Ground bees revisited

Last week I posted about my mystery bugs which turned out to be ground bees. Even though I watered my flowers in the barrel, thinking I probably drowned out the bees, they dug out their holes again and made them even bigger.

I was able to get some much better shots of the bees. It helped to know that I wasn't going to get stung while I had my camera and my nose practically on top of them.

Just look at all the pollen on those legs!

Their wings beat so fast they become invisible!

The bee below really worked his way around the center of that moss rose (the order I took the photos is counter clockwise starting at the top right).

(Click to enlarge.)

A mysterious bug

Note: This post has been updated... the mystery is solved. See end of post.

On Sunday, I happened to notice a hole in the dirt in my flower barrel in front of the garage. It was about the size of a dime. I wondered what made it but didn't really think too much about it, and I pushed some dirt into it. Then a bit later, I notice several more holes scattered around in the dirt. They were a bit smaller and looked like this:

That bit of wire fencing is there to keep the cats/kittens out of the flowers. Well, it sorta helps... but not too much, as you can see. At least it keeps them from digging and... well... you know what cats do... in the dirt.

I then noticed bugs going into those holes in the dirt. Hmm. You can see a couple of the bugs in the air in the above photo and this next one (click to enlarge). There was a bit of yellowish color on them, and I wondered if they were young bumblebees. Of course they were flying pretty fast, making it really hard to get a good look.

I managed to get a closer picture of one of the bugs and decided it's not a bumblebee. The yellowish color I saw seemed to be just pollen on its legs. But I sure don't know what they are. Anybody else know?

Georgie was determined to be in the photo shoot, too, so here he is. :) Don'tcha just love his nose?

And here's another shot of the beautiful osteospermum, while I'm at it:

Update: Thanks to commenter Annie Dee, I now know that they are ground bees. You can see pics of many different kinds of them here.