More Colorado Native Bees

Continuing from the previous post...

I used to think that honey bees did the vast majority of pollination in my yard here in Jefferson County, Colorado. The more I look, the more I notice just how many other insects are in my flowers and many of them are native Colorado bees.

This little green sweat bee, Augochlorella aurata, is often seen in the flowers of my sedum or dill weed. It is a very tiny bee with such a beautiful metallic sheen.

We also seem to have quite a variety of leaf cutter bees and their relatives. Besides this fellow from the last post, Lithurgus apicalis,

we also have other bees in the Megachilidae family such as this tiny white faced bee:

this little bee:

this little green eyed Anthidium oblongatum on sedum:

and this honeybee sized Megachile perihirta with the incredible orange butt:

And there are the bumble bees. Here's one in my Salvia transylvanica:

Here is the cute little orange striped bumble bee, Bombus huntii in Penstemon Red Rocks:

Native Bees of Colorado

I knew that there were native bees, but I didn't know there were so many native bees until Greg, of Dakota Bees, told me. There are four thousand species of bee in North America. So, I started looking at my blooming plants and noticed that there were many bees other than honey bees. Many of the native bees are very tiny.

Here's teeny one. It's a small carpenter bee, Ceratina, on the flower of Centaurea. Look at all the white pollen on it's leg.

To show how tiny it is, here it is with a honey bee:

Another tiny one is this sweat bee, Halictus:

Here it is with some honey bees to compare with.

On the opposite side of the scale are the Bumble Bees. Here is a biggy, Bombus nevadensis, having trouble getting into Penstemon strictus otherwise known as Rocky Mountain penstemon.

A much smaller bumble bee is the brown belted bumble bee, Bombus griseocollis, here in my spotted gallica rose:

Here is a ground bee, Anthophora bomboides, with an amazing mouth:

This is a leaf cutter bee. I've seen plenty of it's workmanship on my roses, but hadn't seen the culprit until now. Lithurgus apicalis: