- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Oh, to be a praying mantis, and hide among the flowers waiting for prey.
On a warm sunny morning in Vacaville, Calif., this female Stagmomantis limbata positioned herself in a patch of Mexican sunflowers, Tithonia rotundifola.
She lurked beneath a blossom, camouflaged with the green leaves and stems. She groomed herself. It's important to wash up before breakfast and be presentable at the breakfast table and say your prayers.
Then she spotted a honey bee.
Ms. Mantis climbed the stem and peered over the orange petals.
What happened next? Spoiler alert, no breakfast for Ms. Mantis.
Later, though, another mantis hanging out in a nearby rosebush snagged and ate a small fly and a slow milkweed bug. Satiated, she crawled beneath a leaf, perhaps to digest her breakfast and sleep. You could say she "rose" to the occasion, or you could just say she was hungry.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Are you tired of the triple-digit temperatures? Wish someone would throw a breeze your way and provide a little shade?
A honey bee foraging on a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifola) probably felt a slight breeze when a Western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) fluttered down and landed next to her.
This is a two-insect blossom now.
Butterfly: "Bee, what are you doing?"
Bee: "Sipping some nectar, same as you."
Butterfly: "Bee, don't get any closer."
Bee, edging closer. "But I was here first. The nectar is excellent."
Butterfly: "Go away."
Bee: "No."
Butterfly: "Then I will." The butterfly lifts off.
Bee: "Thanks for the shade. You make a good umbrella, Madam Butterfly. Come back anytime."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's early morning and the spider is hungry.
It snares a honey bee foraging for pollen and nectar in a patch of Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifola) in a Vacaville pollinator garden.
The spider slides down the sticky web, kills its prey with a venomous bite, and begins to eat.
The spider is not alone. It soon has unexpected dining partners: tiny freeloader flies (family Milichiidae) who did no work but insist on their share of the free food.
Indeed, orbweavers are artists. Wrote Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) in her poem, "The Spider as an Artist":
The spider as an artist
Has never been employed
Though his surpassing merit
Is freely certified.
Today was a good day for an unemployed artist, freely certified, too--and a good day for the freeloaders, certified hungry.
Emily Dickinson? She wrote many poems with references to such arthropods as bees, spiders, butterflies, flies and gnats,
Emily Dickinson's Arthropods
"By my count, 180 of Dickinson's 1,775 poems refer to one or more arthropods," wrote U.S. Army medical entomologist (retired) Louis C. Rutledge in The American Entomologist, summer of 2003.
Who knew?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's Day 3 of National Pollinator Week.
Fortunately, a tiger came to visit us--no, not the predatory jungle animal, Panthera tigris, but a newly emerged Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus.
This native butterfly is quite colorful, with black stripes accenting its brilliant yellow wings, and blue and orange spots gracing its tail. When it flutters into your garden, you stop everything you're doing and become a professional butterfly watcher until it leaves. It's the law, I think. Anyway, Western tiger swallowtails are almost hypnotic.
This fluttering tiger took a liking to our Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, and was totally unaware of a tiny longhorned bee, a male Melissodes agilis, heading straight for it.
Pretend you're the butterfly. Here you are, newly emerged and you've discovered a patch of Tithonia offering delicious nectar! Heaven scent! Then you see a speedy little critter targeting you. He's not about to make a lane change. There's no garden patrol to monitor his speed or aggressive behavior. He's coming for you. He aims to hit you and dislodge you from your perch.
This little bee, in fact, targets all critters occupying "his" flowers. He isn't out to sting the floral occupants, as one reader surmised. It's a male bee, and boy bees can't sting. Nor is he fighting over pollen. Males do not collect pollen or nectar for their colony--the females do.
So what is he doing? He's trying to protect or save the floral resources for the females of the species so he can mate with them. The late Robbin Thorp, noted bee expert and distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, used to talk about these little guys bullying all the floral tenants--from Valley carpenter bees to majestic monarchs to praying mantids. Sometimes an unfortunate Melissodes winds up in the spiked forelegs of a mantis. Or in the clutches of a spider. Or in the beak of a bird.
It's a jungle out there. Sometimes it's the survival of the fittest. Or the flittest.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was July 3, 2020.
The male bees, Melissodes agilis, were getting quite territorial.
Every time a butterfly, a honey bee or another insect in our family's pollinator garden expressed an interest in foraging on the Mexican sunflowers, Tithonia rotundifola, a male Melissodes buzzed them.
"Get out of here!" he threatened. "I own these flowers. These are mine!"
What to do? I grabbed my Nikon D500 and 200 mm macro lens, adjusted the settings to 1/5000 of a second, f-stop 5.6, ISO of 800, and managed to get a shot of the menacing bee confronting a bewildered monarch.
Eye-to-eye. Antenna-to-antenna. Wing-to-wing.
What happened? The monarch quickly escaped the wrath.
And the bee? It buzzed off, only to return to target another insect.
"Get out of here! I own these flowers. These are mine!"
Another tiff on the Tithonia. Another round on the rotundifola.
Just another day in the pollinator garden.
