Bees in the Tupper Greenway

As I sit on a rock in the Tupper Greenway during lunch hour, the peace is disturbed by a Vancouver School Board gardener with a leaf blower. He is creating a toxic dust storm uncomfortably close to a group of students who are eating their lunch. Why does the VSB need leaf blowers? They cause noise and air pollution and do not accomplish anything useful in a garden. A pox on leaf blowers, I say! They will be getting a letter from Madame Beespeaker.

As you can see in the photo above, forget-me-nots and Kanazan ornamental cherries are blooming in the hood. Those tiny self-seeding forget-me-nots can actually provide important food for small bees at this time of the year when not much else is blooming at that height. Flowering brassicas also provide food for mason bees now, so those are two plants you should really have around to make sure your strawberries and fruit trees and shrubs are getting pollinated too. It may seem counter-intuitive to have a variety of plants blooming that may draw bees away from your food plants, but actually I believe that you will attract more species of bees to your garden, in greater numbers, which means they will be pollinating every bee plant in sight or smelling distance of their nests right now.

The Tupper Greenway is a beautiful pollinator corridor that arose after a tragic event near the high school. Students and staff rallied with the community to create a place of healing and regeneration. I have seen an incredible transformation of this space. One of the best things that has happened is that this is a safe place for children to learn to ride bikes and the Pedalheads school use it over many weeks of the summer to help fledgling cyclists. Families feel safe here and students eat their lunch among the fragrant flowers of red-flowering currants. The Master Gardeners have helped to provide the know-how and the local community provides the social capital of volunteer hours to keep the garden beautiful.

Two years ago I noticed there was an aggregate of ground-nesting bees right beside the high school on the Northeast side of the "B Wing". (I'm not making that up!!!!) Hundreds of bees, cuckoo bees, and wasps fly back and forth from flowers to the nesting holes when the sun warms the soil and the air.

One of these bees is a common sweat bee Halictus rubicundus.

She lacks the facial fovea or what I call "sideways eyebrows" that would identify her as an Andrena mining bee.

She has a kind of "false stinger", a line at the back of her abdomen.  These bees are gentle, and do not sting.

Biologist and educator Erin Udal has an affinity for ground-nesting bees. She is an ace at finding nests wherever we go. We spent our lunch hour photographing the bees in the ground and in the dandelions nearby where they are voraciously drinking nectar and covering themselves in the neon orange-yellow pollen.

Here you can see the displaced mud around the edges of the hole. It looks like she's created quite a deep hole. This generation of bees is re-using the nesting site they emerged from.

Another species of smaller bee was collecting another kind of light-coloured pollen--perhaps from fruit trees nearby.

This sloped, scrubby lawn is a paradise for ground-nesting bees. The gardeners have avoided mowing it. I wonder if we should mark it in some way so it doesn't get destroyed, especially while the bees are above ground for the 4-6 weeks they are active at this site.  Those little dots of light in the air are all bees.

In this species (I'm not sure which one), the males are smaller than the females and have a yellow clypeus on their face.

There are two patches of dandelions within metres of the nesting site which are busy with these little bees. They are on the sloped sides of the fields where the lawnmowers can't reach. Or so I thought.

Some of the best friendships I've made are with people who love being with bees as much as I do. We form bonds over the simple pleasure of being with bees.

As you can see in these photos the branched hairs of the bee pick up the pollen grains of the dandelions.

Would you deprive this beautiful bee of her dandy diet?

This bee even has pollen on her antennae, so she will stop and groom it, using special notches in her legs.

These small bees tolerate each other's presence on the same flowers. When it gets crowded, they simply move to another flower. They methodically circle around the dandelion, creating all those beautiful seeds we can make wishes upon.

The science teacher and I have been taking the students out to show them the nesting sight and the bees. Then this happened.  The VSB gardeners mowed down the bee food!!!!!! This is why all levels of our ground care systems need to be educated about ground nesting bees.

This weekend I spotted this on a Vancouver private lawn and I thought--"Hey, maybe this is what we need to do to protect ground nesting bees while they are active.

Of course, these folks were just protecting the area while trying to reseed the grass.  It has likely Good luck with that. Or should I say" bad luck with that." Furthermore, pesticides to kill chafer beetle larvae containing neonics are now banned in Vancouver because they kill ground-nesting bees and poison the soil. For more info, check out the Xerces guide to avoiding neonics in your garden here: http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/NeonicsInYourGarden.pdf

The sloped areas at the school with the nests and the dandelions need to be protected. Also, that site where the dandelions were mowed would actually be a great place to expand the Tupper corridor with a bee meadow. Let's do it!

