Please help me identify....

RBrogen

I was out testing a new Canon 100MM L Macro today and I have never seen this type of what I assume to be in the hornet family that is about 1/8" in length and iridescent in color. Any help on exactly what it is? I shot it in my back yard this afternoon. C&C welcome.

Lord Vetinari

LOvely shot- think I'll finally decide on a sweat bee.
Brian v.

RBrogen

Lord Vetinari wrote:

LOvely shot- think I'll finally decide on a sweat bee.
Brian v.

Thanks Brian....I thought it was a hornet related given the striped tail but entomologist I am not!

RWeb

That is a sweet photo....so lively, love the colors.

I believe this wasp is called Crabronidae - green head and stripped abdomen.

RBrogen

RWeb wrote:

That is a sweet photo....so lively, love the colors.

I believe this wasp is called Crabronidae - green head and stripped abdomen.

Thanks for the kind words RWeb. I looked up Crabronidae and none of the shots look liked this one.

ci2i

RBrogen wrote:

Thanks for the kind words RWeb. I looked up Crabronidae and none of the shots look liked this one.

This is a beautiful shot. Looks like it might be this:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/147472

quark

Shiny!

time2smile

I cant help you on what it is, But its a beautiful shot. The combinations of color really come together, great eye.

mehampson

This is a green metallic bee of the Agapostemon genus -- very probably my particular favorite, A. viriscens. They're a type of sweat bee, or halictid, although in my experience they've never gone after me for sweat. These are small solitary bees that lay their eggs in burrows underground; several females (usually sisters, I think) will dig their burrows off of a larger shared entrance, but they don't build hives, and they don't have the complex, multigenerational social structure of the truly social bees.

edit: I just saw you're in Boston. I live over in Somerville, and did all this research for myself this summer when I started seeing them. Basically, there are four Agapostemon species around here; three of them only have the banded black and cream abdomen in the males, and considering the time of year, I think you found a female gathering the final provisions for her nest (the males tend to die after mating, though I admit I don't know how to sex them reliably). The one this could be, assuming this isn't some random late male, is A. viriscens. I'm actually jealous you're still seeing them; I haven't seen anything interesting on this side of the river in almost a month.

They're small and fast, but perfect animals to perfect your technique on -- getting great shots of them is amazingly satisfying. I think they're really flagship macro subjects in a way; beautiful and common as they are, a lot of people I've talked to about them have never noticed them, even though they most likely have had the opportunity every summer. I personally never noticed them before I was specifically looking for things to shoot.