Euglossa dilemma – Escaping from a toxic relationship?

A beautiful green bee found in Nicaragua, right on the wall of our beach hut! I guess it is the green orchid bee. That’s a famous and beautiful insect. But let’s get the ID straight first. Different sources mention that sweat bees look very similar and can only be distinguished by the shorter tung. Comparing pictures of both I find that only orchid bees have green legs, while sweat bees have dark legs. That would be much easier. I hope to find a picture of a sweat bee in my archive, they sound like a story too!
The first thing you will read about the males of these bees is that have enlarged legs where they store perfume. The more or better perfume a male has, the more attractive it is for females. These bees by the way do not live in a monachry like honey bees. In fact less than 10% of all 16.000 bee species live in colonies. I am so much used to think of bees as honey bees, that I still think solitary living bees must feel lonely.
I would say our bee is female, the last pair of legs does not look that large.

So the males would look for good smelling stuff, and as always in life, someone, namely some orchids, made use of that demand. This is a cute video explaining how orchids attract pollinators. Orchids do not just offer nectar for pollinators, orchid go further!

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The bucket orchid made the green bee famous, by it’s way of attracting pollinators.
Famous because of such videos where an orchid (Coryanthes, bucket orchids,) uses a clever mechanism to apply pollen to the bee. Let’s get this straight, the male bees need perfume to attract females. Some millions years later some orchids developed a way to make use of that need. Not in a nice way, but by nearly-drowning the bee, allowing only to escape when they squeeze themselves through a tunnel, where they get a package of pollen. Or if it happened before, leave the pollen they got before. It is not the nice way, bucket orchid! The drowning liquid contains the perfume the bee wants so badly.
This paper says that bees have been there before orchids developed the appealing scents, so I start thinking the orchard bees can’t be happy in this weird relationship!

Orchid bees, with over 200 species, live mainly in South and Central America. Our bee made it to Florida where it was found in 2003, but this time misidentified as E. viridissima and in 2011 described a new species. The Coryanthes orchids though did not migrate to Florida yet, so one could think the bees try to escape from this relationship?

Obviously male orchid bees find enough other perfume (e.g. from basil) to keep the population growing in their new home. That confirms the bee does not need the orchid!
Florida seems to be a hotspot for the settlement of invasive species.
While some species obviously have a negative effect on the local flora or fauna, it is slightly more complex with our orchid bee.
How would a beautiful harmless nectar slurper cause trouble in Florida?

By pollunating invasive plants that otherwise couldn’t grow! Happening with some sort of figs.
They also made their way to the Dominican Republic.