All winter long my bee condo housed 16 tenants...and one earwig.

And quite comfortably, too, thank you.

It all began last fall when the leafcutting bees laid their eggs, provisioned each nest with a nectar/pollen ball, and plugged it with leaves.

Just about every morning, I did a bed check. Yes, 16 tenants and one earwig. (In actuality, there were probably more of those nasty little earwigs, but each time I checked, I found only one. But lots of frass!)

Bee condos are really just wood blocks drilled with tiny holes for native bee nests. 

In late April and early May, the tenants began to stir. As of yesterday, 13 holes had popped open. Ah, emergence! The nocturnal earwig? Nowhere in sight.

You, too, can rear leafcutting bees (Megachile spp.) in your yard. All you need is the housing, which you can buy at most beekeeping supply stores or online. You can also go online and buy the plans to build them.

Senior conservation associate Matthew Shepherd of The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, in his fact sheet about native bee nesting sites, wrote: "There are 4,000 species of native bees in North America. Together they form the most important group of pollinators. Like all wildlife they are affected by changes in our landscapes, especially the loss of nesting sites. Bees make nests in which they create and provision brood cells for their offspring. In many modern landscapes, a desire for neatness has usually resulted in the removal of bare ground, dead trees, and untidy corners of rough grass—all important nesting sites for bees."

Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, has provided a list of resources for native bee nesting requirements. It's available free on the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility website.

And, the Xerces Society recently published a Pollinator Conservation Handbook where you can find more information about our pollinators.

Just don't expect all your tenants to be pollinators, and all your pollinators to be tenants.

In the blink of an eye, they visit the rockpurslane (Calandrinia grandiflora).

Now you see them, now you don't.

They're a  sweat bee, a little larger than most sweat bees, but a little smaller than a honey bee.

Halictus farinosus (family Halictidae) are often see pollinating blueberry fields,  foraging among  California golden poppies,  and visiting members of the sunflower family, to name a few.

They're commonly called "sweat bees" because they're attracted to perspiration.

This one below is a female, as identified by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis. Note the apical whitish abdominal bands that distinguish this genus from the related genus Lasioglossum (its bands are located basally, not apically).

Halictus has been around for millions of years, paleontologists tell us. In fact, known fossil records date back to the Eocene epoch,  which took place 58 to 34 million years ago.

They definitely have persevered.

Whether it's coming or going, you notice this pollinator's presence.

The European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum), so named because the female collects or cards "plant hairs" or "plant fuzz" to line her nest, is strikingly beautiful.

The bee is mostly black and yellow. The females, about the size of a worker honey bee, range in body length from 11 to 13 millimeters, while the males are 14 to 17 mm. 

The males are very territorial. They put the "terror" in territorial. We see them hovering over the lavender in our yard and then bodyslamming honey bees. This behavior results in very skittish honey bees; no wonder honey bees don't linger on the blossoms long when their cousins show up!

The European wool carder bee, as its name implies, is a non-native. But so, too, are the honey bees, which European colonists brought to America in 1622.

The wool carder bee, according to research entomologist Tom Zavortink of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, was accidentally “introduced into New York state, presumably from Europe, before 1963.”  It was not purposefully introduced to pollinate alfalfa, as some reports allege, he said.

Writing in a 2008 edition of the Pan-Pacific Entomologist, Zavortink and fellow entomologist  Sandra Shanks, now of Port Townsend, Wash., pointed out that several papers “have documented its spread from neighboring areas in the northeastern United States and southern Canada” and that the species has since crossed the country. It was confirmed in Colorado in 2005, Missouri in 2006, and Maine, Michigan, Maryland and California (Sunnyvale) in 2007, the entomologists wrote.

Records show it was first collected in Davis on July 26, 2007.

The wool carder bee nests in convenient cavities such as old beetle holes and hollow stems, according native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor entomology at UC Davis. Its plant preferences include lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantine, in the mint family Lamiaceae), a perennial grown for its fuzzy, silvery gray-green foliage. It’s also been collected in the figwort/snapdragon family (Scrophulariacae) and the pea and bean family (Fabaceae), according to the Zavortink-Shanks research.

And in our yard, it seems to prefer three plants: lamb's ear, catmint, and lavender. 

If you've ever been to Angel Island or Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, you may have seen them.

Bumble bees.

And sometimes if you're fishing in the Bay, a bumble bee may land on your boat.

That was the case Monday, May 28 when the sportsfishing charter boat, The Morning Star, left its berth at Loch Lomond Marina, San Rafael, and headed out to the Bay to search for what skipper Gordon Hough calls "meals on reels."

The Morning Star encountered the bumble bee about two miles north of Angel Island, near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, later identified it from the photo below as a female Bombus vosnesenskii.

Nobody was catching any halibut or stripers at the time, so some of the anglers caught an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee.

"I thought it was remarkable to see a bee flying around in the middle of nowhere," said Hough. 

"She was probaby just too lazy to fly the distance and decided to hitch a ride," quipped Thorp. "Wonder if she does a daily commute to find a better patch of flowers."

Thorp says that bumble bees are "larger, stronger fliers than honey bees and can potentially fly for several miles."

"They have occasionally been found on boats off shore, but like honey bees, they tend not to forage across wide strips of water," Thorp says.

UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, who does fly research on Alcatraz, has seen bumble bees on Alcatraz, too. No honey bees, but bumble bees.

As for Hough, he says he has no plans to offer bumble bee charters.