Image of wool-carder bee

Description:

Excuse the low quality of this heavily cropped photo but this is the first wool carder bee I have ever seen. (I thought I saw one in a neighbours' garden earlier this summer but it flew off before I could get a close look at it.) The species is a northern hemisphere species new to New Zealand. It was first seen in Nelson and Napier in 2006 and Auckland in 2008. It has been recorded recently in Christchurch by others but this is the first one I've seen.