I've seen bright metallic green bees here for years in the past, if I remember right these were leaf-cutter bees.

What I have seen this year that I have never seen before is a bee that is mostly black with thin stripes. One was carrying a fly and the other an ant. Very strange! I would have much preferred to see one carrying a flower.

Robber flies fly around with captured insects. Flies have two wings and bees, four.

Haven't seen bees carrying flowers, but metallic blue, green, and green with yellow/black abdomen bees have been in my yard over the years.

Leaf-cutting bees typically do not have metallic markings; sweat bees and "metallic green bees" (a literal common name!) do.

Yes, I wasn't sure about the leaf-cutting going with the metallic green. Other leaf-cutter bees I have seen were not colorful.

Bees are not predatory so you are seeing something else, such as the robber flies suggested. I think even bald-faced hornets (these are also black and white) would be expected to mash the prey into a ball before taking it to the nest. I once saw one kill a house fly and butcher it in such a manner.

Thank you everyone for your follow-ups. Now I have realized I had better explain myself better: I saw a honey colored insect just like European honey bee, flying with a bright blue flower. I apologize for my poor English writing. (English is my second language. Excuse!! Excuse!!) Anyway next time I see "My Bee" I hope I have a camera handy. Meantime I would like to think I saw a bee collecting flower petals for her nest.

A picture would be nice, I am also interested in the Google search you did, either the search words you used or a link to one of the resulting web pages you found.

My Google search words are: "flower carrying bee" and "flower petal carrying bee". There are a few interesting articles and photos. One of the links is: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-05/19/discovered-unique-bee-nests-made-out-of-petals

You made me look at a bumble bee carrying a flower petal this morning, but it dropped it almost as soon as I saw it. Interestingly, it kept going to the almost finished flowers on the salvia "hot lips" which dropped off because of the bee's weight. there is a myriad of fresher flowers (which it ignored), before flying away empty-handed, so to speak. Bee-haviour, very strange.

Thanks for that info, llaurell. The article and other search results refer to a unique, recently-discovered Eurasian bee.

The more local (Canada) bee you saw was most likely one of the leaf-cutter bees that found the whole flower to be the right size for its purpose. The bee would have been a female, as you thought.

I enjoyed reading about those bees very much!