it's a bird, it's a plane, no - it's a giant bee

A couple of years ago, I visited the world-renowned Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA as part of the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour. Although the Ruth Bancroft Garden is known mostly for its collection of cacti and succulents, it also has a nice variety of California natives, hence, was included as part of the tour.

While looking at the bed of Foothill penstemon (Penstemon heterophyllus), a crowd of us were startled by the appearance of a bee that was hovering around the flowers. I'd never seen one so big! Luckily I had my camera with me and managed to get a number of shots of it, following it around for awhile. Hopefully it wasn't too annoyed (!) as I had to steady my camera inches away from it.

I didn't know what kind of bee it was, and neither did the people that worked there. I, for one, thought it was some exotic bee that had flown in from who knows where; to give you an idea of how big it was, the blue blossoms of the Foothill penstemon measure about an inch long, and the bee was as long as a blossom!

I corresponded with the Ruth Bancroft staff, emailing some of my photos so they could pass them along to someone that could make an ID for us. As it turns out, it was a run-of-the-mill Valley Carpenter Bee. Well, it wasn't so run-of-the-mill to me... it's still the biggest bee I've ever seen. From what I've determined online, it was a male and similar to the smaller, shiny big black bees I often see around the native flowers I have at home. This one though resembled more of a honey bee in coloring.