- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Have you ever seen the defensive antics of a female longhorned bee, sometimes called a sunflower bee, as she's trying to forage on flowers while a suitor is trying to get her attention? (To mate with her)
Such is the case in our family's pollinator garden as the activity on, around, above and below the Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifola) becomes fast and furious.
The female Melissodes agilis kicks a leg up as if to say "Go away! I'm not interested! Quit bothering me!" but a male posse persists.
Finally, the female will buzz off for another flower (escape!) but not for long. Here they come again!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Get off my turf!
The native bees known as Melissodes, the longhorned bees, start stirring in the early morning. First, they settle on a leaf or flower to warm up their flight muscles. Once ready to fly, they don't let up until late afternoon.
We look forward to seeing them forage and battle one another in our Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifola) patch, a key part of our Vacaville pollinator garden.
The males are extremely territorial and try to bop other insects off "their" flowers. That includes bumble bees, butterflies and males of their species. Sometimes they aim for a spider or praying mantis on their real estate. Sometimes they lose. Why are the males such bee boppers? To protect their turf, according to the lateRobbinThorp, UC Davis distinguished emeritus professor. They are trying to save the resources for the females per chance to mate with them.
If you have a camera that will allow you to set a fast shutter speed, such as 1/8000 of a second, sometimes you can freeze the action. Otherwise, they are an elongated blur as they whiz by, seemingly faster than the proverbial "speeding bullet."
The book, California Bees and Blooms, a Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heydey 2014), co-authored by University of California scientists, offers a closer look at Melissodes.
California is home to more than "1600 hundred species of undomesticated bees—most of them native—that populate and pollinate our gardens, fields, and urban green spaces," according to the authors (Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp (1933-2019), Rollin Coville and Barbara Ertter.) They explored 22 most common genera (and six species of cuckoo bees), describing each one's distinctive behaviors, social structures, flight season, preferred flowers, and enemies.
One of them is the Melissodes agilis that we find in our garden.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Did you feel the buzz in 2015?
The honey bees, bumble bees, sunflower bees, sweat bees...what a year it was!
It's time to walk down memory lane--or stray from the garden path--and post a few bee images from 2015.
It wasn't all flowers and sunshine. Bees took a beating--from pesticides, pests, predators, diseases, malnutrition, climate change and stress.
Often it was predator vs. prey. So we include an image of a praying mantis feasting on one of our bee-loved honey bees, and freeloader flies (family Milichiidae) dining on a spider's prey.
That's what praying mantids, spiders and freeloader flies do. They. Eat. Bees. If I were in charge of their menu planning and food preparation, however, they'd get five-star dining: stink bugs, aphids, mosquitoes, cotton whitefly, and the Asian longorned beetle.
Give me five! Give us all five!
Happy New Year! And may the buzz be with you.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Just call them "snuggle bugs."
Or "snuggle bees."
After spending the day chasing the girls and defending their patch of Mexican sunflowers or Tithonia, a cluster of Melissodes robustior males settled down for the night.
Their bed last night: a Tithonia leaf curl. Before that, some lavender stems. Before that, a Tithonia blossom.
The occasion: Boys' Night Out. While the girls sleep in their underground nests, the boys find a comfortable and presumably safe place to get some shut eye.
Last night a single male chose the bed, and soon half a dozen others joined him. They are territorial during the day, but at night, it's all fuzzy wuzzy, peace 'n harmony, and "brotherly love."
Meanwhile, a European paper wasp flew by, its legs dangling, and a nearby garden spider crawled to the edge of its web and checked out the sleeping boys.
Melissodes is just one of the bees mentioned in the book, California Bees and Blooms: A Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists (Heyday). It's the work of the University of California-based team of Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp, Rollin Coville and Barbara Eritter, all of whom are linked to UC Berkeley, past or present (Thorp, a distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis, received his doctorate at UC Berkeley.)
The authors point out that there are 130 Melissodes species in the New World, "predominantly in North America, which is home to approximately 100 of these."
Fifty Melissodes species have been found in California alone. "Only (the) species, M. robustior, M. tepida timberlakei and M. lupina are widespread and common," they write.
Our Vacaville bee garden annually draws dozens of Melissodes robustior to the Tithonia.
Widespread and common? Yes, at least in our little bee garden.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The excitement began when Martin Guerena, an integrated pest management (IPM) specialist with the City of Davis, encountered a native bee nesting site Wednesday in front of the U.S. Bank, corner of 3rd and F streets, Davis.
Some passersby figured they were wasps and were asking bank officials to exterminate them.
Guerena contacted UC Davis officials and learned that these particular bees were sunflower bees, Svastra obliqua expurgata, nesting underground. Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, identified them, and Katharina Ullmann, who last year received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis and is now a crop pollination specialist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, circled the site with yellow caution tape today and posted an educational sign.
"This is a sunflower bee nesting site," Ullmann wrote. "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: "Three things you can do to help this bee: (1) protect nests, (2) plant flowers and (3) use fewer insecticides.
Sunflower bees are also nesting nearby--near the Pizza Guys restaurant and the 7-Eleven parking lot. UC Davis entomology graduate student Margaret "Rei"Scampavia identified the bees as from the same genus, and also noted the presence of cuckoo bees.
Thorp says the female cuckoo bee, Triepeolus concavus, lays her eggs in the ground nests of other bees, including the sunflower bee, Svastra. Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites, meaning that they steal the food stores provisioned by the host bee. Cuckoos lack pollen-collecting structures (scopa). So when the cuckoo bee eggs hatch, the larva will consume the pollen ball collected by the hosts, and kill and eat the host larvae. Like human kleptomanias, they've found a way to make it in this world at the expense of others.
Ullmann, who studied with pollination ecologist Neal Williams of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, wants to protect the sunflower bees and figures an informational sign will help.
Frankly, it's quite appropriate that the sunflowers bees are nesting near the bank. They're making their own deposits--pollen!