst around a small central pistil, and the reward for a visitor is pollen rather than anything sweet. These bees carry pollen home swallowed rather than on their legs, which is why they look so unlike a bee; the species within the genus need the exact shape of those yellow marks, and this angle doesn't give it.
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