Is this a bee?
Sun, 08/23/2009 - 20:19 — cdhutchins
This lovely insect loves my flower bed as well as the sunflowers. It is not very large, flies rapidly, yet can hover, has long antennae, the thorax is an iridescent teal green and the abdomen has distinctive black and yellow stripes. It folds its wings back over when it is on a flower. It does not appear to have hair for fuzz, though it is such a small insect that it is hard to tell if there are fine hairs on the thorax. I have not been able to find an image of this one at the bee index located on this website.
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Yes, it is.
Beaufiful, isn't it? Nice picture. It's a metallic green bee, genus Agapostemon. Sex is probably male, by the way, since it has yellow stripes on its abdomen and doesn't look to have much hair on its hind legs. See reference images here: http://bugguide.net/node/view/7997/bgpage