By Alice Mary Herden on March 5, 2019 ( Leave a comment )

Metallic Sweat Bees ( Halictidae)

These are my favorite bees… like EVER! The coloring is so amazing, these metallic green or blue colors just pop!

Metallic Blue Sweat Bee | February 28 | Alice Mary Herden

There are thousands of species of sweat bees and 60 species alone documented in Florida.

Metallic Blue Sweat Bee | February 28 | Alice Mary Herden

Metallic Blue Sweat Bee | February 28 | Alice Mary Herden

With thistle blooming, it is time to hang around these plants if you are interested in getting some great photos and video, however, you will most likely get more bee butts because they will be digging their way to gather pollen. But hey, who doesn’t like a cute bee butt!

Metallic Blue Sweat Bee | February 28 | Alice Mary Herden

Metallic Blue Sweat Bee | February 28 | Alice Mary Herden

Would like to find out how they obtain that metallic color.. if you know, please comment below! Just to note they are attracted to the salt from human sweat!

Links
http://www.floridasnativebees.com/sweat-bees.html

Know your native pollinators: Sweat bees

Click to access IN89700.pdf

Categories: Bees, Florida State Forest, Pollinators

Tagged as: Bees, Florida, Goethe State Forest, Halictidae, Native Bees, Pollinators, Sweat Bees

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required) (Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Categories

Recent Posts: Florida Nature

Black Swallowtail Caterpillar

Swallowtails are challenging for me to identify, and the only one I can remember is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail; it’s the only one with more yellow than black! The swallowtails And of course, there are more in other states, but these are the common ones you will find here in Florida. So what brought this […]

More Snaglets!

For the past couple of years, we have been so fortunate to observe the fantastic life of two species of birds right from our backyard – Eastern Bluebird and the Downy Woodpecker. Now, let us move from the backyard to the front yard to add another species of cavity-nesters, the red-bellied woodpecker. While there are […]

Gopher Frog

At some point, every living creature indirectly or directly depends on another organism, whether it has been created by seed or egg. The more you explore nature and expand your curiosity to learn about the incredible lives of these living creatures, you will soon realize that everything pretty much connects to one or the other. […]

My first observation of a Giant Skipper- A Cofaqui Giant-Skipper

At first, I thought it was a moth because of its furry, thick and plump body, but after a closer look, the antennas were not that of a moth. So if it’s not a moth, then what is it? It’s a skipper! “Dear nature, I have just gotten through devoting hours and hours to creating […]

Sensing Nature

Have you ever gone into nature and felt that you shouldn’t be there? I have been going to Chassahowitzka WMA for years, even before I uploaded my first observation to iNaturalist on March 10, 2017! I have always felt welcomed, happy, and even excited to see what Chass would let me see! Friday after work, […]

%d bloggers like this: