First sighting of a Summer Long-Horned Bee

So exciting!

The Summer Long-Horned Bees are back!

This Summer Long-horned Bee male Melissodes robustior was perched on top of a dried California poppy stem, in the morning sun, in our native patch.

I noticed it purely by chance, because these bees are quite small.

On another dried California poppy stem, about twelve inches away from the Summer Long-Horned Bee, a Yellow-faced bumble bee Bombus vosnesenskii was perched, drying off in the sun and breeze after it accidentally flew under a fine spray of water from the garden hose that I was aiming at one of our recently planted native seedlings.

As I monitored the Yellow-faced bumble bee drying, which took about ten minutes, I noticed the Summer Long-Horned bee from the corner of my eye.

It's very likely that the bee spent the night on the dried poppy stem.

In the past summers we've seen them in the evenings or early mornings, sleeping on sunflowers and on top of dried nude buckwheat flowerheads.

The bee was still sleeping, and after ten minutes it suddenly flew away.

The Summer Long-Horned male Melissodes rosbustior has extremely long antennae and yellow markings on the lower part of his face.

Here is yet another example, why it's best to leave your garden a little messy.

Don't deadhead ALL of your plants.

Pollinators need tall thin stalks to rest or even sleep on.

In the case of the Yellow-faced bumble bee Bombus vosnesenskii that accidentally got sprayed by the garden hose, it instinctively crawled to and climbed up to the top of the closest tall stalk it could find, which was another dried poppy stalk.