Entomologist Rachael Winfree Offers Advice on Catering to Bees

Some time back, Rachael Winfree, an entomologist at Rutgers, generously agreed to meet with us at the pollinator garden we're creating at Herrontown Woods, to discuss ways it might better fill the needs of bees. For an hour, she poured out information while I scrambled to take notes. More can be found at her website, at the bottom of this post.

DEAD WOOD: Her first thought was that she liked all the wood strewn about, in the form of trees felled by wind and ice storms over the past ten years. The bodies of trees live a long life after death, providing a home for all sorts of insect life. Fallen trees are one of the places bumble bees make their nests underneath.

SOIL: She liked less the soil--mostly heavy clay. The many kinds of bees that build their nests underground prefer looser, more sandy soil. Perhaps we could bring some sand in to lighten up some areas, she suggested, or dig up the soil here and there to make the bee's job of digging easier.

SLOPING GROUND: Slopes would be good, too. Water runs off a slope better, so there's less chance that the bee's underground home will be flooded. Our pollinator garden has no hills, but it does have the hillocks made when a tree is uprooted. The rootball angles up into the air, leaving behind a hole in the ground with slopes on all sides. America, it is said, was very lumpy back before western settlement, as each tree over the millenia would eventually fall, its raised rootball leaving a depression.

XERCIS SOCIETY: She mentioned the Xercis Society and its website on multiple occasions. She's on its board, and thinks it's one of the best sources of ideas for creating habitat for insects.

WASPS VS BEES: Wasps visit flowers not to collect pollen but to sip enough nectar to get through the day. They are therefore poor pollinators, since they don't collect pollen and therefore are less likely to spread pollen from one flower to another. To reproduce, they prey on other insects, which they collect and use to nourish their young.

BEES ARE VEGETARIANS: Bees are essentially vegetarian wasps. They use the protein in pollen to feed their young, collecting a bunch of pollen and then laying an egg in it. Different bees carry pollen on different parts of their bodies. The classic honey bee, the cow of the bee world, not native but widespread in the service of agriculture, carries pollen on the back legs, as do bumblebees. One bee carries pollen on its belly, which is very cute to see when one turns the bee over.

SOCIAL VS SOLITARY BEES: Social bees, such as honey bees and bumble bees, are in the minority. Most types of bees are solitary. These types are very unlikely to sting, because stinging is a very dangerous activity for a bee, and a solitary bee is on its own. Bumble bees and other social bees are "on the wing" longer than solitary bees, meaning that they are around all summer rather than for just a couple weeks.

BEES IN DECLINE?: Though the news media has been reporting that bees are in decline, Rachael contends that there isn't all that much evidence to back that up. There are no long-standing studies of bee numbers to reference. Complicating any effort to tally bee numbers, there are only three taxonomists who can identify all 160 or so species of native bees in New Jersey. (I didn't catch the names, but two of them may be John Ascher and Jason Gibbs. When googling John Ascher, I came across this very useful looking manual: How to catch and identify bees and manage a collection) Bees, unlike plants, must be killed in order to be identified, and though some of that is necessary for research, it's not necessarily an activity entomologists want to promote. Bees may actually benefit from the habitat fragmentation that comes with suburban sprawl.

SPECIALIZED BEES: I had wondered if there are specialized bees that depend on a particular plant species that we could then plant to help that bee species. She mentioned two to get me started: a bee called Andrena erigeneae that feeds exclusively on spring beauty (Claytonia virginica), and the Rose-mallow Bee (Ptilothrix bombiformis), which has a black velvet appearance and feeds on Hibiscus. (I found this informative article that lists many others: https://vnps.org/specialist-bees-need-special-plants/)

SMALL CARPENTER BEE (Ceratina sp.): a common bee around here.

NESTING: Bumble bees nest under logs, or at the base of bunch grasses.

MOBILITY: Small bees fly only a couple hundred feet.

PLANTS TO ATTRACT BEES: sweet bergamot, lavender, mountain mint--especially Pycnanthemum tenuifolium

MORE INFO: Her website has useful pdfs, including a primer on New Jersey bees.

The Bees in Your Backyard--A talk by Olivia Carril

Interesting talk at the Princeton Public Library on bees, by Olivia Carril, co-author of a new book on North American bees called "The Bees in Your Backyard". Most engaging was her clear passion for the subject, which is expansive, given the 4000 species of bees in this part of the world. Each species has its own story, its own special approach to living a bee's life, and new ones are being discovered all the time. Just in the process of doing her doctoral work in Utah, she found 46 new species, and a new species of bee was recently verified in Central Park.

