- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What's better than seeing a yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, foraging on an neon pink ice plant at Bodega Bay?
Seeing two bumble bees on the same flower.
That's what we observed on a recent trip to Doran Regional Park, Bodega Bay, Sonoma County. It was bumble bee heaven. While conservationists are removing ice plant in one area of the park, bumble bees are foraging on the flowers in another area.
B. vosnesenskii is a native. The ice plant, Carpobrotus edulis, is not. It's from South Africa. Conservationists are removing the invasive ice plant "to allow native, endangered plants to repopulate the area and wildlife to thrive."
But meanwhile, this Bombus keeps buzzing and foraging. (Bombus is derived from a Latin word meaning "buzzing.")
Bumble bees are important pollinators (think "buzz pollination" on tomatoes) but we haven't seen them much around Solano and Yolo counties this year.
Sonoma County, yes! Bodega Bay seems to be an oasis.
And speaking of bumble bees, the Bohart Museum of Entomology sponsors an annual Robbin Thorp Memorial First-Bumble-Bee-of-the-Year Contest to see who can find the first bumble bee of the year in the two-county area of Yolo and Solano.The first to photograph one and email to the Bohart Museum wins. This year UC Davis doctoral candidate Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, photographed B. melanopygus with her cell phone camera, and horticulturist Ellen Zagory, retired director of public horticulture for the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, photographed B. vosnesenskii with her Sony camera.
Coincidentally, they each took their photos at exactly 2:30 p.m., Jan. 1 in the 100-acre UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden as the bees foraged on manzanita.
They represented "a double," too--a double win.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's Day 7--the last day--of National Pollinator Week. Meet a longhorned bee, Svastra obliqua expurgata, family Apidae. It's also known as a sunflower bee.
"It's a bee that prefers sunflower but will collect pollen from a variety of members of the Aster family," the late Robbin Thorp, UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor of entomology and a native pollinator specialist, told us several years ago.
He co-authored the book, 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.
We remember seeing these native bees nesting underground by the U.S. Bank in Davis in 2015. See Bug Squad blog.
Katharina Ullmann circled the site with yellow caution tape and posted an educational sign. Ullmann, who received her doctorate in 2014 from UC Davis, worked as a national pollinator specialist for the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation before accepting her current position as director of the UC Davis Student Farm in 2017.
"This is a sunflower bee nesting site," wrote Ullmann. "These gentle bees are native and ground nesting. The females of this species are solitary bees, but like to nest near each other and often use the same nest entrance. Their nesting tunnels lead to individual chambers below the ground. Each chamber is filled with pollen, a single egg, and then closed off. These eggs will hatch, develop underground, and emerge next summer to build their nests. This sunflower bee is one of 1600 species of native bees found in California."
The sign included a "name tag" with the common name, scientific name, favorite food (pollen and nectar), favorite place to be (3rd St., Davis), favorite colors (yellow, red and orange) and favorite saying (YOLO, You Only Live Once).
Ullmann added--and good advice then and now, especially during National Pollinator Week: "Three things you can do to help this bee: (1) protect nests, (2) plant flowers and (3) use fewer insecticides."
Or better yet, no pesticides.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Seems like many folks assume that all bees are "honey bees."
They're not.
If you look around you, you'll see bees of all shapes, colors and sizes nectaring flowers.
And they're not all honey bees (Apis mellifera)!
The one below, as identified by native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, is a medium-sized striped sweat bee, Halictus ligatus. It's a ground-nesting bee. It's also a native bee (unlike honey bees which arrived here from Europe in 1622 with the colonists).
This particular sweat bee took an avid interest in the Agapanthus in our yard.
The Xerces Society has compiled a wealth of information on native bees. You'll want to check out their Web site and read about the $458,000 grant the society recently received to study native pollinators and protect their habitat.
