My Little Chewy: Osmia caerulescens

Hi there, my name's Chewy!

There's a small blue bee in your garden that is doing a lot of pollinating for you and it's time you learned her name! She's a cousin of the famous Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria). Her name is simply the blue mason bee (Osmia caerulescens), but I like to call her "Chewy".

Right now she's the major pollinator of my small pineapple strawberry blossoms.  As you can see, her head and thorax sometimes have an iridescent green tinge. I suspect she's been chewing on those petals and using them as material for her nest. She loves to chew on the leaves on my little sour cherry bush.

Like her cousin, the blue orchard bee, or BOB, she nests in cavities. She loves to nest in the thin bamboo poles in my garden and the hollow giant fennel stalks I cut down to about 1 foot and leave for the bees.

Gentle and curious, the males and female love to sun themselves on perches in my garden. They like a piece of painted wood I put down on the ground to suppress the weeds.

Chewy collects pollen on branched hairs called setae located on her belly, just like the blue orchard mason bee.

The males are smaller than the females and they are bronze. They each sport a very cute blonde moustache.

Besides strawberries, they are also pollinating my black cap raspberries and my garden variety raspberries that my neighbour Catherine gave me.

They also love the forget-me-nots and the thyme growing in my little raised bed. Thyme is also a medicine cabinet plant for bees which contains the active component thymol, that helps bees fight parasites and disease.

 Besides these small shallow flowers, you might be surprised that little Chewy loves our native large-leaved lupin flowers and she's an expert at standing on the keel of the blossom so the  flower dusts her belly with pollen!

I also have some claytonia (the pink flowers) blooming in this bed, but see smaller bees such as Dialictus pollinating that plant.

These small ground-nesting Andrena miserabilis also help pollinate berry flowers and many fruit tree flowers as well.

 I was also surprised to see a cuckoo wasp in the strawberry flowers. It has a remarkable amount of pollen on its body despite the lack of branched hairs. The light grey pollen is from the nearby raspberries.

These brown and black velvet Andrena are about the size of a honey bee. You'll also see them in berry and rose flowers.


So we really need to show gratitude for some of these lesser-known native bees for pollinating our berries and rose hips!

I also just wanted to notes that the small raised bed with the strawberries also contains bush peas, wild garlic, perennial sweet peas, sneezeweed, garlic, and Egytian walking onions. You can pack a lot into a small space to feed humans and bees--a mini Victory Garden for Bees.

For more information on B.C.'s native bees, check out the British Columbia Native Bee Society: https://www.bcnativebees.org/

If you're curious about what I'm up to these days, check out the blog for our artist residency at Terra Nova in Richmond, B. C. : https://victorygardensfordiversity.blogspot.com/

I hope you are all staying safe and connecting with nature in these difficult times. Bee well!

Celebrating Pollen with Jasna Guy: ArtStarts Weekend Workshops

I was pleased to pitch in and help participants explore bees and pollen with a workshop devised and lead by Jasna Guy through ArtStarts. The results were fabulous!  And we got to celebrate the 20th birthday of ArtStarts four times!!!!

Bee Gardens Trump Bee Hotels: A New Canadian Study

A new study out of Toronto suggests that planting bee gardens is a better strategy than building bee hotels. The study by Laurence Packer and J. Scott MacIvor  found that bee hotels fill up with about as many introduced bee species as native bees, but that wasps that predate bees outnumbered the other guests. The research took place over two years, so it will be interesting to see future studies to see if pest buildup increased over four years to a population "sink" or crash, which is a natural cycle.

The study suggests that it's very important where you put the hotel. The best place? In a bee garden.  The highest percentage of native bees on the guest list were found in backyard gardens. Another important finding was that it is very important to locate the hotel in a sunny spot which will be less likely to be overcrowded with wasps. The conclusion to the study warns businesses who sell bee hotels not to "bee-wash" their products with claims that they boost native bee populations, when in fact more research needs to be done. In the meantime planting more flowers for our native bees is your best investment.

The sad little mason bee in the photograph above is from my back yard. She is covered with mites and was trying to groom them off. Males will mate with her and the mites will jump onto them. She will probably not live very long. These bees are nesting in the cedar shingles of our house. Speeking of bee-washing, if you do have been hotels, make sure you clean the cocoons in the fall to prevent bees being overloaded with mites and to help prevent the buildup of parasitic wasps. If you have a bee hotel you cannot clean, learn how to cycle out old materials to prevent this buildup of pests and research which hole sizes are best for native bees rather than introduced bees.

You can read the entire study called 'Bee Hotels' as Tools for Native Bee Conservation: A Premature Verdict? by Laurence Packer and J. Scott MacIvor in PLOS One.