She began with speculation about how bees came into being back in the days of dinosaurs, when primitive magnolia flowers served as the stage where early predatory wasps could evolve into bees that used nectar and pollen for food. Making the transition easier was the similar nutrients content of insects and pollen.

Along with explanations of how to distinguish bees from other insects and from each other, she gave some insights into the myriad lifestyles bees have evolved: where various bees sleep through the night, and the underground preparations for spring.

I asked about how the presence or absence of various species of bees could affect habitat restoration efforts. She said that the first bee species to be lost when habitat is disturbed are the ground-nesting bees and those that are highly specialized and therefore specific about which flowers they pollinate. The specialist pollinators are highly vulnerable when the particular native plant species they've adapted to utilize are lost. Plant species reintroduced to an area after a long absence, and whose specialized pollinators have long since disappeared, will likely still get pollinated, she said, by generalists--bees that pollinate a great variety of flowers.

When asked about what to plant to accommodate the needs of bees, she listed three of the best plant families for attracting bees: sunflower (Composite), mint and pea families. I mentioned the phenomenal insect community (50+ species of insects and spiders) that comes together on our disks of boneset flowers each August, and a woman suggested that narrow-leaved mountain mint, a local wildflower found in meadows, also draws a very diverse insect crowd. Many posts having to do with boneset can be found on this website by typing the word boneset into the search box. Here's an example of the diversity to be found if one looks closely.

Some other notes:

• More bee diversity in dry climates, due to there being fewer fungi to prey on the bees. Southeast U.S., which has a hot, humid climate, has relatively low numbers of bee species.
• Carpenter bees use the same galleries year after year, enlarging them each time
• Bumble bees prefer abandoned rodent holes for building their nests
• Miner bees dig "gopher" holes in the ground. Most of their lives is spent underground. 
• Cuckoo bees parasitize miner bees, using a strategy similar to that of cowbirds. 
• Bee wolves paralyze bees and take them back to their nests for food

Master Gardeners of Mercer County are hosting a June 18 event on bees. 

A Bee Tree in Herrontown Woods

 On April 12, I received an email from Jenny Ludmer saying she'd found a bee tree in Herrontown Woods. Jenny does a lot of good work locally at Sustainable Princeton, and she and her daughter have also helped out at our Princeton Botanical Art Garden, creating an educational display of wildlife bones on the rootball of an upturned tree. A bee tree, she explained, is a tree in which honeybees have a nest. This one is in 

an old tree just a few paces from the Green trail (about halfway from the Red and Yellow trails). The entrance to the honey bee nest is about 40 feet up in the tree and facing away from the trail.

She felt it safe to disclose the location, since it's so high up. My ambivalence about disclosing the location came from a post I had written last year around this time about having witnessed a swarm of honeybees in that same area of the preserve. I was told that the day after I posted, someone wearing a bee suit had come to Herrontown Woods and made off with the swarm! That was not exactly my intention.

With Jenny's email came some great photos showing bees already active in the nest. I'll quote extensively from her email, and then add a few things I've learned since.

I first discovered that honey bees live in trees about a year ago when I spotted a swarm in that very spot. Knowing that swarms never travel too far from the hive, I wondered how it got to the middle of Herrontown Woods. After reading several of Thomas Seeley's books and taking a class from Michael Thiele of Apis Arborea, I learned that not only do honey bees live in forest trees, they thrive in them. 

Yes, across the country, honey bees are suffering. Mites and numerous other calamities plague honey bees and make beekeeping a costly and depressing endeavor. Wild honey bees, on the other hand, are doing things just as nature intended. Instead of living low to the ground in thin-walled hive boxes, wild honey bees are nestled high in big trees, surrounded by thick trunk walls which protect them from temperature extremes. Unlike in traditional smooth hive boxes, honey bees cover the rough interior of the tree cavity with propolis, a sticky anti-fungal and antibacterial substance which helps create a healthier microenvironment for the bees. Furthermore, while traditional beekeepers maximize the size of their hives in an effort to harvest extreme amounts of honey, wild honey bees actively limit the size of their nest to about 40 liters and swarm frequently to spawn new generations and help prevent any large infestations of mites. Perhaps more importantly, no beekeeper decides the genetic line of these wild bees and there's no moving them around the country as farmers see fit. Nature and evolution ensure that the healthiest bees thrive precisely in the location where they were born.

