Bees of North Florida and South Georgia

This is a collection of bees I’ve photographed in my yard, mostly, as well as on shoots around our area. Florida has over 300 native species of bees, and there are over 500 in Georgia. This page will not list all of them! Instead, you’ll see the bees that might commonly visit our yards, and maybe a couple that are less common. I’ll keep adding as I photograph new species, or witness interesting behaviors.

Even if you don’t see a photo of the specific bee you saw in your yard, maybe you’ll see the type. Sometimes, the best we can do is identify a genus of bees, or a tribe. Some bees need several detailed photos, or a microscope, to differentiate between related species. This page organizes bees into their families, and then further down into more specific taxa (subfamilies, genera, species). So, even if you can’t match your photo to a specific species, you might be able to identify that you have a leafcutter or a sweat bee.

We’ve collected some information to help you attract bees to your home garden. Click to learn more about building a habitat through bee-friendly plants, space for nesting, and even a little water for them to drink.

Subfamily Xylocopinae (Carpenter Bees)

Carpenter bees excavate their nests in dead wood, which, in our yards, can mean fences or any other (usually unfinished) wood structures in your yard. Understandably, some people regard them as pests. If you can tolerate a few perfectly round holes in a fence post, they are pollinators, and their nests are used by other pollinators as well.

We talked to Dr. Rachel Mallinger, assistant professor of Entomology at the University of Florida, about Florida native bees, and she had a couple of things to say about carpenter bees. They do bore into wood, which concerns homeowners. Dr. Mallinger points out that carpenter bees nest in soft, usually decaying wood. The main structure of a house is constructed of hardwood, whereas trim, railings, and fences are made from soft wood. If the main structure isn’t decaying, carpenters may nest in the softwood structures.

Leaving decaying wood in brush piles, or otherwise incorporated into the landscape, offers an alternative nesting location for carpenter bees. Learn more in our post on helping nesting bees.

Dr. Mallinger also spoke about male carpenter bee’s tendency to fly at humans. It’s aggressive, and unsettling when they get in your face, but male carpenter bees have no stinger.

One last note about carpenter bees. They look, at first, like large bumblebees. The easiest way to differentiate between the two is the abdomen. As I tell the kids, bumblebees have fuzzy “butts,” whereas carpenter bees have smooth abdomens. But, as we’ll see below, there is one other bee species in the area that mimics carpenter bees and their “smooth butts.”

Eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica)

There are two species we’re likely to see in our area. The males of both species are similar, though the southern carpenter bee has a purplish abdomen while the eastern is pure black.

Southern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa micans)

Here we see the female southern carpenter bee, which is all black with a purplish tinge. Female eastern carpenter bees, on the other hand, look much like their males.

Subfamily Apinae (Honey, Bumble, Longhorn, Orchid, and Digger Bees)

Bumblebees (Genus Bombus)

Bumblebees are both common and conspicuous among our native bees. Not only are they widespread, but are large enough to be noticed even on higher-up tree flowers.

They are social bees. In the fall, queens and males leave the nest and mate. The queen is the only bumblebee to survive through the winter, carrying next year’s colony within her as she lies dormant in leaf litter. In the spring, she emerges and creates a new colony. The leaves we let lie in the winter harbor numerous insects, such as dormant adults, larvae, and pupae.

Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens)

Here is the bumblebee species you’re most likely to see in your north Florida yard. It’s a ground-nesting species, where the American bumblebee nests above ground.

Note the fuzzy abdomen and pollen sacs on the hindmost legs.

American bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus)

American bumblebees were once the most common bumblebee species in the US. But they have declined over the last several decades, and are now listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The US Fish and Wildlife Service is currently considering the species for protections under the Endangered Species Act. Unlike other bumblebees, they nest above ground. In our segment on them last year, they had taken over a purple martin gourd.

They are larger than eastern bumblebees, and have a striped yellow patch on their abdomens.

The American Bumblebee in the WFSU Ecology Blog

In August 2019, we visited a beekeeper who had taken in an American bumblebee nest.

Southern plains bumblebee (Bombus fraternus)

Here’s a large bee that first visited our yard one day in October of 2022. The southern plains bumblebee has been listed as globally endangered by the IUCN after drastic declines in its population in recent decades. The Xerces Society predicts that if the species continues its current rate of decline, it could go extinct within 80-90 years.

