I checked out a website where you can post photos of strange insects and ask for help identifying. In less than five minutes I had a response: it appears to be a California carpenter bee!
It's larger than a bumblee, all black, appears hard-shelled on the back two-thirds of the body, but fuzzy shoulders. Here's the really strange thing: it doesn't collect pollen from the front of the flowers...it goes to the back of the columbine blossom and uses a tiny little letter-opening type thing on it's mouth to slit open the spindly things on the back of the blossom and get nectar out. It's been in my garden for the last couple of days feasting on the columbine plants. I thought it was a bee, but I can't find anything online that looks like this.
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