So while traditional beekeepers claim the only way to keep honey bees alive is to medicate and artificially feed them, nature has a different story to tell. I hope all beekeepers get to learn from Thomas Seeley and Michael Thiele. 

Jenny's email led me to learn more about what honeybees experience in the early spring. In her photo here of the nest opening, you can see a bee exiting. The red flowers in the photo are red maple, whose flowers--early and abundant--are an important source of sustenance for bees.

Through a beautiful description of early spring activity in a bee hive, I quickly gained an appreciation for how risky early spring is for honeybees, and how important early sources of nectar are as the bees use their last winter stores to up the temperature of the hive, raise new young, and take "cleansing flights" as the weather warms. Even when flowers like maple are available, stormy spring weather may keep the bees from foraging.

That got me taking a closer look at early flowers, like this pussy willow in the Herrontown Woods botanical garden. Didn't see any honeybees, but this fly looked different from your usual fly. 

There's a progression of native spring ephemerals in the forest, beginning around the first week of April. This bloodroot is being visited by a bee, likely a native bee. (Honeybees were introduced from Europe in colonial times.)

In some areas we still have patches of wood anemone, 

and the spicebush are numerous, though their flowers last only a few days.

Hepaticas are very rarely seen. 

The far more numerous spring beauties would be worth taking a close look at for visits from honeybees.

One of Jenny's photos is of a honeybee taking a drink amidst the leaf litter on the forest floor. 

Here is a description of one of Thomas Seeley's books. Thanks to Jenny for letting us know about one of Herrontown Woods' hidden denizens.

Honeybee Democracy--a book

Honeybees make decisions collectively — and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. 

Some Buzz On Native Bees

Rutgers entomologist Rachael Winfree gave an information-packed talk on native bees at DR Greenway this past Thursday. Here is some of the information I packed for the trip home, with apologies for any bruising of the truth that might have occurred in-transit. Rachael has a very useful downloadable brochure on the subject of native bees and the sort of plants and nesting habitat they need (link below).

• Bees are some of the most beautiful animals on earth.
• They're descended from wasps. Wasps feed animals--other insects, I suppose--to their young, while bees are vegetarian, raising their young on pollen. Bees are also better pollinators, being more hairy.
• There are about 400 species of native bees in NJ (I was guessing around 100), out of about 4000 native species in the U.S.
• The natives are grouped into the Mellitidae, Andrenidae, Halictidae, Colletidae, and Megachilidae. Honey bees, which are not native to America, are in the Apidae.
• The peak diversity of most kinds of animals and plants can be found in the tropics, but peak diversity of bees is in xeric (dry) temperate zones, such as Arizona. They are most diverse in unwooded areas.
• A "univoltine" bee produces only one generation per year, while multivoltine bees have multiple generations.
• Bees, depending on species, can overwinter in any stage, from egg to adult.
• Most adults live only a few weeks.
• Some bees come out in early spring and then go dormant through summer, fall and winter. Those may be the ones that are specialized to feed off of spring ephemerals (woodland wildflowers that sprout early to take advantage of the sunlight before the trees leaf out).
• Pollen supplies protein, nectar provides sugar.
• Female bees are better pollinators than males, which are smaller and less hairy.
• Just as there are parasitic birds like cowbirds that leave their eggs in other bird species nests for raising, there are also parasitic bees that use the same strategy.
• The blueberry bee specializes in pollinating blueberry flowers. (Turns out they are one of the single generation per year bees. An interesting description of their pollination technique can be found here.)
• A heterogeneous landscape, such as can be found in towns and suburbs, helps provide a progression of flowers throughout the growing season (whereas our dense woods may only provide flowers in the spring, if the spring wildflowers are intact.)
• That honeybees are proving susceptible to various maladies is not surprising, given that they are part of a monoculture approach to farming. Honeybees are trucked all over the States to pollinate crops, be they almonds in California or cranberries in the northeast. Huge expanses of one crop create locally a boom and bust cycle, in which flowers are abundant for only a brief period each year, making it impossible for a resident bee population to survive. Trucking in honeybees is the only way to insure pollination. 
• Community Collapse Disorder, in which the adult honeybees disappear from a hive, leaving only the young, first appeared in 2006. The cause remains unknown, though it may be a combination of stresses caused by the varroa mites that first reached this continent in 1990, pesticides such as imidacloprid, miticides, a virus or bacterium, and poor nutrition. 
• It's not clear if honeybees have affected native bee populations in the U.S, though some evidence suggests their competition can reduce native bee numbers.
• There is no monitoring of native bee populations in the U.S, so it's hard to tell if there are any trends in native bee populations.
• There are some endangered bee species in NJ, but it wasn't clear if there's anything that can be done locally, such as grow particular plants, to help them recover.
• She suggested a couple websites. To plant bee-friendly habitats, check out her brochure called Native Bee Benefits. For bee identification, DiscoverLife is a popular website. BugGuide is another helpful site for getting identifications.

