Beespotting at City Farmer

My physiotherapist is close to City Farmer, so I have a good excuse to go on a few bee safaris these days. The heliopsis is the current star bee plant, bringing in little leafcutter bees, like the one above and a few more species with cute striped butts.

 Here's the pointy butt of a cuckoo bee. She was also foraging in one of the many patches if thyme that are flowering in the garden right now.

And then that glamorous sweat bee showed up. Even though those the legs appear as if they have pollen, I think it's a male because of the long antennae.

 The cosmos were also popular with the striped butt crowd. Here is a larger species of leafcutter bee.

 Finally, a wee bee, maybe a Halictid species. Stripes are definitely the fashion at City Farmer Garden this summer!

Bee Plant of the Day: Coreopsis

 In the first week of July the coreopsis started blooming. The perennial form is a wonderful well-behaved plant that expands a bit every year. It is a cheerful low maintenance plant and I see the city is growing them in sunny hot spots. Check out the shadow of this little sweat bee. Doesn't it look like she is secretly sticking her tongue out at the photographer. Cheeky!

 Daisies are also blooming. They are not my favorite perennial because they are quite agressive spreaders and they smell like stinky feet. Maybe that's why it's a favorite of syrphid flies. This is another classic composite flower, and this little leaf cutter doesn't seem to mind the funk.

 Scientists call her megachilidae--I just call her cutie pie. Her little shield-shaped abdomen is coated underneath with pollen and she tends to raise her back end up--there must be a yoga pose name for that--upward bee as opposed to downward dog.

This is a photo of a syrphid fly on a daisy--I have saved an article in a magazine about the decline of bees that featured a similar photograph. Real bee nerds chuckle at this sort of mistake.

Along with lavender and linden, this hedge plant is blooming and is teeming with bees, mostly honeybees in this case. I think it's a kind of syringa with thick waxy leaves--more research is required on that ID, but it makes a fabulous bee plant hedge, high and dense.

ETA: So, I think this might be a form of privet. If it is, apparently honeybees love it, but it gives un unpleasant odor to honey which beekeepers tend to feed back to the bees. I will continue to do some detective work on this.

The Shaggy Bee

Maybe I'm just noticing a wider variety of bees, but this seems to be a good year for bee biodiversity in Vancouver. I was in my neighbor's fantastic garden and her tiny climbing roses were chalk a block with bumble bees and leaf cutters. This bee (a megachilid, I think) didn't look too healthy--it was all tuckered out, which meant I could take these photos. I've never seen a leaf cutter bee (if that's what it is) with such a bald back and REALLY hairy legs. I am assuming it is male pattern baldness. Anyone out there know if this is true? Usually I see leaf cutters with more delicate legs and they are really hairy under their abdomens.

You can see the scale here as it is perched on the top handle of a shovel. It's a bit larger than a honey bee and smaller than a large bumble bee.

These are the roses with their surprisingly dark pollen. The bumble bees were absolutely loaded down with the rust-colored pollen. This one is up to her elbows in it!