Its native habitat is an intact prairie, though it is found in urban habitats. I live near downtown Tallahassee, and in 2024 it became a regular visitor to our flowers. The bee is in decline, but it has healthier numbers in the southeast than in the northern parts of its range. While they’re not the most common bumblebee species in Tallahassee or the surrounding area, they are well-represented in town and in the forest.

Two-spotted bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus)

This bee is so named because of the “two spots” on its abdomen. To me, it looks like a yellow W on its otherwise black bottom side. It looks very much similar to the common eastern bumblebee, so when I see a bee that looks either I try to angle myself to see that marking.

The time of year might also help when differentiating the two bumblebees. From iNaturalist observations in Leon County, I see that this is a bee whose numbers spike in April and is rarely seen past June (throughout its whole range it spikes in July). They are also far less numerous than common eastern bumblebees, whose numbers climb until peaking in September/ October.

Tribe Emphorini (Chimney Bees)

Morning glory turret bee (Melitoma taurea)

This is a specialist bee with a large range, from Florida to Pennsylvania, Texas to Missouri. It’s a specialist in morning glory and false bindweed flowers, which are similarly shaped.

The turret in the species name and the chimney in the tribe name refer to its nesting structure. Its nests openings are soil domes with a cave-like opening on one side. I only saw this bee briefly on a visit to Angus Gholson Nature Park, and I hope to see more of it, and those nests.

Here’s a closer look at the bee:

Tribe Eucerini (Longhorn Bees)

Genus Melissodes

Many of the Melissodes and Epimelissodes (formerly Svastra) genus longhorn bees look similar, and are difficult to distinguish from each other using only photos. In recent months, though (writing in March of 2025), I’ve had more of my longhorn observations on iNaturalist receive more specific identifications. Part of the reason for this is that, whenever certain types of bees have many similar-looking species, I photograph and upload as many as I can to iNaturalist.

Subgenus Melissodes

I have had a few observations marked as subgenus Melissodes. This includes several similar-looking species, such as the common longhorn (Melissodes communis) and Tepanaec longhorn (Melissodes tepaneca). The subgenus also includes the two-spotted longhorn, a common and easy to identify bee.

Two-spotted long-horned bee (Melissodes bimaculatus)

This is a bee I see in my yard from mid-May through early July. It feeds off a large variety of flowers of different shapes and sizes, hanging from salvia, pentas, or fanpetal flowers, or sitting on larger tickseed and coneflower flowers. And it loves beautyberry flowers. This generalist diet might account, in part, for their wide range as a species, covering half of the United States.

In 2023, I started seeing two-spotted longhorns in April. As there were no iNaturalist observations for it in April in Leon County, I added it. Those observations add data on seasonality and range that might be helpful to researchers. In 2023 I also saw a male for the first time. It looks like it has a blonde dye job on its head and legs:

Tepanec longhorn (Melissodes tepaneca)

This bee has a range that extends from the Appalachians to Mexico, and down into Florida. It’s a widespread range, and yet, if you look at its iNaturalist observation map, its observations are sparse and widely spaced apart. It makes me wonder if this had once been a more common bee.

Subgenus Apomelissodes

Melissodes mitchelli

During the 2023 City Nature Challenge, I took my kids to the Munson Sandhills to wrack up observations. I found a few on just this one prickly pear flower:

I was curious about the bee, but it went ignored by the iNat bee curators for two years. Then, in the March of 2025, it got interesting.

EDIT- August 2025 – I returned in April and May of 2025, and made Research Grade observations of the rare Melissodes mitchelli. It’s a specialist of prickly pear flowers (genus Opuntia), which bloom in April and May. This is when the bee flies.

This is a rarely observed bee, and one reason is that many species of the Melissodes and Epimelissodes genera look similar. Another reason is that people may not be looking for them specifically at the time of year when they fly. All but one of the bee’s iNaturalist observations were recorded in 2025. You can read more about my search for the bee in an Ecology Blog post.

Genus Epimelissodes / Svastra

Many bees in the genus Svastra have been reclassified as Epimelissodes. This includes bees that had previously been listed on this page as Svastra.

Subgenus Epimelissodes

I’m pretty sure that both the bee above is Svastra, possibly Svastra aegis, the sandhills longhorn. I’m in doubt about the one below, it might be a Svastra or a common longhorn (Melissodes communis). These and a couple of other longhorns in our area look similar.