Erin Udal and I are working with Tupper art and science students on a project funded by ArtStarts, Tupper PAC, Tupper School, and the Riley Park Community Garden. We thank them all for their support.

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!

Wily Chayote and Green Bees

 

Today I have an eclectic selection of seasonal images from Vancouver. Chayote plants for sale on Fraser Street near Main and 49th.

 Tulip trees blossoming on the grounds of the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre. These blooms are so full of nectar, you can shake them and the nectar showers down from the blossoms.

A green sweat bee gathering powdery purple pollen of Bolander's phacelia. This year we have a critical mass of these flowers which means the variety of bees visiting the flowers has increased compared to last year, when it was visited mostly by bumblebeees.

This photo shows the stripes on the bee's abdomen.

While the sweat bees collect pollen, a  leafcutter bee goes in for a nectar dive, pushing past the hairs around the stamens to get to the sweet stuff.

Bee Sculptures from Recycled Materials

 Here's a sneak peak of a Madame Beespeaker ArtStarts residency at Moberly Elementary co-sponsored by Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre. Can you identify this bee?

Irridescence in the Garden

 I set out to find hummingbirds at VanDusen Gardens and I found that this is one of the best times of the year to find them. The monardas are just past their prime, but the crocosmias are glorious right now.

 I'm aware of the differences between roufous and Anna's but I still find them hard to identify. I think this is a rufous because it struck me how tiny she was. The first thought I had when I saw her flight path was "Insect or bird?" The female hummers are also harder to spot because they are so quiet. This little one was proprietary about this particular patch of crocosmia. She did have a tussle with another hummer to defend her patch of paradise.

 Later, I saw this hummer, which I think is an Anna's. I think at this time of the year it might be even more tricky to identify the species of hummingbird with some birds being adolescents.

There are patches of monarda in different parts of the garden which attracts the large bumble bee queens as well as hummingbirds.

As I was waiting for the bus, I witnessed two people having an argument. The body language alerted me to their conflict. I overheard what the problem was: a mentally challenged adult was having words with his caregiver because she had touched his hand. He didn't like people touching him. "I touched your hand because you weren't listening to me," she said. She was frustrated, but not in a mean way. It struck me that sometimes fighting is just another form of communication. Hummingbirds often communicate by fighting.

I harass bees all the time and usually they don't bother me. I stick my camera in their space and snap away, trying to get closer and closer. Some bees are more shy and they usually fly to a place where I can't reach. Some bees aren't bothered at all.  Sometimes bumble bees will wave their leg up in the air as a warning, but I find that rarely happens to me. Bees will physically push each other to assert themselves. Usually the larger bee pushes the smaller bee out of their way so they can continue foraging. Sometimes when you get too close to a beehive or wasp nest they will give you a "Glesgae kiss" also known as a "Glasgow kiss" or a head butt. I disturbed a shy little wasp walking down my steps the other day and I watched her hide in the cracks, peeking out at me to wait until I left.


Hummingbirds are very alert to predators. The hummers at VanDusen are used to people being around all the time, but as soon as they hear a raven, they disappear into the shadows. I think they like to forage high, ie on climbing plants, as an instinct against predators like cats.

This variety of crocosmia is more towards the orange color, with these striking centres that probably function as nectar guides.

 Just before I left the garden I spotted a beautiful sweat bee in these asters. This little patch of asters was attracting the largest variety of bees in the garden. In fact, since the plants are thirty per cent off in the garden shop, I bought four little pots of asters to take home. There are many types of asters in different heights, so it should be easy to find an aster that suits your garden.

I went to Oak Meadows park and the garden around the Insect Hotel where a hummingbird was visiting the monarda. This late in the season the park could really do with some asters to feed the bees.

A Tale of Two Hydrangeas

 

 I took this photo of a little sweat bee in a yard that contained two kinds of hydrangea bushes. This bush had lacy blossoms in the center of each flower head. Each center is made up of many tiny florets with anthers containing pollen. It was alive with bumble bees scrambling across the blue filaments, and tiny bees foraging for pollen and nectar. The other bush had no visible stamens. It was pretty, but silent, like a statue of a hydrangea.

 So there you have a dramatic illustration of the choice we have in planting our gardens. Do we want to support our bees with pollen-rich plants, or do we want to put our time, money, space, and water into plants that do nothing for our pollinators?

Certainly I am not about to rip up the two hydrangeas that grace the side of our front door. They were here before we were, and I have fond memories of them blooming on the sunny afternoon our son was baptized at the Lutheran Church around the corner. However I would consider planting another lacy climbing hydrangea--if we had the space!