- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A sneak peak at a couple of Solano County Fair entries...think insects!
The COVID-19 pandemic derailed fairs and festivals, but now they're back on track.
Take the 73rd annual Solano County Fair, themed "Bales of Fun." Located at 900 Fairgrounds Drive, Vallejo, it opens June Thursday through Sunday, June 16-19, and gate admission is free. Headed by president Lee Williams of Rio Vista, the board of directors includes Valerie Williams of Vacaville, better known as "Mrs. Solano County 4-H." In fact, Valerie has served tirelessly for some 25 years as the Solano County 4-H program representative. The 4-H program is part of the University of California's Agriculture and Natural Resources or UC ANR.
Our favorite part of the fair? The exhibits at McCormack Hall, particularly those that are insect-themed.
One entry, by talented photographer Matthew Agbayani, 17, of the Vaca Valley 4-H Club, Vacaville, shows a syrphid fly and a honey bee sharing a sunflower. It takes a special kind of patience to be able to capture two species on the same flower.
Many folks mistake syrphid flies, aka hover flies or hover flies, for honey bees. They're both pollinators.
Three of the easiest ways to differentiate a fly from a bee:
- A fly has one set of wings. A bee has two sets.
- A fly has short, stubby antennae. A honey bee doesn't.
- A fly has no corbicula or pollen basket. A honey bee (worker bee) does.
Among the other insect-themed displays: Rio Vista resident Richard Laswell's exquisite watercolor depicting three dragonflies that he entered in the amateur art division; and Vallejo resident Ashley Workman's colorful blue butterfly (oils and acrylics) that she entered in open art division.
Art by Iris Mayhew of American Canyon also caught our eye. She drew inspiration from a safari in Kenya. "I love animals," she said. That includes monarchs and Gulf Fritillaries. She'll be depicting them next.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What does science tell us about this?
In a recently published EurekAlert news story, titled "Research Reveals Why Plant Diversity Is So Important for Bee Diversity," researchers at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of Sussex, related that bumble bees have distinct advantages of honey bees.
"In the study, published in the journal Ecology, the researchers used stopwatches to determine how many flowers a bee visited in one minute," according to the news release. "Using a portable electronic balance to weigh each bee, researchers found that, on average, bumble bees are almost twice as heavy as the honey bees. This means that they use almost twice as much energy as honey bees. The stopwatch results showed that they visit flowers at twice the rate of honey bees, which compensate in terms of energy efficiency."
Bumble bees dominated on such species as lavender and "were visiting flowers at almost three times the rate of honey bees."
"While they forage on the same flowers, frequently we find that bumble bees will outnumber honey bees on a particular flower species, while the reverse will be true on other species growing nearby," said Professor Francis Ratnieks. "What was remarkable was that differences in foraging energy efficiency explained almost fully why bumble bees predominated on some flower species and honey bees on others."
The professor said that in essence, "bumble bees have an advantage over honey bees in being faster at visiting flowers, so can gather more nectar (energy), but a disadvantage in being larger, and so using more of the nectar energy to power their foraging. On some flower species this gave an overall advantage to bumble bees, but on others to honey bees."
(The late Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis and a global bumble bee expert, told us that bumble bees are earlier risers than honey bees and can forage at lower temperatures. He co-authored Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide (Princeton University Press) and California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday Press).
The Sussex researchers studied 22 flower species in southern England and analyzed the behavior of more than 1000 bees. They found that "energy efficiency" is a key factor when it comes ot mediating competition.
"Bee body weight and the rate at which a bee visits flowers determine how energy efficient they are when foraging," according to the news article. "Body weight determines the energy used while flying and walking between flowers, with a bee that is twice as heavy using twice as much energy. The rate at which a bee visits flowers, the number of flowers per minute, determines how much nectar, and therefore energy, it collects. Together, the ratio of these factors determines bee foraging energy efficiency. On some flower species such as lavender, bumble bees dominated and were visiting flowers at almost three times the rate of honeybees."
The researchers said that energy (provided by nectar for bees) is a fundamental need, but the fact that honey bees and bumble bees do not compete head on for nectar is reassuring in terms of conservation and co-existence.
As Ratnieks explained: "Bumble bees have a foraging advantage on some plants, and predominate on them, while honey bees have an advantage on others and predominate on these. Bee conservation therefore benefits from flower diversity, so that should certainly be a focus on bee conservation efforts. But fortunately, flowering plants are diverse."
