Bees on the Chiapas Sage

You know that Spring truly is here when different bees arrive.

This is a Habropoda digger bee female foraging for pollen in a blossom on the Chiapas Sage shrub.

A few days I noticed a Habropoda flying around the Ray Hartman ceanothus. It was the very first time I ever saw one of these bees, so it's an exciting observation.

The females nest in soil, sometimes in flat, bare ground and usually in vertical banks.

Several Mountain Carpenter bees Xylocopa tabaniformis orpifex circled around the Chiapas sage and Silver Bush lupines.

To take photos of them is a dizzying experience. They seem to be constantly in motion.

These bees visit sage plants for nectar.