A Honey Bee Swarm, and a Specialist Native Bee on Spring Beauty

A couple interesting sightings of bees in Herrontown Woods recently. Working on trails on April 12, I paused and heard what sound like a buzzing coming from somewhere nearby. With so many machines of transport shut down due to the pandemic, it was quiet enough in the woods to hear what turned out to be a swarm of honey bees 40 feet up in a snag, still erect but completely stripped of branches. They were flying around a hole in the trunk. I went to get another load of stepping stones from our stockpile, but by the time I returned a half hour later, they were gone.

Some internet research led me to an entomologist at Cornell University, Scott McArt, who was kind enough to reply:

"From what you describe, it’s very likely a colony that swarmed. During swarming, half of the bees will leave the hive with their old queen, while the other half of the bees will stay in the hive with a new queen. The exiting bees will typically leave the hive and congregate on a nearby branch for a few minutes or hours, then move on to the next branch (or their new home, once they’ve found it). It’s an impressive sight when thousands of bees assemble onto the branches and/or move en masse to the next location, hence why it’s called a “swarm”." 

"Mid-April is a bit early for swarming, but not unheard of, especially since there’s been some warm weather and flowers popping up over the past few weeks. Aside from a bear getting into the hive, it’s really the only reason you’d see thousands of bees up in a tree right now. So if you didn’t see a bear, I’d say you saw a swarm :)"

Another bee sighting was much more subtle. Over the past month, the most numerous spring ephemeral wildflower has been the spring beauty. Again working on a trail, I happened one day to look down and see a tiny bee visiting one. I was crouching down to catch a photo when the bee dropped off the flower and stood motionless among the dead leaves--reminiscent of the freezing behavior rabbits use when approached. The same happened another day when I again sought a photo.

I was able to find mention of a Spring Beauty Bee (a miner bee named Andrena erigeniae) in a list of specalist bees.

An article in the Baltimore Sun entitled "Searching the Forest for the Bees" describes the bee's lifestyle, which includes only a brief appearance in the spring. It's useful to know that honey bees are not native to America.

"Unlike honey bees, which congregate in hives, most of the forest bees are loners that spend the bulk of their lives in the ground. They emerge for just a few weeks in early spring to pollinate flowering plants, shrubs and trees before the forest leafs out and shades the understory from the sun.

Many are "specialists," Droege said, focusing on a particular type of plant or flower.

For example, he said, there's a bee that specializes in collecting nectar and pollen from spring beauty, a ground-hugging pink or white wildflower that's one of the earliest harbingers of spring. One can't exist without the other, he said. In fact, many flowers have features that attract particular pollinators, while discouraging or excluding others.

"Flowers were all designed by bees," Droege said, over millennia of co-evolution."

 As a botanist, I had naturally assumed that all bees were designed by plants.

Blueberry Bees

More buzz on bees. Got into a conversation the other day with a botanist who shifted careers to study native bees, partly out of fascination and partly because so little is known about them. We got to talking about blueberry bees, which use rapid wing beats to shake pollen loose from the flower. Here's a description I found via an internet search:

"The southeastern blueberry bee (Habropoda laboriosa) is so named because it is native to the southeastern US and forages primarily on blueberry (Vaccinium spp.) plants. It resembles a small bumble bee (Bombus spp.) and is abundant in blueberry orchards throughout its range. Blueberry plants are most effectively pollinated by sonication and the southeastern blueberry bee is very efficient at this. The bee grabs onto a flower and moves its flight muscles rapidly to release the pollen. The bee's face is then covered in pollen, which is inadvertently deposited at the next flower on which the bee forages." (nbii)

The frequency of the wing beats determines whether the pollen is shaken loose. Since honey bees don't use sonication to shake pollen loose, they have a harder time pollinating blueberry flowers.

Something to look for when the blueberry flowers come out this spring. He also said that native bees can be safely petted, which I had heard before, in reference to bumble bees. Since I've never tried it, please don't take this as a recommendation, but it is interesting to consider that fascination and respect may be more useful responses to bees than a blanket fear. Here's a post, found via an internet search, that includes a video of bumble bee petting, described as a relaxing activity.