Sandhills longhorn bee (Epimelissodes aegis)

After years of photographing longhorn bees in my yard, I received an identification for something other than a two-spotted longhorn:

I live a few miles from the Munson Sandhills, but an area near me must have a similar nesting habitat.

In October of 2025, I found a congregation of sandhills longhorn bee nests in Innovation Park, which is home to WFSU and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (AKA the Mag Lab). Longhorn bees are solitary nesters, though they often nest in close proximity, and multiple mothers might share a nest entrance. Though their nests are close together, they have not exhibited a social structure like that of honeybees.

At this congregation, I observed concave longhorn cuckoo bees infiltrate their nests to lay eggs. The association between these two species was first noted in a research paper in 2024.

Genus Peponapis (squash bees)

This is one of two genera of longhorn bees to specialize in the flowers of Cucurbita: gourds such as squashes and pumpkins. Xenoglassa is a genus known as the large squash bees.

Pruinose squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa)

Like the blueberry digger bee, this is a specialist, though I’ve come to find that doesn’t mean they won’t try other flowers. The handful of squash bees observed in Leon County have all been found in May, but that’s a small sample size (half of those were mine from 2023). Throughout their range, they peak in July. I imagine its seasonality is tied to the availability of squash flowers in a particular area.

Cuckoo Bees (Nomidae)

Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites, animals that replace the eggs of another animal in the host animal’s nest. Their offspring hatch and eat the pollen collected by the host bee. Because cuckoo bees do not have to provision their own nests, they do not have pollen sacs.

Cuckoo bees have evolved in multiple families of bees, and typically target a specific genus, tribe, or family of bees. Directly below, we have a few species of cuckoo bees in the Apidae family. Scroll down further to find a cuckoo bee in the leafcutter family (Megachilidae).

Genus Triepeolus

I observed the bee above in Klapp-Phipps Park, and Dr. John Ascher identified it as a member of the Triepeolus genus. This genus of kleptoparasites usually specializes in longhorn bees.

Lunate longhorn-cuckoo bee (Triepeolus lunatus)

This cuckoo bee lays its eggs with those of the two-spotted longhorn bee, which is common in my yard from mid-May through early July. I only spotted this one once in my yard, in June of 2022, just as I was starting to see multiple longhorns.

Concave longhorn-cuckoo bee (Triepeolus concavus)

I encountered this bee outside of WFSU in October of 2024. The patchy grass on the side of the station had earlier hosted several dozen mining bees. That was earlier in the year. This bee had been spending time near a ground nest, and sadly I only had a cell phone with me on the daily walks where I encountered it (and was nowhere to be found when I brought out a real camera).

Bugguide says this is a cleptoparasite of Svastra obliqua, the sunflower or oblique longhorn bee. I had seen a longhorn on nearby Bidens alba plants, though I didn’t photograph it. As I write this in early November, I haven’t seen either bee in over a week. But the nest is there, and I’ll keep an eye out for both of them next summer. Many longhorn species are difficult to distinguish from each other, even with a good photo, but an association with a more easily identified bee would help.

UPDATE- OCTOBER 2025: I observed several of these bees in association with sandhills longhorn bees. Researchers at the University of Florida had observed this new association the year before. Sandhills longhorns are common in Talahassee, while sunflower longhorns haven’t been observed for dozens of miles in any direction. The longhorn and concave longhorn-cuckoo bees only flew for a few weeks, and I was able to observe mating behavior and kleptoparasitic behavior.

Genus Nomada

I saw this bee in an open area next to WFSU where mining bees nest. The day I first saw mining bees emerge and make nests in 2025, I also saw this nomad bee. This was only a genus-level ID, but the bee flew up next to mining bee nests. Cuckoo bees specialize in specific species or genera of bees, and this must be a mining bee specialist.

Lively cuckoo bee, aka fervid nomad bee (Nomada fervida) 

I first photographed this bee in our yard, in August 2020, and I’ve seen it every year since at about the same time of year. Cuckoo bees lay their eggs with specific bee species, genera, or families; this bee hosts on the Agapostemon genus. In our yard, this is represented by Agapostemon splendens– the brown-winged striped sweat bee. Those have an annual population explosion every August in our yard, when we see the fervid nomad bees that nested with them. In recent years, we’ve had a smaller brood earlier in the spring, also accompanied by fervid nomad bees.

