With the start of summer (which was a while ago in Florida!) come plenty of summer wildflowers and pollinators. One of my favorite summer pollinators are the metallic green sweat bees (Agapostemon texanus). I love their bright green color that just shines in the summer sun. I also think it’s pretty cool that they like to lick human sweat. In my first encounter with them there were several that kept flying to me and landing on my arms and legs. Fortunately, I’m not afraid of bees and know not to slap at them. In fact, I found the behavior kind of intriguing. A friend of mine who keeps honeybees had already explained to me that they sometimes do this to get the minerals in the sweat, but I had never seen it personally before. Since then I’ve learned that the behavior is much more common in the sweat bees than in other types of bees. Like other bees, metallic green sweat bees feed on flower pollen and nectar, and although they are not especially particular about which flowers they choose, they definitely seem to have a fondness for blackjack flowers (Bidens pilosa). The blackjacks are starting to pop up all over the place, which means that I’ll also be seeing more and more metallic green sweat bees.