A Bombus bimaculatus queen visiting honeyberry flowers 😊

Equally tiny and (to me) more surprising bee on the same flower - smallest Andrena miner #bee I’ve ever seen, thought it was a small sweat bee until I looked at the photos. (On Sisyrinchium angustifolium, blue-eyed grass.) #bugsky #macrophotography #bloomscrolling #nativeplants

The first Bombus I photographed this year was a B. occidentalis in the wax currant! #rockcreekbc

Massive and important positive news... #NSF #GRFP awards are out. 2,599 awards! + 1,440 Honorable Mentions. A significant boost from last year. Congratulations to the winners (and HM-s)! & many thanks to the reviewers & program officers who made this possible. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

Busy day at the Colletes inaequalis nesting aggregation. Feels like spring is officially here :)

Tiny #bee on a tiny flower - female Ceratina strenua small carpenter bee on Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium). (Photo taken today at Wylde center) #pollination #bugsky #insects #nativeplants #bloomscrolling

colletes inaequalis update from this evening

Change your focus, change your life. ~•~ Male Globemallow Bee (Diadasia diminuta) in Apricot Globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua). 🌿 #Invertebrates

If you're in need of a bit of color this morning, here's a metallic green sweat bee who wants all the pollen. Anza-Borrego Desert, California. #Bugsky 🌿🐙🐝🌼

So within three hours after I took the photo that I just posted of the first open blossom on our mock orange, a male Chelostoma philadelphus mock orange scissor bee claimed it! Couldn’t get a clear shot without disturbing him but there is no doubt what it is. The first of many! #bees #nativeplants

I would greatly appreciate anyone amplifying this or contributing. The Alex Pretti nursing scholarship is being created. An endowed scholarship awarded to a student with financial need. Preference will be given to students with an interest in supporting America's veterans. Link below. Thank you.

Photo stacking is taking a series of shots at different focus points and combining them to create more depth of field. L is a stack of only 2 shots, R is 6 shots. Which do you prefer? I like the L, but there's no right answer. (Male Hesperapis sp. native bee asleep in a flower at night) 🐙🌿📷 #BugSky

Saw my first Colletes inaequalis of the season today! Earliest I've ever seen them in MN. Smashed my previous earliest record of Mar 29th set in 2001.

On taxonomist appreciation day, I take comfort in knowing that generations of taxonomists have also had to deal with scientists confounding identification and taxonomy plus abysmal levels funding and support. Excerpts from Slater (1960), which has many parts that read like they were written today:

My big monograph is finally out in @ejtaxonomy.bsky.social right on #taxonomistappreciationday! 169 new species of flat wasps from Australia, many of them with remarkable head modifications for seeking their hosts. So excited to see this published after 8 years, available free and open access. 🧪

Bees visiting blueberries in the yard yesterday! Two-spotted bumblebee queen (Bombus bimaculatus) and male southeastern blueberry bee (Habropoda laboriosa.) #bees #bugsky #bloomscrolling #insects

The redbud trees are apparently where the action is. Colletes inaequalis, unequal cellophane bees, from this afternoon. #bees #bugsky #flyday #insects

Good article, but the framing is wrong. There is not a dearth of interest in taxonomy. There is a scarcity of funding and positions, which is a deliberate choice by funding agencies and institutions. The youth love taxonomy! It's the olds that are failing to meet their passion!

Our beloved fence pets are back. [Xylocopa sonorina male, Alameda, CA 2-28-26] #bees #nativebees

The bee season has also begun here. Many queen bumblebees (Bombus terrestris, B. pratorum, B. lapidarius and B. hypnorum) and solitary bees (Andrena vaga, A. bicolor, Xylocopa violacea, Osmia cornuta) have been flying around Braunschweig since this week. #BeesUp

1st HFFB! We have seen Hairy-footed Flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) in late February before but always males, so surprised to find a female buzzing around the Pulmonarias yesterday before taking a break on a rustic leaf 🐝🙂. @brigitstrawbridge.bsky.social

Warmth can also be a floral reward. On sunny windless days the air "trapped" within daffodil flowers is ~3°C warmer than the exterior. Earlier today Andrena bicolor bees made brief stops within Narcissus bulbocodium flowers to gain some of the heat lost during flight

Job tools I dislike: - computer - email - calendar - word processor Job tools I like: - microscope - colored micron pens

The ICE surge in Minnesota isn’t over — it just moved outside of the Metro. ICE agents are still terrorizing innocent people in the suburbs. They’re targeting bus stops and hospitals and parks and being more deceptive than ever. This isn’t over until ICE is out of the ENTIRE state.