Digger Bees (Tribe Anthophorini)

Blueberry Digger Bee (Habropoda laboriosa)

The blueberry digger is an early flying bee, coinciding with the spring bloom season for blueberry species in the southeast. It uses buzz pollination (sonication), vibrations that shake loose pollen. I first saw this one crawling into a ground nest, and later on blueberry flowers. In our yard, they like Florida betony (an early-blooming wildflower that grows as a weed) as much as they like blueberry flowers.

Fun fact- when Proof Brewery hosted WFSU and its partners for 2019’s EcoCitizen Day, it brewed a blueberry beer called Sonicated.

Honey Bees (Tribe Apini)

Western honeybee (Apis Mellifera)

I’ve saved these for last in this family because they’re not native, though they are an important agricultural animal. Below is the most common honeybee we might see, the female worker bee. During the weeks that they’re alive, they move through a series of jobs, from tending larvae to, finally, seeking nectar to bring back to the hive, from which they make honey.

Below are the queen, the mother of all of the bees in the hive, and a drone. Drones are male bees and are distinguished by their larger eyes, which give them the vision they need to spot a queen in flight. Their only job is to find a queen and mate.

Honeybees build hexagonal cells in their hives. Some of those cells contain honey, and others larvae. Worker bees tend to the larvae until they’re almost ready to pupate (metamorphose into adults), and then the cells are capped. You can see larvae in the uncapped cells below.

Honeybees on the Ecology Blog

• In 2014, we kayaked the Dead Lakes and visited apiaries in the Wewahitchka area. The numerous tupelo swamps between the Chipola and Apalachicola Rivers make this the tupelo honey capital of the world.
• In 2019, Dr. Lee Bushong and his partner, FAMU Entomology PhD. student Worrel Diedrick took us into their hives. All of the photos of honeybees are from that shoot. They were also raising an American bumblebee colony.

This is a family of solitary nesting bees with similar habits. They make use of existing tunnel structures, such as those left by wood-boring beetles or insects that tunnel in the ground. Leaf cutters will, as their name suggests, cut leaves to line these tunnels and build their nests. Mason bees collect sediment to seal their tunnels, much like mason wasps. Resin bees use resin to seal their nests.

Genus Megachile

Carpenter-mimic leafcutter bee (Megachile xylocopoides)

With its smooth abdomen and yellow hair, the male carpenter-mimic leafcutter looks much like a smaller carpenter bee. Note the narrower wing shape and flatter abdomen, and the shape of the head compared to the carpenter. The female mimics the female southern carpenter bee, with an all-black body and less hair than the male.

Carpenter-mimic leafcutter bees on the WFSU Ecology Blog

• We first saw this bee on the Backyard Blog. It was a regular presence in our yard in May and June of 2020. Like a carpenter bee, it was aggressive towards other pollinators in our flower patch, especially wasps.
• In July of 2020, I saw the female when shooting pollinator footage at Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park.
• In 2022, both the male and female were regular visitors to the yard over several months. In the fall, a cuckoo leafcutter hung around when the female was in the yard.

Petulant leafcutter bee (Megachile petulans)

Here are two very similar-looking leafcutters. The images above and below come from two different dates at Klapp-Phipps Park, and I had at first thought they were both flat-tailed leafcutter bees. After loading the images into iNaturalist, it appears they might be two different species.

Flat-tailed leafcutter bee (Megachile mendica).

Dr. Ascher confirmed flat-tailed leafcutter (Megachile mendica) for the image below, which was taken in my yard. Looking at images of both bees in Google image searches, and on their Discover Life pages, the differences between flat-tailed and petulant leafcutters seem to be highly technical. Maybe more technical than I’m ready to dive into and learn about for the amount of time I have to write this post; but, like I keep saying, I’ll keep returning to these pages with new photos and any other information I learn.

Resin Bees (Genus Megachile, Subgenus Chelostomoides)

This is another species of leafcutter I spotted while shooting video in Klapp-Phipps Park in Tallahassee. I couldn’t narrow the ID to anything more specific than genus, which isn’t uncommon for bees. This subgenus of Megachile does not make their nests with leaves, but rather with plant resins. So this is considered a mason bee.

A bee in this subgenus briefly visited our yard in May of 2023. iNaturalist identified it as a bellflower resin bee (Megachile campanulae), a bee not otherwise observed in Leon County and sparsely in Florida. No one has confirmed it, and this was the only time I saw it in the yard. If I cross paths with it again, perhaps a few different photos at different angles might help with an ID.

