- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Mama said there'd be days like this,
There'd be days like this, Mama said...
When Van Morrison wrote the lyrics to "Days Like This," a song popularized by The Shirelles, he probably wasn't thinking of a mama garden spider or her prey.
Still, when Mama Spider weaves her web and snares three pollinators in two days, that's a "Wow." A double, triple "Wow!"
Garden spiders are good to have in the garden when they're capturing and eating pests, like flies, knats, mites, lygus bugs, katydids and the like. Just wish they'd quit picking on the pollinators.
Still, Mama has to eat.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was not a good day to be a honey bee.
But it was a good day to be a spider.
For days we watched honey bees, sweat bees and syrphid flies visit a patch of alyssum and African daisies in our yard. Their floral visits did not go unnoticed. A crafty spider stretched a web between two citrus trees just above the flowers.
The spider waited patiently, sometimes dangling in the middle of the web, sometimes tucked beneath the citrus leaves. The web seemed more like a fishing net than a trap because, under our watch, she caught nothing.
Her prey easily slipped through the net and bounced out of harm's way.
Not so on Saturday. A honey bee encountered the sticky web and could not escape--neither the sticky web nor the spider's bite. By the time we saw the bee, she was already toast...well...spider dinner.
It was not a good day to be a honey bee.
But it was a good day to be a spider.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The very presence of a black widow spider, shiny black with a globe-shaped abdomen, strikes fear in most people.
And not just on Halloween.
"Many spiders will bite when trapped but black widow spiders (Theridiidae: Latrodectus) are the most dangerous North American species," write Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney in their newly published book, Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates: A Guide to North American Species.
"Their strong venom can kill," agrees George C. McGavin in the Smithsonian Handbooks' Insects, Spiders and Other Terrestrial Arthropods, "but a fast-acting antivenom can be given by injection."
The black widow is a cobweb spider and "the females produce about 200 to 250 eggs, attached to the web in a sac," McGavin says.
So, where can you find black widow spiders? They're usually in more concealed places than the common house spider, which is "found in any dry structure, including houses, basements an barns, as well as under natural 'roofs' such as overhanging ledges," according to Eiseman and Charney.
And, Eiseman and Charney point out, the black widow spider webs are "composed of extremely strong, coarse threads"--unlike those of common house spiders.
McGavin says black widow spiders are commonly found in leaf litter, under stones and in and around buildings.
We sighted one under leaf litter recently at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. Its distinguishing mark: the reddish-orange hourglass on its stomach.
Then last week we spotted a black widow spider guarding her gumdrop-sized sac in a secluded area of a UC Davis parking garage.
She didn't pay attention to the "permit parking only" signs.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She didn't come home last night.
The little honey bee at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, University of California, Davis, wound up in a spider's stomach.
This morning we stopped by the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, the half-acre bee friendly garden planted last fall next to the facility, and a spider was having breakfast--one of Susan Cobey's New World Carniolans.
We spotted the same spider chowing down on a ladybug during the grand opening celebration on Saturday, Sept. 11, and we remember saying "Good, it didn't get a bee."
This time it did.
I jokingly asked beekeeper Elizabeth Frost, staff resource associate who works with Cobey at the Laidlaw facility, if she were missing any bees. (After all there are "only" about six million of them in the apiary.)
It would have been hilarious if she had said "Did a bed check. One unaccounted for."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Not today.
Bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is.
Spiders lurk in flowers because that's where the insects are. Whether they spin a sticky web, ambush their prey or just outrun or outmaneuver insects, spiders are there.
Waiting.
This morning a spider successfully trapped a honey bee in what amounted to an intricate "world wide web" connecting a tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii) to catmint (Nepeta).
But just as the hungry predator began racing toward its struggling prey, something unexpected happened.
Freedom. The photographer flicked the web and released the bee.
Just in time for National Pollinator Week.