Happy New Year from Beespeaker Saijiki

You can see this is a leafcutter bee by the bright  yellow outline of the pollen hairs on her belly. Can you see how her abdomen appears flatter than that of a honeybee? I took this photo last August at the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga.

This is probably the wierdest photo I took last year. Does anyone know what kind of fly this is on the Viper's Bugloss?  In the meantime, check out this awesome post on Echium vulgare by Brian Johnston. Although you might think the pollen grains are blue, they appear transparent under the microscope.

One of my favorite bloggers, Sean McCann is giving a talk about his work with Ibycter at the Beatty Biodiversity Museum this Sunday. I am trying to get my work done today so I can check it out. Do check out his awesome blog and Bug Girl's feature on Sean's work in her fabulous Wired column called Charismatic Minifauna.

Id' also be interested in what you think of Bird Chick's two posts on Birding and Sexism, although it's really more about haters and online misogyny in general.

I was sad to hear that another blogger/chef I follow at Butter on the Endive is suffering from cancer. Make an apple tart this week and send Owen good wishes.


This week's saijiki: Christmas trees lie abandoned on city boulevards. A wind storm scatters gifts for foragers. We drink cups of strong, spicy chai.

May your 2014 be filled with radiant joy and blessings.

The OMG Wasps at Moberly Cultural Herb Garden

This is what happens when you plant a community cultural herb garden in Vancouver. The children come. They snack on lemon balm and rub wooly lamb's ears leaves on their cheeks. Their parents come and snip some herbs to keep the moths out of their closets. The grandparents come and clip mint and chamomile for soothing teas.

The birds come and eat seeds and aphids.

 The pollinating insects come and feed on nectar and pollen. The carnivorous insects come and feed on smaller insects which then feed on smaller insects. . . .

 The artists come and make music, build trellises, make costumes, and have garden parties. The healers come and make smoothies and healthy treats and show us how to use the plants around us to heal and give each other hope and love.

 The magic of the garden brings some rare and distinguished visitors: eagles circle overhead, blessing the garden, and today two bright metallic blue and green sweat bees  cuckoo wasps sunned themselves in the Moberly Community Herb Garden. OMG!

 

 Bumblebees and wasps foraged together in the second blooming of this California Lilac.

A pair of chickadees took turns snatching sunflowers.

Artist in Residence Melanie Schambach puts out a sign that says "Before I die I want to. . .

My answer: Plant more gardens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ETA: Cuckoo Wasps aka Chrysididae or jewel wasps are cleptoparasitoid wasps that lay their eggs in the nests of other insects. They have a curious defense mechanism that enables them to curl into a little ball. Ahhh, sweet!

Rain and Relaxation, and Tapestry for the Senses

It is raining outside as I write this cozied up in my writing cave and I am so happy I could cry. I am exhausted. I have been watering 6 gardens this month and bloody heck, I need a rest! Besides which, there are corners of the back yard where my hose will not reach and they are desperate for moisture. Hallelujah! I have also been taking photos of bees and hummingbirds almost every day this month. I have hundreds of images to sift and sort. My work is cut out for me.

It has been an amazing month of investigation, meditation and revelation for me. Now I have to sit and write it all out. There is an imaginary crocheted scarf forming in my head and then there's the scarf that I am actually crocheting. Every day I add a few loops and piece together a narrative out of my experiences over the last six years. This month has been very symbolic for me--returning home to Saskatchewan to loop back the beginning to where I have worked my way to the Pacific Northwest, doggedly trying to connect myself to its social and ecological fabric.

I have created a home with my family, colleagues and friends. Our garden in the heart of the home. It's such a pleasure to be able to sit in the garden and watch the bees in the flowers as we did last night after dinner. And before the day is over I just have to squeeze in one more bee photo: a little sweat bee hunkering down for the evening on a pale pink sweet pea blossom. Are those little bite marks on the  petals? Is she literally hanging on by her teeth? (Or mandibles in this case.)

It's raining, so the bee activity will slow down, but I still have work to do. Please join Rebecca Graham and I tomorrow, August 3 at the Roundhouse Turn Table from noon to 2 pm for some fun with bee and hummingbird plants.

Tapestry for the Senses

Join artists Madame Beespeaker and Rebecca Graham in creating a multi-sensory, multi-dimensional tapestry exploring the healing powers of bees and hummingbirds. Using a seasonal palette of herbs, plants, flowers and other natural materials, we'll create pathways and panels to appeal to the eyes, nose and fingertips, while discovering how the world appears to the senses of bees and hummingbirds.