Newly published: a letter that continues the discussion of “ghost records” and continues our push for good practices and replicability in bee research and monitoring: “Ghost records and unverifiable specimen data hinder bee research: a reply to Cobb et al.” doi.org/10.1093/aesa...

We got one little rain storm and all the tiny silly wasps are out again and I'm very pleased 🤎 These lovely little Encyrtids are pretty common and I love to see their comically large antennae flapping as they run. This lass was grooming hers.

Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules. Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change—all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.

#FebuArty #Fuzzy #Inverts #Bee 🐝 A Fuzzy Half-balck Bumble

This is just insane. It’s only a matter of time before DHS kills another innocent person here. (clip via MPR and @davidjbier.bsky.social on X)

Two more students from Liam Ramos' school are now in ICE detention, joining their mother who was detained first. The school principal "said the boys cried when he told them what was happening and were frightened and asked to hold a school nurse’s hand when they walked into the Whipple Building."

NEW: Minnesota's federal judges have been inundated — and become increasingly alarmed — by cases stemming from the Trump administration's deportation surge in the Twin Cities. Now they're poised to decide whether the surge can continue at all. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Female Brown-winged striped sweat bee (Agapostemon splendens) on Camphorweed (Heterotheca subaxillaris) 10-13-25 Bowditch Point Park Fort Meyers Beach, Florida #MacroMonday #eastcoastkin #native #bees #flowers #pollinators #macro #photography #bloomscrolling #art #macroPhotography #bugsky #nature

I found this bit, by a journalist who has written about CBP and ICE for many years, to be really instructive on how shockingly and persistently lawless those agencies, and especially CBP, have been for their entire existence, for more or less the same reason. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/ice-101-ho...

I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening. The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.

A coworker took this from her apartment. I haven't seen a crowd this size before. Maybe the first Women's March? But it was much much warmer that day. ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA!

Great interview with Krystle Hickman, a wonderful photographer & community scientist who I'm lucky to know. She first learned about native bees as an adult and is not a trained scientist, and has since made important scientific contributions and inspired countless people (including me). 🌿🐙📷 #BugSky

As clergy pray, arrests begin

ICE detained a 5-year-old Minnesota boy coming home from school + took him and his dad to Texas, school officials say. The family has an active asylum case + entered the US at a port of entry. "They’re taking children. They're not violent criminals. They're little kids," the superintendent told me.

Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic. The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.

Yes, immigration agents not only took Arnoldo's phone, the 10th grader had to use Find My Phone to locate it — in a vending machine for used electronics, close to an ICE detention center. Read the full story here: www.propublica.org/article/vide...

WSJ investigation: In the past 6 months ICE agents have fired at vehicles 13 times, leading to: * 8 people shot * 5 of which were U.S. citizens * 2 died * no victims drew a weapon The playbook: Agents box in a vehicle, block attempts to flee, then fire www.wsj.com/us-news/vide...

The woman killed by ICE was Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year old who was the mother of a 4-year old child whose father already died a few years ago. The Star Tribune talked to her mother. www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...

Female two-spotted longhorn bee (Melissodes bimaculatus) pollinating red & yellow dahlia flower in August’s Chicago noonday sun. #macroMonday #macro #photography #eastCoastKin #native #gardens #bugs #bees #art #flowers #macroPhotography #nature #red #yellow

In other Hymenoptera macro size comparison news: ~3/4" Sweat Bee so sweet and teeny... ...then there's the chalcid wasp following her... #inverts #becurious

drunk on pollen .... enough is enough already! Melissodes (I believe), Anza Borrego DSP, Oct 25

New Ant Lab video today about pincer wasps and a new research project. This one has some really cool, newly-filmed insect behavior in it! youtu.be/9osTBzQ0zbk

This gallery of almost all EU bee species high quality photos is quite impressive: pollinatoracademy.eu/images

Si te equivocas de entrada puede que visites la casa de una Donacosa merlini (Lycosidae). Un hembra de Eucera rufa (Apidae) es arrastrada bajo la atenta mirada de 3 machos que no entienden nada y que a pasar de sus esfuerzos no pudieron salvarla. 🐝💔🕷️ Laguna del Ojillo (RBD) @ebdonana.bsky.social

New study: backyard mosquito sprays lead to insecticide levels high enough to kill pollinators, and sprays travel easily into neighboring yards. stacksjournal.org/article/ande...

“She has marks on her neck and wrist from where agents restrained her. Agents cut off her wedding ring and held her in leg shackles at Whipple Federal Building for about five hours.” Her crime: witnessing ICE, from a distance.