- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What's better than a bee threading through a flowering artichoke? Two bees, a honey bee and a long-horned sunflower bee.
Flowering 'chokes are big draws for bees. Plant 'em, let 'em flower, and they will come. Sometimes in droves. Sometimes in diversity. Always amazing.
A male sunflower bee, Svastra obliqua expurgata, aka the long-horned sunflower bee, stopped foraging to look at us with his big green eyes.
An Italian honey bee, Apis mellifera, buzzing low and packing white pollen, ignored us.
From their missions they did not stray.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Makes sense that the sunflower bee (Svastra spp.) forages on the genus Cosmos.
Cosmos (also the common name) is a member of the sunflower family, Asteraceae.
Sunflower bee: sunflower family. A specialist bee.
On a recent trip to the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens in Santa Rosa, we spotted scores of sunflower bees on cosmos, each bee packing a heavy load of golden pollen.
There was a pollen party going on, pure and simple.
Although the sunflower bee, as a floral visitor, is often mistaken for a honey bee, there's no mistaking that this is a pollinator, too.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Will the real honey bee stand up?
Not all bees are honey bees and not all floral visitors that look like bees are bees. Sometimes they're flies.
A recent trip to the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road at the University of California, Davis yielded a variety of floral visitors.
They all took a'liking to the 8-foot-tall Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), as orange as a Halloween pumpkin.
The floral visitors?
One was a drone fly (Ristalis tenax).
One was a sunflower bee (Svastra obliqua expurgata).
And one was a honey bee (Apis mellifera).
Scores of editors have mistaken drone flies and sunflower bees for honey bees and published photos that make entomologists cringe.
Entomologist/insect photographer Alex Wild of the University of Illinois (he received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis with major professor Phil Ward), wrote an eye-opening piece on his Scientific American blog about mistaken insect identities. You'll want to read this--and then take a look at his amazing Myrmecos site.
And if you want to learn about insect photography from a master, be sure to attend his seminar from 12:10 to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 26 in 122 Briggs Hall, UC Davis. His topic: "How to Take Better Insect Photographs."
And maybe he'll mention that Bees of the World book cover. The image is a fly.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Think bumble bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, sweat bees, sunflower bees and scores of other bees.
The grand opening celebration of the garden will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11, but the bees and other native pollinators are already out there.
And have been for some time.
Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, has been monitoring the garden for the past two years--from open field to planted garden.
He's found more than 50 different species of bees representing five families (Andrenidae, Apidae, Colletidae, Halictidae and Megachilidae).
They include the striped sweat bee Halictus ligatus from the family, Halictidae; the yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii from the family Apidae; the leafcutter bee, Megachile sp., from the family Megachilidae; and the sunflower bee, Svastra obliqua expurgata from the family Apidae.
How colorful they are. And how diverse.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The UC Davis Aboretum--particularly the Storer Garden--is full of color--and sunflower bees.
A recent trip to see the New England Asters (Aster novae-angliae from the Asteraceae or sunflower family) yielded a Nikon moment: fuzzy-wuzzy sunflower bees foraging on the striking purple flowers.
The sunflower bee (Diadasia enavata), family Apidae, is a specialist bee instead of a generalist. You'll see it on members of the sunflower family, such as the asters, daisies and sunflowers. Unlike honey bees,it doesn't go for the sage, lavender and catmint.
The sunflower bee is tiny but the sunflower family is b-i-g. How big? It includes more than 1,600 genera and 23,000 species, making it the second largest family of flowering plants.
The sunflower bees would definitely have "a field day" in a field of sunflowers.