Wow, I am so thrilled I was able to snap some pictures of these great beneficial insects on my roof/patio!  Here is an update to the labeling.  Three months after the original post, I have been able to identify the weird “native bee” as actually a Hover Fly.

So my mint plant had just recovered from a good pruning from one month ago and was flourishing.  Yesterday I noticed holes and black spots appeared on some of the leaves.  Today there were a lot more holes so I decided to document this occurrence.  All it is is a hungry little caterpillar!  This is totally harmless.  I in fact love having caterpillars around as they always remind me of Eric Carle’s book The Hungry Caterpillar.  I find the whole metamorphosis into becoming a butterfly is so fascinating.  If I were to cook with my mint, I could just make sure to clean the mint leaves (as I normally would) and just make sure I haven’t added the caterpillar into the meal by mistake.