Town Hall meeting

The old Town Hall off Main Street, Vacaville, Calif., is the perfect backdrop for Iceland poppies (Papaver nudicaule) thriving in planters.

The Iceland poppies, sometimes called arctic poppies, are native to northern Europe and North America. "Papaver" is the Greek word for "poppy."

Last Sunday, around 8 a.m., we spotted two pollinators--the honey bee and the mason bee--nectaring the blossoms.

Honey bee: Apis mellifera. (Contrary to Jerry Seinfeld's incorrect information in The Bee Movie, foragers are worker bees, and all worker bees are female.

The mason bee? A female from the genus Osmia (Family Megachilidae)

Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, said this mason bee could be the blue orchard bee (BOB), Osmia lignaria propinqua, "but I would need to be able to see the face of the bee to be sure.  BOB females have distinctive horns at the bottom of the face.   Osmia are difficult enough to separate under a microscope, and only a couple can be identified to species from photos at just the right angle." 

It's probably too early for BOB, he said. Whatever the species, the mason bee declined to turn around.