Rest in Peace in Grindelia: Late July Bees in Oak Meadows Park

At this time of the year you'll find leafcutter bees chillin' in the fireweed at Oak Meadows Park.

I had fun watching this male leafcutter hover behind a female, fixing on the target before he mated with her. You can see that the male has ashy grey hairs, while the female is more blonde. She also has quite the facial hair, which is sometimes the case with certain species of female bees.

How can a person resist playing with fireweed seeds? Be free and feed the bees!

Meanwhile, on the east side of the park, the perennials are becoming well established and I was happy to see these gumweed flowers (Grindelia sp.) because they were so attractive to bees in the Okanagan.

They are shallow, easy-access flowers that capture the warmth and energy of the sun.

Look for these green plugs at the ends of leafcutter nests in the pollinator hotel.

This is also the time of the year when the males are dying. I found this little melissodes male in a grindelia flower.

He still has a glint in his eyes.

This bumblebee had died on a flower and was stuck in the sap that oozes from the buds.

This little guy was alive, but he had lost part of one antenna.

The honeybees were foraging in the chickweed growing underneath the taller perennials.

The lovely asters are blooming too.

I popped in quickly to VanDusen Gardens to admire these alliums. They'd be good to plant with nodding onions as they bloom slightly later.

Here's a cheeky wool carder bee heading into a beautful penstemon flower which was also hosting honeybees and bumblebees. I've read that some penstemons have hairs that keep some bees out of their corollas and I'm curious to study those species.

Taking the Vancouver NatureKids Club on a Bee Safari

I was asked to be a nature mentor and take some Vancouver NatureKids and their caregivers on a bee safari. We met in beautiful Oak Meadows Park at the bee hotel. I started by showing them the small leafcutter bees that were using the tunnels in the hotel as nesting sites and we saw a little bee carrying a piece of leaf into one of the entrances.

It was the perfect day for a bee safari and the flowers were active with bees of all stripes. Before setting out we covered some bee safety tips and I gave everyone a sheet with prompts: twenty things to try to find on our safari.

A flower with pollen that is a color other than yellow or orange: fireweed. Check! Fireweed has green or blue pollen. Look for honeybees, bumblebees and leafcutter bees in fireweed.

And here's a reminder to enter any good bee safari photos you've taken in the EYA's photo contact. There's gonna be prizes!

Another flower with unusual pollen is lacy phacelia or The Bee's Friend.  This little bee is rubbing herself along the long stamens to gather the purple pollen. West Coast Seeds sells packages of this flower, calling it purple tansy. There's a really nice photo of a bumblebee right on the package. Whatever it's called, I highly recommend putting it in your garden.

Doesn't she look fierce in flight? Even so, she's a "tickle bee" and cannot sting you! Look at the mandibles she has for digging her nest. She must be some kind of sweat or mining bee, carrying pollen on her legs.

When you're on a bee safari always look in the weeds for bees, especially dandelions and false dandelions. You are likely to see the really wee bees swimming around in the shallow flowers, covering themselves in pollen.

And here's a wool carder bee, resting before nesting in one of these holes where she stuffs wool carded from the nearby wooly lamb's ear plant. I think she's the bee that's sealing the holes with the tiny pebbles you see here. We also saw a hole stuffed with resin--made by another kind of bee or wasp. I even saw a parasitic wasp or ant stuck in the resin--what a cool evolutionary tool!

You often see these little bees on yarrow literally up to their armpits in pollen. Some have yellow leg hairs, making them seem even more neon yellow when they are coated in yarrow pollen.

At the end of the safari we headed over to the entrance of VanDusen Gardens. This planting is an example of one of my favorite native combinations of plants: sedum, blanket flower, nodding onion and Ocean Spray. There were Melissodes digger bees and leafcutter bees here.

This patch of flowers near the entrance of the new building is worth a visit in itself.

And I did see a turquoise sweat bee, even though she proved elusive during our safari.

The sloped soil and stone wall likely provide great sites for ground nesting bees here.

I really enjoyed my afternoon jaunt with the Vancouver NatureKids Club. The adults and kids asked really great questions and they were so appreciative of the work done in Oak Meadows Park to support pollinators thanks to biologist Nick Page and the Environmental Youth Alliance.

As I walked north of VanDusen Gardens to have tea with my inlaws I was rewarded with the sighting of a bee that's rare in Vancouver. In fact, I'd never seen it here before. This was taken in a front yard garden. Too bad my photography skills went on vacay!

I'm pretty sure this in Bombus nevadensis, or the Nevada Bumblebee, a really golden velvety bumblebee queen with a black head and black tip on her tail. How exciting!!!!!

Visiting Royalty in Oak Meadows Park

No Mow Zones: Buzzing with Potential

We've got to start making more room for pollinators in our city, so why not start by re-wilding the space under our beautiful trees?

This morning I had a very exciting celebrity sighting. She was more beautiful in person than in the photographs and movies and she was very generous about posing for photographs. Her name is Danaus plexippus, but you may know her as the monarch butterfly. I had never seen a monarch in my life, and I was gobsmacked. I happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right camera! What luck! She patiently waited while I took several photos and then fluttered up to perch on a cedar tree. I wanted to jump up and down and hoot and holler, but instead I remained silent and tears of wonder streamed down my cheeks.

