Favoritos de rainhead

This animal was collected by divers during the Hakai Institute Quadra Island Bioblitz, under a DFO collection permit and/or BC Parks Letter of Authorization. It was kept in a sea table, shown to the public for a community event, then released.

During this nest site check found 1 female while she was excavating a small amount of sand from her nest opening located just under a Yellow Sand Verbena plant's roots. Her opening was mostly obscured by the plant and had I not seen her movement, I would not have counted the nest. Nearby this opening was another (last photo) of a typical nest opening observed for this bee. You can see the sand was recently moved from the nest burrow. Earlier, I identified 13 of these nest openings, or similar, in the 3 active areas of dune adjacent to each other here this season. I was surprised that most of them had shown recent activity. They are still nesting as of this day. I have documented a female nesting at the beach up to early June.

iNat had different recommendations for each picture, fuzzy-horned bumblebee and Vancouver bumblebee were two, the other two weren't bees. I lifted up a yard-waste bin I had sitting in the yard for a long time and found a bee nest! I used the container for its intended purposes then carefully placed it back at night. The bees were actively covering their exposed nest in the interim, and had got it mostly covered in a few hours time.