Megachile

A difficult day.

On the upside, I was quite pleased with this image. I have been noticing that some bees are very yellow on the underside, so I have been doing some research. I am pretty sure this is a leafcutter bee. I cannot work out the species. There are seven species of the Megachile genus in the UK, with the males and females very different in appearance.

But this bee is so covered in pollen that any identification would be impossible. A lot of the pollen is carried in the “pollen brush”, a structure which sits underneath the rear abdomen. Which is why it is so yellow.