This photo was taken at 11:03AM...a little under two minutes after the last image in
this preceding series. I think it may be the same species---even the same individual---as in that series. My recollection is hazy, but I seem to recall the bee in the
preceding series "disappearing" into the morass of pollen and filaments at the base of the
Mentzelia involucrata flower here, and me taking the opportunity to adjust something on my camera while keeping one eye on the flower to make sure the bee hadn't flown off. When I finished, I cautiously tried to approach even closer. When this bee finally emerged from the morass of filaments, I think it saw how close I was and got spooked...I was barely able to snap the blurry image above as it warily zoomed out of the corolla.
I took the next shot in this series when it promptly returned.
In spite of the blurriness, I wanted to post this image because it gives some idea of the face (and mouthparts), which I thought may help in making an identification. Note the crusty glob of pasty-syrupy pollen gunk on the hind leg here. That wasn't visible on the bee in the previous series. But like I said, this bee may have been the same bee...seen here after furtively flopping around in the bountiful bottom of that flower during the two minutes between these shots and the previous ones. So it may have picked up all that gunk in the interim. (Or maybe it's a second bee that flew in with a heavy load already amassed. I'm not sure, that's why I'm posting the images as separate series.)