Looking around the garden to see where the honeybees are feeding, I’m finding all manner of other pollinators. The bees were on this apache plume for a short time, but when I came back with the camera this lovely creature was here instead.

There are lots of these tiny iridescent green bees, little wild things, all over the honeysuckle.

… and lots of these, too. I’ll be learning flying insects, that’s for sure.

This bee is named Shine.

Dawn called when she heard I’d hived a swarm. At the end of our enthusiastic conversation, she said, in that way she has, “…If you need any help naming them…” I laughed for two days over that. She suggested Genevieve Honeysuckle Clagett for the Queen. Of course! Yesterday I was filming the bees, and I called to tell her that we’d have hours of footage to watch so we could identify each bee by its distinctive markings and name them that way. She said, “I think it would be better to take a still shot of each bee. You could frame them all and hang them on your green wall, with a little name tag under each one! Just a little square portrait, life-size.” I am still laughing, and we are playing at naming bees.