Wool gathering

It may not be a difficult bee to ID… but I am nevertheless proud that I managed to work this out for myself. At first I thought the yellow face alone would be diagnostic as I’ve never seen a bee like it.

Wool Carder Bee Anthidium manicatum

But looking up ‘bee with yellow face’ I find there is a small group in one family that can be told apart by the face pattern. The trouble was none of them were like this one? In the end an on line trawl did it and I found a great picture of one. Great because it was very like the picture below.

Those yellow dots along the abdomen really narrowed it down!

Rant it out!
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