We photographed this Leaf-cutting bee (Family Megachilidae) on Entire-leaved Gumweed (Grindelia integrifolia) on the Port Angeles, WA waterfront in late September, 2006. I identified it to family based on the wing veination, but did not attempt to identify it to genus or species. It looks quite similar to this specimen on BugGuide.net, which is identified as a member of the genus Megachile. These specimens are remarkable for the pollen covered brush of hairs on the face (closeup cropped from the image at lower left).

I don’t know if this is true of many megachilids, but on a couple of occasions—including this one—I’ve been able to follow a single megachilid from flower to flower for many minutes.

Two more eugraph pages on megachilds: Leafcutter and Cuckoo | Another leafcutting bee (includes video)

Leafcutting bees gather pollen, carrying it on the abdomen (unlike honey bees, which carry pollen on their legs). Whether on the abdomen or the legs, the pollen carrying hairs are called a scopa, from the Latin for broom. Here’s a photo of a scopa full of pollen on a megachilid photographed at the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge 09 14 06.

All of the images here on flowers were photographed with a Nikon Coolpix 5700. My wife, Karen Hart, also photographed these megachilids with a Nikon D50 with a telephoto zoom lens (70-300mm), mostly to see if we could get any useful images at a distance of 3 feet or so. The image at the upper right is cropped from one of these photos (uncropped original). The D50 also has a rapid-fire mode, allowing the capture of several images in a row. This cropped image of the magachilid on the wing was captured this way. Using a digital SLR with a a telephoto zoom lens seems like a good way to get a first shot of an insect. Once you have one good image, you can try to get closer with a close-focussing camera like the Coolpix (or macro lens on the SLR).