- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
You will if you attend the Spring Festival hosted at the Loma Vista Farm, part of the Vallejo City Unified School District, on Saturday, May 16. Offering free admission, the festival will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 150 Rainier Ave., Vallejo.
The bumble bee nest? It's the home of a colony of yellow-faced bumble bees, Bombus vosnesenskii, a native bee species commonly found on the west coast of North America, from Baja California to Canada.
Rita LeRoy discovered the entomological prize. She's the "Farm Keeper"--that's her official title--at the Loma Vista Farm. "I've worked for the Vallejo school district at Loma Vista Farm for 25 years," she related. "I teach students about nature and nutrition through hands on farm lessons involving cooking, gardening, insect appreciation, and animal care."
The nest is currently roped off, just waiting for two-legged folks to admire and appreciate it. It's a marvel of nature, for sure.
More on the Loma Vista Farm? Founded in 1974, it's a 5-acre outdoor classroom that provides hands-on educational activities involving plants and animals for children of all ages and abilities, according to its website. "We seek to increase students' knowledge of nature and nutrition while enhancing academic learning, ecoliteracy, and psychosocial development."
The farm offers field trips, after-school opportunities through 4-H, community service and volunteer opportunities, garden-based workshops for adults, and job training for college students, developmentally disabled young adults, and disadvantaged youth.
We first visited the Loma Vista Farm back in the 1980s as part of a 4-H activity. It was--and is--a delightful place to be. (And bees think so, too!)
Loma Vista Farm is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. during the school year. It is closed on holidays and follows the Vallejo school district calendar.
And the Spring Festival? It's an opportunity for friends and families to visit the farm and participate in crafts and activities. Activities include educational information booths, animal adventures, train rides and greenhouse tours. Download flier.
In the meantime, check out the red pollen load of Bombus vosnesenskii (at left). We saw the bumble bee foraging on vetch last weekend at the Hastings Preserve, Carmel, a biological field station operated by the University of California. The Hastings Preserve was the site of a BugShot macro photography workshop taught by acclaimed insect photographers Alex Wild, John Abbott and Thomas Shahan.
And for more information on bumble bees, be sure to read the book, Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton Press), co-authored by one of our own, Robbin Thorp, native pollinator specialist and distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis. Lead author is Paul H. Williams, and co-authors are Leif Richardson and Sheila Colla.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Don't you just love watching bumble bees?
This morning we watched a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) foraging on lavender. It moved quickly from one blossom to another, barely allowing us time for a "bee shoot." It was "bee gone" every time we aimed the camera.
Finally, it cooperated.
Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, identified it as a male, the first (photo of a male Bombus vosnesenskii) he's seen this season.
He thinks a prize is in order.
Well, okay!
Thorp, co-author of the newly published Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton Press), and Davis photographers Gary Zamzow and Allan Jones and yours truly usually have a friendly competition to find and photograph the first bumble bee of the year, of the month, of the day, of the minute. Well, almost. It's "Bumble Bee Alert" a lot. On Christmas Day, I managed to capture an image of a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, foraging on jade blossoms at the Benicia Capitol State Historic Park, Solano County. (The black-tailed bumble bees emerge much earlier than the yellow-faced bumble bees.)
Now a Bumble Bee Watch group has launched a website to track bumble bee populations across the U.S. and Canada. This is a collaborative effort among several conservation groups and universities, according to the website and they need your sightings, including photos. As a spokesperson said: "The information will help researchers determine the status and conservation needs of bumble bees, and help locate rare or endangered populations. They will also help with identification!"
Well, today, I watched one male Bombus vosnesenskii, and he watched me.
My prize? Just enjoying--and appreciating--nature at its finest.
(Note: How can you distinguish a male from a female Bombus vosnesenskii? Said Robbin Thorp: "Boy bumble bees have an one more segment in the antenna and the abdomen than females do. The tip of the abdomen is also more rounded. Male bees do not have any pollen transport structures. In bumble bees, this means that the hind tibia is much more slender than in females which have corbiculae (pollen baskets). In Bombus vosnesenskii there is a second partial yellow band on the abdomen on T-5."
"The most accurate test of female vs male bumble bees, is to pick up a specimen with a bare hand. If you get stung, it is a female, if not, it is a boy bee. Boy bees can't sting, because they have no stinger. But I do not recommend this test unless you already know the answer! :)"
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Billed as "the first comprehensive guide to North American bumble bees to be published in more than a century," it allows readers, both amateurs and professionals, to identify all 46 bumble bee species found in North America and learn about their ecology, changing geographic distributions, and the endangered and threatened species.
Bumble bees, you know, are among the most recognizable of the world's 20,000 species of bees. The genus, Bombus, has only 250 species. A small number, indeed.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, is back.
We spotted some overwintering queen bumble bees gathering nectar on a hebe bush last Sunday at the Berkeley marina.
Distinguished by their yellow faces, yellow head pile, black wings, and a bold yellow stripe on their lower abdomen, they bumbled around the hebe as if they were newbie pilots.
The warm weather invited them out of their underground nests. RSVP accepted. The hebe proved to be a good host, enticing them with the sweet scent of nectar. Soon the queens will be starting rearing a colony, and the worker bees will emerge.
Hebe (genus Hebe), a native of New Zealand, grow wells along the coast. Gardeners who tend the marinas around the San Francisco Bay seem to favor it.
So do the bumble bees.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Native on native.
That's when you get when you see a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) on a penstemon, also known as "beard's tongue."
Both the bee and the flower are native to North America.
Native Americans reportedly used the penstemon, formerly classified in the Scrophulariaceae family and now considered a member of the Plantaginaceae family, to relieve toothaches.
Whether it relieves toothaches or not, the penstemon, with its two-lipped tubular flowers, is quite attractive to bumble bees!