Leafcutter cuckoo / sharp-tailed bees (Genus Coelioxys)

There are different families of cuckoo bees in the Apidae family, listed above. This cuckoo bee is in the Megachilidae family, so it is genetically a leafcutter even if its reproductive habits more closely resemble other, more distantly related cuckoo bees. Like other bees and wasps labeled “cuckoo,” this is a kleptoparasite.

Sharp-tailed bees kleptoparasitize other leafcutter species. Leafcutters make nests from leaf cuttings, and Coelioxys use their sharp tails to break into their nests, killing the eggs in a few cells and replacing them with her own. I started seeing this bee in the yard when it started attracting more leafcutters. They’re often on flowers near to those used by other leafcutters.

Note the lack of pollen sacs, or the pollen-collecting hairs we see under the abdomens of other leafcutters. Because cuckoo bees don’t ned to stock their own nests, they do not need to collect pollen.

Coelioxys dolichos

Per its page on Bugguide, this bee is know to parasitize carpenter-mimic leafcutter bees, which are often in my yard. I’ve seen this bee much less frequently in my yard.

Tribe Anthidiini

Resin bees in the Anthidiini tribe don’t bury their nests like other Megachilidae. They build waxy pods, which some species mix with pebbles or vegetative matter.

Rotund resin bees (Genus Anthidiellum)

Northern rotund resin bee

In my forest wandering lately (spring and summer 2025), both for work and on my own time, I have been photographing a lot of bees in the leaf cutter/ resin bee family. Northern rotund resin bee nests look like little waxy pots. Now that I’ve started finding resin bees in certain spots, I’ll start looking for their nests.

Perplexing rotund-resin bee (Anthidiellum perplexum)

I have only one image of this bee, from a patch of sensitive plants at Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park.

Genus Paranthidium

Southeastern sunflower burrowing-resin bee (Paranthidium jugatorium ssp. lepidum) 

Here’s an oddity I encountered in November of 2024. This is only the second recorded sighting of the bee in Florida, and the other was just a few miles away. The next closest recorded sighting of the bee is hundreds of miles away.

Sunflower burrowing-resin bees nest in sandy soils, lining the walls of their nests with resin. They specialize in flowers of the aster family, which includes sunflowers and goldenrod. I found this bee in a summer burn plot at Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy. The plots are within an area of mixed longleaf and shortleaf pine, split into four sub-plots, each of which is burned in a different season. When I visited in the early fall, the summer burn plot had more flowers than the other seasonal plots.

I hope to return to Tall Timbers to better document the bee in 2025.

Dark Bees (genus Stelis)

In the late summer of 2025, I walked a stretch of trail in the Munson Sandhills over the course of a few weeks. During this time, I photographed three similar-looking bees in the Anthidiini tribe. One was the northern rotund resin bee you can see a couple of entries above. Another was easily identified once I uploaded it to iNaturalist, and yet another was a mystery. These last two bees are kleptoparasites in the genus Stelis, which are hosted by other bees in the leafcutter family, likely the subgenus Chelostomoides. Chelostomoides are resin bees, and I observed a couple near these dark bees.

Louisiana painted-dark bee (Stelis louisae)

This is a widespread bee, found throughout the eastern United States. Here we see it visiting elephant’s foot (elephantopus) flowers, which bloom throughout our area in the late summer and early fall. These are small flowers, just larger than a quarter-inch, and this bee is about the same size.

The elephatopus flowers bloomed along trails in the Munson Sandhills, and were well-visited by other small invertebrates, some of which ate the plant, and others of which could have tried to eat the bee.

Subgenus Heterostelis -or is it?

Here is a bee that confounded me. I poured through photos of Anthidiini bees on Bugguide, and so many of them looked similar, but not quite a match for this bee. So I posted it to the Florida Native Bees facebook group, and received an identification of curved pebble bee from a bee researcher and the group admin – two knowledgeable people.

Then, some weeks later, bee researchers paid these photos a visit on iNaturalist. Dr. John Ascher identified this as a dark bee in the same genus as the Louisiana painted-dark bee, but in a different subgenus. So, are these two bees of different species that fill the same ecological niche, that are closely related, found within a few yards of each other? Or are they the same species, with some color variation? Maybe they have some other connection. It’s worth returning here next summer to take more photos.

