Hylaeus nelumbonis. The bee likes wetlands and... wetland plants, by implication, love this bee. American lotus (Nelumbo) and water lily were early on noted as hosting this species on its flowers. Side note. I wonder how Robertson (the guy who described the species and whose mission was to document floral use by bees) collected these bees - on at least water lilies, which lie on the surface of the water (Lotus has the good sense to project its flowers above the water). If you try to net a bee on a water lily, everything gets wet and essentially goes under water and you end up with nothing. I know this from first hand experience. When I was trying my hand I had to slowly glide up on a waterlily, wait for a bee to land and crawl inside the waterlily, then grab the whole head of the flower with my hand and throw the everytthing in a net to extract the bee (and not fall out of the canoe by reaching a bit too far). In any case, these bees can be found on a variety of flowers, but always in and around wetlands. It is unclear why this should be. What is it that keeps them next to wetlands if not that they need some of those flowers specifically? Maybe its the pollen of one of the plant groups that is required for its young but it will sip nectar and party with the males on a variety of other flowers. H. ornatus and H. schwarzii do pretty much the same thing (more to the east). A nice tidy research project that could save the world (because you never know what you will discover when you poke around Mother Nature).
