Snoutbean Buddy

Few welcome the least snoutbean (Rhynchosia minima) to their yards. That’s because, left alone, it is a super aggressive weed that likes to cover up your fancy (maybe ecologically inert) hummingbird shrubs or bushes. But at the CB, at least for this year, we decided to leave the snoutbeans to the WG or White Goddess. Predictably, the snoutbeans have done well. The phrase commonly employed in reports by environmental consultants to explain why they didn’t go somewhere, impenetrable thicket, comes to mind.

Nevertheless, as everyone knows, snoutbean vegetation is consumed by larval white-striped longtails. The larger megachiles cut nest plugs from the leaves. Megalatomus nymphs suck on the fruits. And, as it turns out, a tiny bee is the main pollinator, at least at the CB. A tiny hoover fly may also participate, buzz pollinating, but we have no picture of that particular hoover fly yet.

Here’s the bee we are presently discussing. Looks a little like a Heriades, what with the nice brown rings on the abdomen.





This second pictures exposes these little bees as Megachilinae. But which genus? Progress. But not enough, progress.