Busy bee? Not so much. This bee is taking a nap in this flower, which is more common than you may think! Social bees like honey bees have a nest to come home to every night and only sleep outside if they get lost during sundown or become too cold to fly back to the hive. Solitary bees, however, can often be seen sleeping outside on flowers. This is especially true for male solitary bees that emerge in the spring and don’t build nests—they just eat and search for a mate. The males of some solitary species are even known to sometimes sleep together in large aggregations up to a hundred individuals.

[Photo and caption by Adrian Perez]

Mahlmann, T., Hipólito, J. and de Oliveira, F.F., 2014. Male sleeping aggregation of multiple Eucerini bee genera (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil. Biodiversity data journal, (2).