First Spring Hymenoptera

It's a bee. 

Update: it is a Small Carpenter Bee (Genus Ceratina).

When Lucy and I went outside to check our daffodils yesterday, I noticed an insect or two crawling in this bloom. It's a bee! My instinct, such as it is, says it is a masked bee (see cropped version below), but they are not documented to be out this early. Nomad bees are out this early, though, so it may be that. I gave a masked bee identification to iNaturalist, though, because the bee people have been swarming all over bee photos all winter making sure that IDs are correct. They will come across this and if it is wrong, they will quickly correct it.

Masked bee or nomad?
Both are native.

Last week I sat outside at the school's picnic table and beheld a cold fly trying to warm itself in the sun. The antennae are wrong for the order Diptera (flies), as were the head, eyes and wings. The venation and the antennal flagellomeres led me to the order Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants), which led me to sawflies, which led me to the Family Tenthredinidae — Common Sawflies. I checked the Vermont phenology for sawflies and have concluded, rightly or wrongly, that this is a male Dolerus unicolor. No one on iNat pays too much attention to sawflies, though, so I don't know when I will be affirmed—if I ever am. And that's a shame. Sawflies have become one of my favorite families. 

Perhaps Dolerus unicolor

That is Spring in northern Vermont as of this date. But where there is one bug there are thousands more! We made it through the winter.

😂

Photo Sunday

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