For those of you who have seen monarch butterflies, count yourself lucky, their population is in serious decline and we may lose them if we don't take action. Monarch butterflies are dependent on plants in the milkweed family, because this is what their larvae eat. Backyard habitat has recently become essential for the survival of the butterflies because that farmers are using GM Round-up Ready crops are killing all the milkweed on their land, leaving the monarchs with no place to lay their eggs. Milkweeds are great bee plants too, so they should be an essential plant in pollinator gardens and corridors.

The monarch butterfly I saw was sunning her wings in the long grasses under a cedar tree in Oak Meadows Park. This is a site where the Environmental Youth Alliance and the Vancouver Park Board are creating enhanced habitat called Pollinators' Paradise. The proof is in the party, as bees of all stripes, hummingbirds and butterflies are living it up in the lupins, yarrow, bee balm and other wild meadow flowers planted in the park. Take look at the garden right now if you can, because it's really at its peak. It's on the bike route! You might be inspired to add some of the plants to your garden to enhance pollinator habitat. Watch out for hummingbird males dueling over access to the bee balm.

 Part of the Pollinators' Paradise plan has been to leave the zone under the drip line of trees untouched by lawnmowers so that wildflowers and weeds that support bees can grow up, giving the park a more natural look. This circular "no mow zone" was exactly where I saw the monarch butterfly. Why not create more "no mow zones" all across the city? Trying this on boulevards and under trees is a great place to start. Trees that are more upright that allow a sunny spot would be great to plant wildflower perennials like milk weed. Trees with shade could host fabulous native shade tolerant plants for bees and butterflies like nodding onion. To make the idea more user-friendly, perhaps 1/4 of the no-mow zone could be set aside, marked off with a miniature fence, leaving enough room for picnic blankets on the moss or grass. Imagine snuggling next to your sweetheart in the shade next to a charming mini-wildflower meadow. (Just like in the BBC costume dramas!) Miniature hills of compost can provide habitat for beetles and a place for bumblebee queens to snuggle inside to dream away the winter months.We could plant fairy rings of crocuses, squill, and native fritillaries to provide important sources of pollen to bumblebee queens when they emerge in the spring. Children will love it! A child's life should be full of flowers, beetles, butterflies, and bees.

Pollinator Paradise with EYA and Eric Hamber High School

We're in Oak Meadows Park at eight in the morning and we're here to help the Environmental Youth Alliance plant a Pollinator's Paradise. The park is enveloped in fog, softening the edges of the world, and creating a sense of a suspended disbelief. The spiders have been here before us, industriously setting dew-laden traps for the last moths of autumn.

 The lupins are left to seed themselves to create more habitat for bumble bees.

We shift plants in pots to the garden beds. All the bushes and trees are local native species, super-foods for local pollinators and supermarkets for songbirds.

 Students appear out of the distant fog, as if magicked by garden elves.

 Gradually these trees and bushes will naturalize into the existing park flora and create a rich biodiverse region that functions on many beneficial levels, for humans and critters.

We came, we planted, we weeded, and we had a light snack.

We had the benefits of physical labor, companionship, fresh air and granola bars.

Plants like Oregon grape also look gorgeous in their fall colors.

Adam checks out the clay discs mason bees will use in the spring to create walls in their creches.

 Massaging the roots is a most important part of the planting process.

Soon the plants will be producing fruit, like these elderberries.  I ate some because they are delicious, healthy and because I was the eldest person around. Thanks to everyone who came out and helped make the world a better place for us all.

Skippers and a New Insect Hotel

 I have been noticing a lot of skippers lately all around the city. They are so plucky and playful. I like their attitude. This is a skipper in the snowberry (still blooming!!!) at the Moberly Cultural Herb Garden. (Have you got your red dress for the party this Sunday????)

 This is a small buddleia at the Oak Meadows park. It is a shame that most buddleia are invasive* here in Vancouver because they are great bee, butterfly and hummingbird plants. In fact, after I took this picture, I stood up and startled a hummingbird feeding from this plant. This afternoon I spent a good ten minutes watching an Anna's female feed in my neighbor's towering 18 ft buddleia. The bees were all over it as well. The Anna's even fought with a smaller hummer (perhaps a female rufous) to defend "her" bush. There was no squeaking, just the clacking of beaks like tiny swords. About a half and hour later there was a flock of bush tits in the buddleia, feeding on bugs. It was funny to see them land on a branch and sproing up and down on it.

 You can see her tongue go into the orange center of the floret.

 Erin Udal from the Environmental Youth Alliance says the yarrow in Oak Meadows Park has bee supporting the bees since the lupins finished. We discussed how plants like yarrow can be empty in some gardens and teeming with insects in others.

There are a variety of wasps out now and bees that look like wasps, so it all gets very confusing. But this wasp is acting like a bee.

These twins love phacelia.

This is an empty ladybug pupae case on tansy, which is an escaped old world herb. The honey bees and bumble bees were visiting this plant as well.

 Check out this fabulous new insect hotel made from a decommissioned phone booth by Contexture Design!

 *You must cut off the seed heads of the buddleia before they mature. Plant breeders are developing less fertile cultivars, but the pollen and nectar rewards may not be the same as the weedy ones. We have one that grows out of a crack in the sidewalk in front of our house.