Subfamily Lithurginae

Southeastern woodborer (Lithurgopsis gibbosa)

The bee is a specialist on cactus flowers, and this is where I saw it. I only saw it the one day in 2025, but I hope to encounter it again in 2026 as I search for new Melissodes mitchelli (a prickly pear specialist) sites in spring of 2026.

This is a large and diverse family of bees. Sweat bees are some of the smaller bees we see on our flowers, from the gnat-sized Dialictus bees to the somewhat larger and more colorful Augochlorini. They are said to be attracted to human sweat.

Tribe Halictini

Lasioglossum, subgenus Dialictus

Dialictus is a subgenus of the Lasioglossum genus, and it has hundreds of very similar-looking bees. They are difficult to differentiate, even with a microscope. I see quite a few in my yard, and some are slightly larger than others. I figure, based on size, that I have at least two species. Or maybe it’s one species with larger males or females?

Lasioglossum reticulatum

Here’s a Lasioglossum, subgenus Dialictus, bee for which I actually received a species-level identification. It looked not quite like a Poey’s furrow bee, and not quite like other Dialictus. This is a southeastern bee, which, according to its bugguide page, flies from March to November in most of its range, and year-round in Florida.

Lasioglossum floridanum

In 2023, I made an effort to photograph as many small bees in our yard as possible. Here is a second species-level identification for a Dialictus sweat bee.

Genus Halictus

Poey’s Furrow Bee (Halictus Poeyi)

Poey’s furrow bees are just a little larger than the largest Dialictus in our yard, and they often use the same flowers. The furrow bees have a more pronounced yellow and black striping on the abdomens, and big, thick heads. These small bees are common in north Florida yards and parks.

Above is the female Poey’s furrow bee. In 2022, I saw a male for the first time when one attempted to mate with a female.

You can see the female, left, has a larger and less hair-covered head. Also, as in most bee species, the female collects pollen to bring to a nest, whereas a male has no means to collect pollen. This photo was taken in the fall when furrow bees stop flying and females find a place to lay low during the cold months. Before doing so, they mate, and the female carries the next year’s brood within her. In the spring, she’ll emerge and make a nest.

Genus Agapostemon

Brown-winged striped sweat bee (Agapostemon splendens)

The male brown-winged striped sweat bee is unmistakable. In August 2019 and 2020, I saw larger and larger numbers of the males on flower patches in our yard. I saw females, which have a similar green coloring to the Augochlorine bees, as early as June 2020. In years since, the start of the population explosion varies by a couple of weeks, usually coinciding with the late summer blooming of dotted horsemint.

One subtle difference between Agapostemon and Augochlorine bees is the wings. Female brown-winged striped sweat bees have murkier wings than Augochlorine bees. If you scroll up to the photo of the pure green sweat bee, its wings look more like they’re made of glass panes. Another difference is that the female brown-winged striped sweat bee has more pronounced stripes on its abdomen:

Sweat bees are ground nesters, though they may also nest in rotting wood. In July of 2019, I removed an old wooden bench from the yard, and a green sweat bee flew out. I followed it as it appeared to search the ground for a new nesting area. If you have space for a brush pile in your yard, for a place to put a nice-sized fallen branch to let sit and rot, this is one of a few different insects that would make use of that habitat.

Augochlorini tribe

There are two or three species we’re likely to see in our area, and these are very similar looking. Augochlorine bees are solitary nesters.

Below are a few photos of Augochlorine sweat bees. I’m noticing that very few get species-level confirmations on iNaturalist. One of the bees below has a deep blue color, but that’s a normal color variation for these bees. They also resemble the female brown-winged striped-sweat bee (which we’ll see next), but those have a few features that make them easier to identify.

Pure green sweat bee (Augochlora pura)

The photo above was submitted to iNaturalist and confirmed to be a pure green sweat bee (Augochlora pura). Another possibility in our area is the metallic-epauletted sweat bee (Augochloropsis metallica).

Andrena genus

Mining bees are early flying bees, feeding on nectar from flowering trees such as Carolina cherry laurels, which bloom in the late winter/ early spring.

In April of 2021, I saw a couple of mining bees returning to or digging new nests under individual leaves scattered on open soil. Although mining bees often nest close together, sometimes in the hundreds, they are solitary nesters. They do not form hives together; social, hive-building bees and wasps are generally more aggressive than solitary nesters.

