Mignonette Yellow-face

The smallest of flowers attract the smallest of creatures. There is a large field Pennycress plant, in the garden. I know it's a wildflower but it is so pretty in an area which isn't yet planted. The bees that caused my procrastination yesterday were back again.

Hylaeus Bees are very primitive and amongst the 500+ Hylaeus species, most of the males have masked faces. This one is a Mignonette Yellow-face, Hylaeus signatus. Tiny as it is, it's the largest of the UK Hylaeus. They are mostly associated with chalk downlands and are closely associated, as their common name suggests with wild Minonettes.

I first spotted these not so common bees, flying around my Speared Snapdragons last year. There weren't nearly as many as are swarming around the Pennycress. They're fast and not that easy to photograph so out of 100 or so images, only a handful were in focus.