September — Melissodes sp.
Short antennae, green eyes, and hind legs so heavy with pollen you can see the weight of them in the air. This is the same bee as August, caught between flowers.
She is her own colony. There is no hive, there are no workers, and nobody is helping her. She digs the burrow, builds the cells, gathers every load, seals them, and makes that round trip dozens of times for a single egg.
Nearly everything people believe about bees comes from the honeybee — the hive, the queen, the division of labor. This is what the other several hundred species in Oregon are actually doing, and most of them are doing it alone.
Photographed at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge by Jonathan Swanson.
A high-resolution download of this photograph is coming to the shop shortly.
Back to all twelve bees