Flower Hour and the Native Bee Society of BC Bee Tracker

 

 

It's officially spring and on warm sunny days in Vancouver the bumble bee queens are out and about foraging for nectar and looking for nesting sites. This is such an exciting time of the year for bee spotting!

 

We are still in pandemic mode, and with the fatigue and stress of so many months of lockdown, getting out and connecting with nature is more important than ever. I don't know about you, but my mood is very up and down these days. The vaccine is coming, but fatigue and fear is still a very real part of life. I have to keep reminding myself to get my daily dose of flower and bee watching. It does really help me keep calm and carry on doing the work I need to do, moving forward. 

 

 

I like to try to get up early and get a good chunk of work done in the morning so I can spend one or two hours outside with the flowers and the bees. Seeing the first blossoms of spring emerge can be very thrilling. After a long, wet winter, it's such a relief to feel the sun on my face and  find a spot where I can safely take off my masks and inhale the scent of the spring air with its delicate floral scents. It's especially glorious to find a re-flowering currant bush, sit on the ground and watch the bees and hummingbird foraging in its fragrant blossoms. The scent is resinous and seductive, reminding me of garden sage, but more delicate and floral. Taking time to enjoy the flowers without my camera in front of my face is a form of regenerative meditation. 

My colleague Tyler calls the time spent outside with blossoms and bees the "flower hour". Love it! Renew your power in the Flower Hour! Inspired to connect with folks who love bees, we've created the NBSBC Bee Tracker project. We'd love you to join in the fun! And so we invite you to go out and spend your "flower hour" with the bees and the flowers and post your photos on iNaturalist with the tag "FlowerHour". If the bee you're seeing is a first bee, ie first  bee of the year, first bumble bee, first mining bee, please feel free to use the tag "BCFirstBee". You can explain how it's a first bee in your notes. I've never used the journal on iNat, but I'm also determined to try out thus feature as well to add more detail to the field notes.

I'd like to personally invite you to a project on iNaturalist created by the Native Bee Society of British Columbia. We would love you join and post your photos of native B. C. bees! If you haven't joined iNaturalist, this would be a great time to start! You don't need a fancy iphone--you can just post sightings from your computer. 

When you're posting photos of bees, it's important to try to crop them down so we can just focus on the details of the bee to try to identify it to Genus or species. In this photo you can see the whole side of the bee and the back leg, which is important to seeing if it is male or female. We also see the shape of the side of the head, the hairs on the "shoulders" of the bee and the side of the thorax and the entire abdomen.

It's also important for us to see all the parts of the bee, including the butt! The colour and length of the hairs and the shape of the very tip of the tail can give us clues to its ID.

 

In the case of this bumble bee, seeing the underside of the abdomen so we can check the sternites of the bee help us tell if tell two very similar species apart. Bombus calignosus has yellow hairs on the underside of its abdomen. In areas where there are B. calignosus this is particularly important to check. Don't be a perfectionist! Even blurry shots can help build the ID.

 

It also helps to see the face of the bee--the shape of the face, length of tongue, and the colour of the hairs on the front and top of the head.  You can see why this is called the yellow-faced bumble bee!

 

It's also good to get a shot of the back of the bee so we can she the thorax, and the middle of the abdomen. This queen was the first I've seen of this year with a full pollen load. Exciting to know she's found a nest and starting to gather food for her first babies! So lovely to see a vigorous queen foraging in a native plant!

When I post a sighting on iNaturalist I like to make a note of what the bee is doing and which plant it is foraging on. If you want, you can make two posts with the same photos: one for the plant, and one for the bee.

I was also excited to see my first B. melanopygus of the year foraging in the sunwarmed blossoms. This is one of the earliest emerging species of our BC bumble bees, so there have been over 40 sightings of them reported on iNat in our province so far this year. Now that the yellow-faced bumble bees are waking up, the numbers of sighting have started to overtake the "mels". I'm having so much fun watching folks post their sightings of BC bees. Please join our project and consider becoming a member of The Native Bee Society of British Columbia to help us celebrate BC native bees!

 

 

 

Happy Pollinator Week!

To celebrate our local pollinators I made three cards you can take into the garden or your back yard to look for these garden super stars. You can ask us for a hard copy or download and print the pdfs below. As you walk through the garden, look for the colours and patterns on the BINGO card photos. Get a sense of the general shape of the insect.  Is it round and fuzzy, or slim-waisted and hairless? How many wings does it have? How are the eyes positioned on the face? Be curious. Ask questions. Take your own photos and compare them to the photos on the card when you get home. Try uploading the photos on iNaturalist to help scientists gather important data on pollinator health. Any photos of butterflies can be added to the Butterflies in my Backyard project created by the David Suzuki Foundation.

When we designed the Riley Park Community Garden, we made sure to create an infrastructure that would feed the insects and birds that help pollinate the food we grow. From the native salmonberries that bloom early in the spring for the queen bumblebees to the goldenrod and asters that bloom in late summer and early fall, we chose plants that provide nectar and pollen for our local bees, flies, beetles, wasps, and hummingbirds. Many food plants bloom only for a short period of two weeks, but many pollinators need food from early spring to fall. This means planting perennials, herbs, and shrubs that successively bloom for longer periods of time so there are no gaps in the foraging season. 

What are the hotspots to look for pollinators in late June? Search for fireweed, yarrow, catmint, snowberry and sage. You’re sure to find all sorts of pollinators slurping down the nectar and the female bees will be collecting pollen from these plants.

For more information on British Columbia's native bees, check out the website for the Native Bee Society of British Columbia.

The garden is also part of the Vancouver Butterflyway produced by the David Suzuki Foundation. For more info, check out the website.

 

Click the links below to download the pdfs. Have fun!

BINGO card #1

BINGO card #2

BINGO card #3

Magnolia Mating Madness!

As I was coming back from a visit to Camosun bog, I noticed several male bees flying around the blossoms of a pink star magnolia tree, so I stopped to take a closer look.

The blossoms had a spicy floral scent that reminded me of lilies. Usually it's so hard to photograph these little male mining bees, but this time there were several who stopped to sun themselves on the petals. Maybe they were as entranced by the fragrance of the flowers as I was!

The males are thinner and more delicate than the females. They have longer antennae and cute yellow markings on the part of their face called the "clypeus".

As soon as a female arrives on the petal, all the males head straight to her. Male bees hover around the blossoms waiting to pounce on females. This behavior is called lekking. The fastest males with the best endurance win the genetic race.

Next thing you know, the bees are makin' whoopee!

. . . And more whoopee. Or should I say "whoopbee"?!

The strange this is I never see bees foraging in magnolia, and the females don't seem to be going into the flowers for pollen or nectar, so this is a bit of a mystery.

Mining or ground nesting bees  often nest right under their preferred food source. Have you seen bees foraging in magnolia?

Those little sideways eyebrows on the female bee tell us it is a species of Andrena bees.

I noticed some little yellow spots on the petals. This looks suspiciously like bee poop. Maybe that's why the males were pausing on the flowers! Not as romantic as I thought!

Does that look like bee poo to you? You can also see how the light reflects from the petals, creating a sparkling effect. It's likely nice and warm on the petals, which is another reason the males like to sun themselves on the surface.

This male was sunning himself on the ground, waiting for the females to come down and enter their nests. He's got his own lekking technique.

The ground underneath the tree was scrappy and sandy. Apparently it's just what these bees like!

And here you can see the tumulus around the nest hole where the soil has been excavated. I see them as miniature Bugs Bunny holes.

So the next time you stop to smell the magnolias, look for bees makin' whoopee and poopin' on the petals! And watch where you step, because there might be bees underfoot.