Little Jewel

I took George out into the front garden, and saw blue banded bees buzzing around, but by the time I went back into the house and grabbed my camera, they had all buzzed off.  I got this one instead.

These are one of our tiniest and most beautiful native bees, commonly known as sweat bees (Halictidae spp) and many people mistake them for flies.

Not easy to photograph either - you can tell the size of the insect by the size of the flower which is your common or garden salvia.  It's at times like this I do miss my 100 mm prime macro lens.