- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Set a plate for one and you might get three more diners.
Such was the case recently in a Sonoma garden when a patch Iceland poppy (Papaver nudicaule) drew a posse of hungry honey bees, all elbowing up to the plate.
Iceland poppy is irresistible.
Ironically, you won't find Iceland poppy in Iceland. It's native to the subpolar regions of Europe, Asia and North America and the mountains of Central Asia, according to Wikipedia. Cultivars include yellow, orange, salmon, rose, red, pink cream and white as well as bi-colored varieties.
These honey bees (below, photographed on Nov. 12) seemed to prefer red!
Meanwhile, mark your calendar!
Amina Harris, director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center has scheduled the fourth annual UC Davis Bee Symposium for Saturday, March 3 in the UC Davis Conference Center. Keynote speaker is noted bee scientist Tom Seeley, Horace White Professor in Biology, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. He's the author of Honey Bee Ecology, Honey Bee Democracy, The Wisdom of the Hive and Following the Wild Bees. The symposium is sponsored by the Honey and Pollination Center and the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Harris has also announced that the second annual California Honey Festival is Saturday, May 5. The venue is the same: Main Street in Woodland. Last year some 20,000 people attended the festival--deemed a veritable bee hive of activity--and even more are expected this year. UC Davis will again be well represented.
More information to come!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The drone fly, aka European hover fly, aka syrphid fly, doesn't get as much press as the other drone, the unmanned aircraft.
But the drone fly (Eristalis tenax), about the size of a honey bee and often mistaken for a honey bee, makes for great in-flight photos. It's sort of the Fat Albert of the Blue Angels.
Last weekend we watched a drone fly (distinguished by the "H" on its abdomen), hovering over an Iceland poppy (Papaver nudicaule). The rain-battered poppy certainly wouldn't have won any gold awards in a county fair's garden show.
But to the drone fly, bent on foraging, this was gold. It emerged with "gold dust" (pollen) on its head.
Yes, its larva are known as rat-tailed maggots and yes, they frequent manure piles, sewage drainage ditches and other water-polluted areas.
But the adults are pollinators. Significant pollinators, at that.