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Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica

Finding these jewel-like orchid bees was a highlight of my trip to Costa Rica. I would never have discovered these bees, except entomologist Dr. Keng-Lou James Hung told me about them and encouraged me to try to attract them into camera range. These tropical bees spend most of the time in the canopy, but the males can be coaxed down with strong botanical scents. I used a drop of eucalyptus oil on a driftwood log at the beach. Within a few minutes, several metallic green males (E. imperialis) were buzzing around the log. One quickly landed, and others followed. After about 10 minutes, the green ones disappeared, and the copper-red ones (E. flammea) arrived. They stayed for several more minutes, and then the show was over.

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