A maybe sad bee story UPDATED

Do you remember the eastern carpenter bee that I found before the Master Naturalist class toured our yard last Thursday? She was very legarthic and hardly moved. I carried her around in my hand for an hour, then I released her in the damianita. I assumed those were milkweed pollinia (pollen sacs) on her front legs.

Yesterday, trainee Karen B. emailed me: "...I took a photo of the bee and forwarded it to my biologist daughter, who then forwarded to her friend who has a PhD in parasitic insect fungi. After looking at the photo, her friend believes the bee is infected with Laboulbeniales. I thought you might be interested to hear this. Thank you for sharing your paradise!"

Yikes, that's a new one to me – an insect-associated fungi! I'll keep a look out now for that. Thanks, Karen!  

UPDATE April 19, 2023 – I shared this photo on iNaturalist yesterday. @michieldg responded: Yeah, they're pollinia. As far as I know, there's no Labouls on bees, and typically they're one constant elongated shape attached to the animal, rather than the thick-then-thin that these are." 

When I Googled Labouleniales images, I noticed that mostly infected ladybugs turned up. So this is good news for our yard. But I'll still watch out for that fungi.