Bees, butterflies, beetles, birds and bats.

What do they have in common? Skipping the alliteration for a moment, they're all pollinators.

Honey bees grab the most attention, of course, and they do the bulk of the work. But so do bumble bees and other native bees.

But other pollinators include moths, hummingbirds, wasps and flies (especially the syrphid flies, aka hover flies or flower flies often mistaken for honey bees by the untrained eye.)

The National Park Service describes pollination as "anything that helps carry pollen from the male part of the flower (stamen) to the female part of the same or another flower (stigma). The movement of pollen must occur for the plant to become fertilized and produce fruits, seeds, and young plants. Some plants are self-pollinating, while others may be fertilized by pollen carried by wind or water. Still, other flowers are pollinated by insects and animals - such as bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, birds, flies and small mammals, including bats."

"At least 75 percent of all the flowering plants on earth are pollinated by insects and animals," they point out on their website. "This amounts to more than 1,200 food crops and 180,000 different types of plants—plants which help stabilize our soils, clean our air, supply oxygen, and support wildlife."

One pollinator that absolutely takes our breath away is the Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, especially when it touches down on the colorful Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, and begins to nectar.

If you're lucky, you'll see different species sharing the same blossom. 

Get ready...it's happening...the annual World Bee Day...

Monday, May 20 is World Bee Day, as declared by the United Nations "to raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face, and their contribution to sustainable development." 

"The goal is to strengthen measures aimed at protecting bees and other pollinators, which would significantly contribute to solving problems related to the global food supply and eliminate hunger in developing countries," the website points out. "We all depend on pollinators and it is, therefore, crucial to monitor their decline and halt the loss of biodiversity."

Lately we've been noticing multiple species of bumble bees in our pollinator garden in Vacaville. One of them appears to be Bombus bifarius.

The bumbles we've seen over the years in our pollinator garden--B. californicus, B. melanopygus, B.vosnesenskii and B. bifarius--especially like Coreopsis, a genus of flowering plants in the aster family, Asteraceae. It's also called tickseed.

Now that's not a good name for such a showy flower! 

What insects did you see during the Solar Eclipse, dubbed "The Great North American Eclipse?" And what were they doing?

In some parts of North America, as the moon passed between the earth and sun, folks saw a total solar eclipse. But here in Solano County, California, totality it was not.

Partial.

We watched the Great North America Eclipse as the moon took a tiny bite out of the sun. 

And then a queen bumble bee buzzed into our pollinator garden just as the moon helped itself to another bite.

Bite of the moon or bite of the bumble bee?

Game over.

The bumble bee won (well, just for a few minutes) and then we returned to the solar eclipse.

The bumble bee appeared to be a Bombus californicus. And she was hungry. 

If she had experienced a total solar eclipse, she may have immediately returned to her nest: "It's dark. Day over."

A black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, foraging on lupine at Bodega Bay on April 24. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Windy? 27 mph!

We didn't think we'd see a single bumble bee foraging on the blooming ice plants, poppies, wild radishes, or lupines, but there it was, a black-tailed bumble bee, Bombus melanopygus, nectaring on a yellow lupine near the entrance to Doran Regional Park. 

This bumble bee species is one of the earliest to emerge in the spring. We've seen it as early as Jan. 1 in Benicia. And the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, coordinates a contest to see who can find and photograph the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano. This year Ria de Grassi of Davis spotted a B. melanopygus, foraging on her ceanothus plant in her backyard on Jan. 8.  (See Bug Squad blog.)

But back to the Bombus at Bodega. How can a tiny bumble bee, ranging from 0.6 to 1 inch in length, withstand that 27 mph wind, which seemed near gale force? Bumble bees pay no attention to gale force, which the National Weather Service defines as between 34 and 47 knots (39 to 54 mph).

Bumble bee authority John Ascher messaged me: "Their flight and resistance to cold is amazing!" Truly! 

"Powerful flight muscles are packed into their stout little bodies, which are covered in thick fur," according to an Aug. 2, 2021 post in Imprint Ecology, Chichester, West Sussex, England. "These can propel them through high winds, in comparison to honeybees and butterflies who find it difficult to get airborne in wind above 20 mph. In addition, bumblebees can dislocate their flight muscles and shiver them to keep warm which is very useful on wet, windy days. Even in winter, you can see big queen bumblebees happily foraging on gorse, heather and crocus, when no other insects are out and temperatures have barely reached double figures."

"Bumblebees evolved in the Himalayas, around 25 to 40 million years ago. They are designed to withstand bleak, windy, mountainous climates and don't actually fare very well in hot places."

The black-tailed bumble bee predominantly has pale yellow hair "with bands of black hair between the wing bases and across the middle of the abdomen," according to the quartet of UC-based scientists, Gordon Frankie, (the late) Robbin Thorp, Rollin Coville and Barbara Ertter, in their book, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists.

They also forage quickly, especially in a strong wind...or an uninvited gust.