On my country road walks in the evenings, I have been seeing these little insects nestled together in the black-eyed Susans. They are male long-horned bees. The males have unusually long antenna or “horns” compared to the females, and they sometimes cluster together inside flowers while they sleep. They are invaluable pollinators of many crops and plants.
“Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.” ~Samuel Johnson
walking on a country road 
we would be in a lot of trouble if our pollinating insects disappeared!
Very true, Wayne! I hope that never happens.
me 2!
Very interesting … I like Black-eyed Susans … ours don’t usually bloom until early-to-mid-August.
This was my first encounter with the long-horned bees. It made me curious to find out more about them. I love to see the black-eyed Susans along the roadside.
They are beautiful flowers and perk up yards and the roadside. A friend of mine lives in North Carolina and yesterday she visited Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh for their Sunfest. It is five acres of sunflowers planted in maze-like fashion. She took a lot of pictures and posted them. Just amazing.
I’d love to see that! Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers. We have a field of sunflowers not far from us that is in bloom.
Yes, I would too Rebecca. Cheryl posted a lot of pictures on her Facebook page and I remembered that years ago Ford Motor Company World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan used to have an impressive sunflower field that you could see from the service drive to an expressway. I Googled and discovered they still have several fields of both sunflowers and wildflowers, but frequently plow/mow them down and leave them empty for a year, to get them to grow heartier the following year. So, I might try to get there … that will be late Summer for us, beginning of September, maybe even later this year due to our late Spring. They typically sow the seeds in June.
I heard today we might be having an El Nino Winter this year … the meteorologist I follow is very much into climate change, and scholarly articles and showed that the National Weather Service is predicting this for us – Southern states will have a cooler and rainier Winter: https://www.clickondetroit.com/weather/el-nino-expected-to-develop-could-dramatically-impact-winter-in-metro-detroit
That would be fun to see the fields of sunflowers and wildflowers. I hope it works out for you. “Cooler” sounds really good to me right now; “rainier” not so much. We’ve had a lot of rain so far this summer.
The rainer season would not appeal to me either – we had a lot of rain from mid-April to mid-June. Now we are near drought-like conditions due to the heat wave. The lawns are already crispy. I am going to go there and check it out … it’s only about six miles from where I live. Here are some pictures of it:
https://foursquare.com/v/ford-sunflowers-field/4e55255c1495ac3f023d2515
Looks beautiful!