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The following material taken with permission from: Mitchell, T.B. 1962. Bees of the Eastern United States, Volume II. North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station. Tech. Bul. No.152, 557 p.
Genus: Neolarra
Records of this genus in the eastern states are very few, due possibly to the extremely small size of the included species. They are parasitic in the nests of Perdita, and studies of the biology of the host species occurring in the East should yield data on these parasites. In addition to their minute size, they are unique among the eastern bees in the degree of reduction of the wing venation, having but one submarginal cell. Also the marginal cell is very small, and is delimited by a much thickened vein.
Species: Neolarra cockerelli
FEMALE — Length 3.5 mm.; breadth of abdomen 1 mm.; head and thorax chiefly black, abdomen testaceous, becoming somewhat darkened at tip; labrum testaceous; mandibles yellowish, narrowly red apically; antennae yellowish beneath, brownish above; basal segments of legs dark, tibiae and tarsi more or less testaceous, mid and hind spurs pale yellowish; tegulae testaceous; wings subhyaline, veins yellowish to piceous; cheeks somewhat narrower than eyes; clypeus only slightly protuberant, its median length about one-third the distance between eyes below; eyes very slightly convergent below; labrum rather broadly rounded apically, its median length about equal to basal width; mandibles simple, rather slender and elongate; basal segment of flagellum slightly shorter than pedicel, somewhat longer than segment 2, median segments considerably broader than long; axillae small, acute, conspicuously separated from margin of scutellum and from the posterior, lateral angle of the scutum, scutellum shallowly impressed medially; metanotum beneath narrowly produced, its apical margin slightly incurved; punctures fine and close but quite distinct over most of head and thorax, the propodeal triangle rather coarsely striate; abdominal terga microscopically roughened, without distinctly separated punctures; pygidial plate narrow and parallel-sided, rather elongate, margins carinate, apex very obscurely incised medially; pubescence greyish-white, very short and subappressed on face, cheeks, pleura and propodeum, very thin and hardly evident on scutum and scutellum but quite dense, appressed and scale-like on the lateral, posterior angles, on the metanotal process, and on propodeum beneath the median triangle; legs thinly but entirely whitish pubescent; pubescence of abdominal terga extremely short and thin, subappressed, forming rather thin, indefinite and barely evident, apical fasciae toward the sides, apical margins of the terga narrowly yellowish-hyaline.
DISTRIBUTION — Texas to Tennessee and Georgia, May to July.
HOST — One specimen of this parasite was collected by R. R. Snelling flying over a nesting area of Perdita obscurata.
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