Yellow-faced bees on beach rose
Hylaeus sp.
Yellow-faced bee · Arverne Preserve · 20 June 2026
Three yellow-faced bees on a beach rose in the dunes at Arverne, on the Rockaway shore. The rose is Rosa rugosa, the tough, salt-tolerant beach rose that dominates undeveloped stretches of the New York coastline - not a native, but so long naturalised on beaches and dunes from New Jersey to Maine that it functions as one. A wide-open, pollen-heavy bloom like this is an easy target for small bees.
Small, slim, almost hairless black bees, the genus Hylaeus, named for the yellow marks on the face that the left-hand one is showing. Sweat bees, the other small dark bees of a summer flower, are hairier and plain-faced. Yellow-faced bees carry pollen home swallowed rather than on their legs, which is why they look so unlike a bee at first glance.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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