- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So here's this male longhorned bee (Svastra) sipping a little nectar from a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).
As the late Mr. Rogers (1928-2003), star of the TV show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," so often proclaimed: "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood."
And here I "bee," admiring and photographing the bees on the reddish-orange blossoms on July 13 in our little pollinator garden.
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood
A beautiful day for a neighbor
Could you be mine?
Would you be mine?
Yes, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, but wait--what's that?
Another male longhorned bee, fast as the proverbial speeding bullet, dive-bombs my little buddy. Both are male Svastra--territorial males--as identified by Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis. He's the co-author of California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (along with UC-affiliated colleagues Gordon Frankie, Rollin E. Coville and Barbara Ertter), a must for everyone who wants to learn about bees and blooms. A noted authority on bees, Thorp annually teaches at The Bee Course, a nine-day intensive workshop affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and held at the Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Ariz. To be held Aug. 20-30, it is offered "for conservation biologists, pollination ecologists, and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees." He's served as one of the instructors since 2002.
So, what happened to the male Svastra occupying the blossom?
Nothing. The occupier kept occupying and the dive-bomber quit dive-bombing.
I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you
(This image was taken with a Nikon D500, with a 105mm macro lens and a fast shutter speed of 1/3200 of a second. Other settings: f-stop, 7.1, and ISO 1600.)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Do they ever slow down?
Not much.
The male European wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum), a yellow and black bee about the size of a honey bee, spends most of the day defending its "property" (food) from other visitors. It's so territorial that it will dive-bomb and/or bodyslam visitors such as honey bees, butterflies, sweat bees, carpenter bees, bumble bees and praying mantids that dare land on or occupy "their" plant. We've seen them do this on catmint, blanket flower, Mexican sunflower, foxgloves and bluebeard.
If you're a floral visitor, it's no fun trying to sip some nectar while trying to dodge a yellow-and-black bullet. And if you don't move, you're likely to get hit. Unexpectedly.
Early morning, however, is a perfect time to photograph the male carder bees. They're often resting on a blossom, warming their flight muscles, or sipping a little nectar.
The bees, so named because the females collect or "card" leaf fuzz for their nests, were introduced in New York in 1963, and then began spreading west. They were first recorded in California (Sunnyvale) in 2007.
"Males are considerably larger than females, and have a spine on either side of the last two abdominal segments and three spines on the last segment," says Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and a professor of entomology at UC Davis. Those spines have been mistaken for stingers, but only females have stingers.
The female wool carder bees build their nests in rotting wood or preexisting tunnels, such as beetle burrows, Kimsey says. At night, we've seen the males sleeping in the bee condos (drilled blocks of wood) meant as homes for blue orchard bees.
A little R&R before D&B (dive-bombing and body-slamming).
(Note: Check out the Anthidium manicatum research in Pan-Pacific Entomologist, the work of entomologist Tom Zavortink, associate at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, and entomologist Sandra Shanks, formerly of Davis and now Port Townsend, Wash. They pointed out that several papers “have documented its spread from neighboring areas in the northeastern United States and southern Canada” and that the species has since crossed the country. It was confirmed in Colorado in 2005, Missouri in 2006, and Maine, Michigan, Maryland and California (Sunnyvale) in 2007, the entomologists wrote.)