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The Bounty of Pollination
If you want to learn more about honey bees and other pollinators, then “The Bounty of Pollination: More Than Just Honey” is the place to “bee” on Saturday, Oct 27 at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science (RMI), University of California, Davis.
This will be the "debut event" of the Honey and Pollination Center of RMI, according to event coordinator Tracy Dickinson.
The public event, to take place from 1 to 5:30 p.m. in RMI's Silverado Vineyards Sensory Theater, is billed as “an afternoon of lively discusssions, unique tastings and interesting displays on the science behind honey and the important (and surprising) non-honey bee pollinators."
RMI is in the process of lining up speakers and displays.
Registration opens in August. The cost per ticket is $60, with discount prices offered for UC faculty, staff and students. The last day to register online is Friday, Oct. 26.
UC faculty staff and students may obtain a coupon code for discounted tickets through tdickinson@ucdavis.edu. Or, if folks want to become a Friend of the RMI, they need to contact Kim Bannister at kbannister@ucdavis.edu.
Honey bee heading toward tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii). (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) on tower of jewels. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Native on Native
Native on native.
That's when you get when you see a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) on a penstemon, also known as "beard's tongue."
Both the bee and the flower are native to North America.
Native Americans reportedly used the penstemon, formerly classified in the Scrophulariaceae family and now considered a member of the Plantaginaceae family, to relieve toothaches.
Whether it relieves toothaches or not, the penstemon, with its two-lipped tubular flowers, is quite attractive to bumble bees!
Yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) crawls inside a penstemon "Evelyn." (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Just the feet of the yellow-faced bumble bee show. At right, another yellow-faced bumble bee heads off to a flower. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Yellow-faced bumble bee emerging from penstemon blossom. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Training for the Olympics?
Training for the Olympics?
If you step into your garden in the early morning, you might see a male bumble bee sleeping on one of your plants. The females return to their nests at night, but the males don't. They stage slumber parties, aka sleepovers, on your plants.
If they look bedraggled, that's because they are. It's the beginning of a bad hair day.
Such was the case when we encountered this male yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) on the lavender.
As the sun began rising, Mr. Bombus vosnesenskii, too, struggled to rise. Had he been partying all night? Sipping too much nectar, perhaps? Rolling in the pollen?
He crawled along the lavender plants , backtracked, and then appeared to be using a stem as a chin-up bar.
Nothing like a little morning exercise...
Male yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, appears to be doing a chin up. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Bumble Bee's Daily Commute?
If you've ever been to Angel Island or Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, you may have seen them.
Bumble bees.
And sometimes if you're fishing in the Bay, a bumble bee may land on your boat.
That was the case Monday, May 28 when the sportsfishing charter boat, The Morning Star, left its berth at Loch Lomond Marina, San Rafael, and headed out to the Bay to search for what skipper Gordon Hough calls "meals on reels."
The Morning Star encountered the bumble bee about two miles north of Angel Island, near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
Native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, later identified it from the photo below as a female Bombus vosnesenskii.
Nobody was catching any halibut or stripers at the time, so some of the anglers caught an image of the yellow-faced bumble bee.
"I thought it was remarkable to see a bee flying around in the middle of nowhere," said Hough.
"She was probaby just too lazy to fly the distance and decided to hitch a ride," quipped Thorp. "Wonder if she does a daily commute to find a better patch of flowers."
Thorp says that bumble bees are "larger, stronger fliers than honey bees and can potentially fly for several miles."
"They have occasionally been found on boats off shore, but like honey bees, they tend not to forage across wide strips of water," Thorp says.
UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, who does fly research on Alcatraz, has seen bumble bees on Alcatraz, too. No honey bees, but bumble bees.
As for Hough, he says he has no plans to offer bumble bee charters.
Yellow-faced bumble bee lands on The Morning Star. (Photo taken with an IPhone)
The characteristic yellow band on the abdomen of Bombus vosnesenskii. The bee landed on the boat and after a 10-minute rest, took off.
Bumble Bees Are Back!
The yellow-faced bumble bees are back!
And amid the throes of winter and the promise of spring.
On a trip Feb. 27 to Bodega Bay, we spotted two yellow-faced bumble bees (Bombus vosnesenskii) about two miles apart.
They were both foraging on "The Pride of Madeira" (Echium candicans) on a sunny, but wind-whipped day in this Sonoma County coastal town.
The camera lens, the strong wind and the erratic flight of the bumble bees didn't allow us to get close, but the purple spiked flowers made a delightful sight.
See more images of this bumble bee, found throughout western North America, on Bug Guide.
Yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) foraging on the Pride of Maderia at Bodega Bay on Feb. 27. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Covered in pollen, a yellow-faced bumble bee forages on a seaside daisy at Bodega Bay on June 10, 2010. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
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