August — Melissodes sp.
Short antennae, pale green eyes, and a hind leg so loaded with pollen it changes her shape. The long antennae that give this bee its name belong to the males; the females are the ones doing the work.
She works asters and almost nothing else. Every load on those legs goes down into a burrow she dug in bare ground, and it is the entire food supply for one bee that will not hatch until next summer. She will never meet it.
August is when Portland’s bee year actually peaks, and this is the bee doing most of it.
Photographed at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge by Jonathan Swanson.
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