Yellow-faced bee

Hylaeus sp. · Bees & wasps

Yellow-faced bee on St. John's Wort

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.

Yellow-faced bees on beach rose

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.