- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Male squash bees know just where to sleep--inside a squash blossom.
If you're growing squash and you head out to your garden just after sunrise, you'll probably see the males fast asleep, waiting for visiting females to arrive.
They're native bees, specialist bees that forage in squash, zucchini, pumpkins and gourds. The females nest in the ground; the males sleep in the blossoms.
We recently spotted a male squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa) asleep in a squash blossom at the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly demonstration garden next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.
The squash bee thrust out his tongue for a sip of nectar and dew, and then darted from one squash blossom to another. His search for a mate proved fruitless that morning, but there's always tomorrow.
And meanwhile, a squash-blossom pillow to rest his head.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If it looks like a bee, sips nectar like a bee, and buzzes away like a bee, that doesn't mean it's a bee.
Last weekend we visited a Fort Bragg nursery specializing in succulents, and these "little white bees" were all over the red flowering thyme (Thymus serphyllum).
"Little white bees." That's what nursery personnel and visitors called them.
Not bees, though. Wasps.
But both in the order Hymenoptera.
Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, identified it as a sand wasp, genus Bembix, probably B. americana.
"These wasps fly very rapidly and frequently visit flowers," Thorp said.
Being a wasp, it's a predator and a carnivore, not a vegetarian like the honey bee. It preys upon flies, hover flies (aka flower flies or syrphids), tachinid flies, lacewings, and other critters, taking the carcasses back to its ground nest to feed its larvae.
The sand wasp digs its nest holes in the sand, thus its name. Its abdomen looks something like a basketball referee: except instead of black and white stripes, it sports curvy black and white stripes.
Bug Guide indicates that North America is home to 19 species of sand wasps.
This one (below) seemed to be sipping nectar (adults feed on nectar).
Probably a "matter of thyme" before it nailed a fly.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Not all bumble bees are primarily black.
Take the Bombus flavifrons.
We spotted a male Bombus flavifrons nectaring on Centaurea montana, aka perennial cornflower or mountain cornflower, recently in Mill Valley. It didn't look like many of the other common bumble bees, such as the yellow-faced bumble bee and the black-tailed bumble bee.
It was as yellow as a baby chick.
It's just one of 20,000 species of bees found globally, and one of 49 bumble bee (Bombus) species found in the United States and one of more than 250 species of bumble bees found worldwide.
Sometimes we overlook something we're not ready to see.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Forceps, please!
Have you ever stopped to admire a blossom and seen forceps protruding?
Earwig!
We were walking near Mrak Hall, UC Davis, on a hot summery afternoon and spotted a tell-tale sign: abdominal forceps, aka pinchers or pincers.
Earwig!
We unfolded the blossom and an earwig crawled out. "Female earwig," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis. "Young female earwig."
In a male earwig, the forceps are more widely spaced.
The most abundant earwig in California is the European eartwig, Forficula auricularia (family Forficulidae), according to entomologists Jerry Powell and Charles Hogue in their book, California Insects. However, it was not known in the state until 1923.
They describe the adult as about 12 to 22mm long, mostly brown with pale forewings and antennae. "The immatures and adults feed on a wide variety of substances, from flowers and green foliage near the ground to living and dead insects, including aphids."
This one seemed to be escaping from the heat.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Honey bee foragers collect nectar, pollen, water and propolis.
Propolis? What's propolis?
It's that sticky plant resin or "goo" that the bees use to seal small spaces in the hive. It's also known as "bee glue." When you see beekeepers using their hive tools to pry apart the frames, they're confronting that glue.
Norm Gary, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis and author of the newly published Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees, writes: "Bees use it as a caulking material to seal small cracks and crevices inside the hive, especially at the joints between chambers, making it difficult to separate hive chambers that are glued tightly together. In warm weather, propolis is sticky and pliable. In cold weather, it’s hard and brittle.”
“A few bees in each colony collect propolis during warm weather when it is pliable enough to manipulate," Gary continues. "This natural bee glue is so sticky that other bees need to assist the propolis forager during the unloading process. It’s amazing how they can manipulate it without becoming hopelessly entangled and stuck together, but they seem to manager just fine."
Bees also use propolis to narrow the entrance to their hive, or encase a large, immovable object in their colony--such as a dead mouse or lizard. Basically, they remove the smell by covering it up.
Humans also use it; it's highly marketable.
In Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees by Malcom T. Sanford and Richard E. Bonney, the authors write: “Research in human medicine has shown propolis to be an antimicrobial agent, an emollient, immunomodulator, dental anti-plaque agent and anti-tumor growth agent. Studies also indicate that it may be effective in treating skin burns.”
It's also used for such products as vehicles waxes and musical instrument varnishes. Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) reportedly favored it for the instruments he crafted.
But have you ever seen a bee carrying a load of propolis?
Staff research associate Elizabeth Frost of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis, recently noticed a bee returning to the hive with a heavy load of propolis.
Sticky, sticky stuff! Especially when temperatures hit 100 degrees.