December — Melissodes sp.
Seen from behind, both antennae swept back, with pollen hanging in the air around him like snow. Those antennae are where the name comes from, and only the males have them.
None of that pollen is his. Males gather nothing and build nothing — it simply sticks to him while he feeds, and he carries it from flower to flower without meaning to. He pollinates by accident, which does not make him any less useful to the plant.
The rainbow in the wings is real and it is the same physics that makes the green sweat bee green. A wing is a thin transparent membrane; light reflects off the top surface and the bottom surface, the two reflections interfere, and some wavelengths cancel while others reinforce. Flash reveals it because it is small, bright and hard. Soft daylight washes it out.
He is out for the last warm afternoons of the year. The females he mated with will winter underground and start again in spring. He will not.
Photographed at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge by Jonathan Swanson, with flash.
A high-resolution download of this photograph is coming to the shop shortly.
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