Barbara’s mining bee (Andrena barbara)

Here’s a bee I first spotted in March of 2023. I’d been watching honeybees visit dewberry flowers, when I noticed a couple of darker bees. They looked like mining bees, but in our yard, I’d only seen those on tree flowers. This is a Barbara’s mining bee.

It has brighter, yellowish hair compared to other Andrena, but I’ll keep an eye out for further iNaturalist suggestions for this bee. According to its bugguide page, it is often overlooked and misidentified.

Smooth-faced mining bee (Andrena miserabilis)

Here’s a small mining bee I saw in my yard just before our cherry-laurels bloomed.

Subgenus Archiandrena

I saw this bee one time in my yard, tackling some shriveled cherry-laurel flowers on the pavement after the blooms on the tree had faded. A sure sign of a specialist. Dr. Ascher suggested the subgenus Archiandrena in iNaturalist.

Fairy and Goblin Bees (Subtribe Perditinia)

Genus Perdita

In the mining bee family, there is a subfamily of small mining bees, within which there is a subtribe called Perditina– fairy and goblin bees. The bees in the image above, which I had thought were small Lasioglossum sweat bees, are fairy bees in the Perdita genus.

Cousinly fairy bee (Perdita consobrina)

Like the small Lasioglossum sweat bees, fairy bees are small and can be difficult to distinguish from one another. Contrast this bee the fairy bees directly above it on this page. It has a few colorful features – stripes, and a green mouth. Also, note the lack of pollen sacks. This is a male.

I photographed this bee in the Munson Sandhills and uploaded it to iNaturalist, where the site’s top bee curator, Dr. John Ascher identified it. It’s one of only two observations of this tiny bee, and when I went to read more, I found little information about it. This, to me, is the joy of photographing insects and using iNaturalist. The sheer number of insects in the world makes it so that many of them are little understood. This includes insects you may see in your yard. When you take the time to see them, capture an image, and share that image on a platform where researchers can see it and know where you found it, you are providing valuable visual data that can further our understanding of the insect and the habitat it inhabits.

Cellophane Bees (Colletes genus)

Long-faced cellophane bee (Colletes longifacies)

Plasterer bees are solitary ground nesters that line their nests with a secretion that resembles cellophane. The substance is a natural polyester, and so plasterer bees are also called polyester bees.

Cellophane bees are a genus of bees (Colletes) in the plasterer bee family (Colletidae). The image above hasn’t yet gotten a species-level identification in iNaturalist. One likely option is sandhills cellophane bee, as I spotted this one in a sandhill habitat, and the species is one of a couple of Colletes species observed in the Florida panhandle.

Edit 10-28-21: It looks like this is a long-faced cellophane bee (Colletes longifacies), based on an identification by bee researcher Dr. John Ascher. This central/ north Florida endemic, he says, is “Historically overlooked due to late flight season.” As Dr. Ascher notes, Colletes longifacies is a “rarely recorded, localized, and specialized species.” It has previously been recorded on clusterleaf blazingstar, a fall-blooming wildflower.

Rufous-backed cellophane bee (Colletes thoracicus)

I saw this bee on March 1, 2023, on a cherry laurel tree overhanging our yard. According to bugguide.net, this bee flies in January and February in Florida. Based on this observation, though, I’d say that as close to Georgia as Tallahassee is, that here the bee flies a little bit into March.

Sandhills cellophane bee (Colletes ultravalidus)

This bee was first described in 2016 and has only been observed in a handful of locations in north Florida, and one location in Mississippi. One reason people don’t see much of the bee is that it only flies for a short time, and keeps to a specific habitat.

Its few observations have been on or near blueberry bushes, specifically bushes in sandhill habitats near cypress wetland areas. A blueberry relative, climbing fetterbush, climbs up cypress trees, and blueberry bushes thrive near the edge of the ponds. The sand there is too wet for ground-nesting bees to excavate, and this bee needs deep, open sand to make a nest.

Blueberries in north Florida bloom in February and March, and that’s when you would see this bee flying. Males also fly in December, making it one of the few native bees in the air in winter. The best way to find the bees themselves is to find their nests on sandhills. They are about three inches across, with an opening about a centimeter across (yes, I mixed metric and standard). If you see the bee, upload your photos to iNaturalist to add observations and help researchers track the species.

Many of the photos above come from the Backyard Blog. WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas has been chronicling the plants and animals in his yard since 2018, paying close attention to insects.