The abstract in Ecology:
"Revitalizing our understanding of species distributions and assembly in community ecology requires greater use of functional (physiological) approaches based on quantifiable factors such as energetics. Here, we explore niche partitioning between bumble and honey bees by comparing a measure of within‐patch foraging efficiency, the ratio of flower visitation rate (proportional to energy gain) to body mass (energy cost). This explained a remarkable 74% of the variation in the proportions of bumble to honey bees across 22 plant species and was confirmed using detailed energy calculations. Bumble bees visited flowers at a greater rate (realizing greater energy benefits) than honey bees, but were heavier (incurring greater energy costs) and predominated only on plant species where their benefit : cost ratio was higher than for honey bees. Importantly, the competition between honey bees and bumble bees had no consistent winner, thus highlighting the importance of plant diversity to the coexistence of competing bees. By contrast, tongue : corolla‐tube‐length ratio explained only 7% of the variation (non‐significant). Our results confirm the importance of energetics in understanding community ecology and bee foraging niche and highlight the energetic tightrope navigated by foraging bees, since approximately half the nectar energy gained was expended in its collection."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's mid-February and early morning in Vallejo, Calif.
Westringia is blooming along a walking path near the Glen Cove Marina.
Suddenly out of no where, there's a flash of yellow and black. A black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, buzzes by our camera and heads for the Westringia.
Good choice. The Westringia, a genus in the mint family and endemic to Australia, is a late-winter blooming plant that provides nectar and pollen when just about nothing else around does. It's tough. It can take it, whether it's the California drought, heavy rains, hot sun, or cold temperatures. And here, near the Carquinez Bridge, it forms a healthy hedge of white flowers and light gray-green leaves. And it's blooming profusely, beckoning bees.
Bombus melanopygus is the kind of bee that lingers not. One minute you see it, the next minute, it's gone. It knows what it needs, where to get it, and how long to stay to elude those predatory wasps.
Intelligence?
That brings to mind the recently published research from Queen Mary University of London that indicates that bumble bees not only possess complex navigational skills, rudimentary culture, and emotions, but they can even use tools. Tools!
It's fairly well known that bumble bees can learn to pull a string to get a sugary reward by watching other bees perform the task. Now Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, says that in the UK study, bumble bees pushed around a small, yellow ball to a specific target to get a sugary reward.
Of course, bees in the wild, including those buzzing around the Westringia in Vallejo, don't pull strings or push balls, but they do shove aside the flower petals to get at that sugary reward--nectar.
The bumble bee brain is about the size of a sesame seed, but if you say it has a "bee brain," that would not do it justice.
Check out the video and news story on the Science journal website.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There she was--a gorgeous orange-and-black butterfly sipping nectar from a rosemary bush near the Glen Cove Marina, Vallejo.
She seemed so out of place and out of season. It was Sunday morning, Feb. 11, and we were east of the Carquinez Bridge, with the temperature pushing 70 degrees after a raucous winter storm.
The butterfly? A West Coast Lady, Vanessa annabella (as identified by Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology. It's often confused with Vanessa cardui, commonly known as "Painted Lady."
"Adults 'hibernate,' but near sea level can be seen sunbathing and being territorial on sunny, mild days all winter long," he writes on his website. "There is probably some altitudinal migration, but no evidence of latitudinal migration as in V. cardui."
"Host plants are herbaceous Mallows, including Cheeseweed (Malva), Alkali Mallow (Malvella), and Hollyhock (Alcea); not recorded locally on Velvet Leaf (Abutilon theophrasti). The species also uses Urticaceae. Several broods, the entire season at any given location."
Shapiro describes the West Coast Lady as "an earnest and generalist flower visitor. In winter often seen on flowers of Rosemary, Escallonia (an evergreen shrub or hedge) and Salpichroa (nightshade family) in gardens."
Our West Coast Lady soaked up a little sunshine and a little nectar and off she fluttered.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The next time you see a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) packing pollen, check out the color.
Last Saturday on an outing in Vallejo overlooking the Carquinez Straits, we noticed a yellow-faced bumble bee on an Echium candicans (Pride of Madeira) packing red pollen, as brilliant as a sun-ripened strawberry.
It probably picked up the red pollen from the nearby California golden poppies--not from the Echium because Echium pollen is a bluish/lavender.
The yellow-faced bumblebee, so called because of its yellow face, is native to the west coast of North America. In the global line-up, it's one of some 250 species of bumble bees--all within the genera Bombus, which is Latin for buzzing or humming.
Bombus vosnesenkii is easily identifiable by its yellow face and the yellow stripe or band at the T4 segment of its thorax.
Want to learn more about bumble bees and how to identify them? Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, co-authored the landmark publication, Bumble Bees of North America: an Identification Guide (Princeton University Press) with Paul Williams, Leif Richardson and Sheila Colla. It won a 2015 Outstanding Reference Sources Award from the Reference and User Services Association, American Library Association.
There's increasing interest in bumble bees--and rightfully so--due to the critical role they play in our ecosystems. Bumble Bees of North America is described as "the first comprehensive guide to North American bumble bees to be published in more than a century."
We haven't seen many bumble bees this year, but as spring temperatures warm up and blossoms beckon, they'll be out there foraging.
Graced with many colors of pollen.