Velvet Ants (Dasymutilla spp.) Velvet Ants are actually wasps, and more than three dozen species of them are found here in the Sonoran Desert. This is a female, she is wingless while the males have wings and look nothing like the females. The females scurry along the ground and find burrows of other solitary bees and wasps and lays her eggs on their pupae or larvae and when the Velvet Ant larvae hatch they feed on them.

Be very careful with this bee, on a sting pain scale of 1 - 4 this little lady is a 3, a honey bee a 2 and a Tarantula Hawk is a really nasty 4.