Dieunomia nevadensis, M, Face, MD, Upper Marlboro_2014-08-22-14.10
A very cool find. This is a lovely male Dieunomia nevadensis. It was found in Maryland at one of the Chaney Sand Mines. They kindly scraped a section of the site and sure enough it was colonized by all sorts of cool sand bees. No sand...no sand bees. That sort of thing. This one is particularly noteworth because the nearest record was from North Carolina. Did it fly all the way from North Carolina to this sand mine?
Nope
This is just to show you how little we know about even something as simple as the distribution of a bee and how very cool sand mines can be as long as they are not filled in afterwards.
Onward Earth.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know
" Ode on a Grecian Urn"
John Keats. Original public domain image from Flickr