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Climaciella brunnea. Cruickshank Trail, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Titusville, Brevard County, Florida, USA.

The most exciting encounter of my Florida trip. And there were hundreds of them sitting in the grass on the dike. I initially mistook them for paper wasps, but something was strange about them, even from a distance.

Found on the ground and apparently too cold to fly. Very small (< dime sized) bumble bee with very orange hair. Kept walking away on the ground so it ended up on my sleeve for the photo shoot where it warmed up and took off after a about 2 minutes. Never saw one quite like this before. Thank you John Ascher for the ID!

A male, so there was no danger of being stung. Found on some low growing Eupatorium and apparently out of energy., I placed it on a Clethra flower where it immediately began feeding. Not sure it helped this late in the season.

WOW!!! Flew up out of some ground cover and was surprisingly cooperative for the photo shoot. This individual really was that intensely colored and was still outside while I was editing some of these photos for comparison.