Wild Pollinators

Some news and olds on wild pollinators:

The Economist has a short article entitled "Variety is the spice of life: Encouraging wild and diverse insects is the best way to pollinate crops". That's the conclusion of some Argentine researched published in Science. The varied shapes of native pollinators, which includes beetles, flies and butterflies in addition to bees, helps insure the pollen gets well distributed. Update: An additional study with similar result is mentioned in this Rutgers article.

The Xerces Society, which "protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat", has a list of guides for building nests for native pollinators (honeybees were introduced to America from Europe). I tend to think of native bees as perfectly capable of building their own nests, but this free download: "A first of its kind, step-by-step, full color guide for rearing and managing bumblebees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, and other honey bee alternatives.", may tell a different story.

Here's a 2011 post of mine--notes from a talk on native bees, hosted by DR Greenway, including the somewhat revelatory statistic that there are 400 species of native bees in New Jersey.

Typing "boneset" into the search box of this blog will yield many posts about the extraordinary diversity of pollinators that visit this native wildflower, which turns into a thriving insect metropolis in July and August.

Four Kinds of Honey Bees in Northern Thailand

These bee hives look like something Winnie-the-Pooh might stick his paw into. The hives are made of hollowed out sections of tree trunk. The photo was taken by my daughter Anna, who was traveling this summer in southeast Asia. 

To escape the heat, she and her boyfriend headed up into a mountainous region in northern Thailand called Chang Rai, where the residents drink three kinds of tea and grow four kinds of honey. She was surprised to learn that the black, green, and white teas all come from the same plant--the same species of tea. But the four kinds of honey are not made by the same kind of bee. This is four kinds of honey made by four species of bees. Thailand, it is claimed, has the greatest bee diversity in the world, including half the world's species of honey bees, and in this tiny village the various honeys they produce are an important part of the diet. 

There's the honey we're familiar with, and then there's another one that tastes like apricot jam. A third, produced by the stingless bee, has a fermented fruity flavor like Kambucha. 

Another species, the asian giant honey bee (Apis dorsata), can't be kept in a hive, so villagers climb trees to reach the honey. Wooden footholds are placed in the tree trunk to expedite the climb. The giant honey bees don't stick around all year, but instead migrate up to 200 kilometers, returning to the same branch six months later.

The asian honey bee (Apis cerana) produces less honey than our honey bee, but is much easier to take care of. 

A Brief Account of Life in a Mountain Village in Thailand

Their first night in the village, they were surprised to be awakened at 3:30am by the robust crowing of roosters, so raucous that the whole village has little choice but to rise and begin its day. Chickens run loose, apparently free of local predators that might consume them before people have a chance to. Once a year, a tiger passes through the area, apparently without raising much concern.

The town runs on solar energy, but lest one think this mountain village an idyllic integration of humanity into nature, daytime brings cooking fires and the burning of refuse. The villagers are conditioned to the resulting stew of smoke that can linger in the valley, but it registered as noxious and toxic to Anna. 

Some of the refuse is plastic, which we're all told releases toxins when burned. What plastics do the villagers have if they grow their own food and have few possessions? Though they cook delicious meals most days, there are times when villagers may not feel like cooking, and so pull out store-bought noodles and tomato sauce, the plastic wrappings from which end up getting burned in the refuse pile. 

This is not much different from my own experience growing up in a small village in Wisconsin in the 1960s. One of my chores was to burn the garbage, plastic and all. In autumn, we'd rake some leaves into piles to jump into, and others into piles to burn. We'd toss acorns into the glowing core of the fire and wait for the popcorn-like explosion. On brisk, sunny fall days, the whole village became suffused with what registered as a sweet and endearing aroma of burning leaves. Even after moving to a city, the 1930s house we moved into had an incinerator in the basement for burning trash. And in the 70s and 80s, when I played jazz gigs in smoke-filled bars, it was not until the next morning that I'd notice the wretched smell of stale smoke in the clothes I had worn. 

There have been efforts to promote cleaner air in remote mountain villages around the world. Some students, before entering Princeton University, sign up to spend a "bridge year" in a foreign country doing good deeds, one of which is helping build cleaner burning stoves for villagers in Peru and elsewhere. You'd think the villagers would be grateful for a home less choked with smoke, and maybe they are, but the capacity of the body to become conditioned to abuse is both impressive and exasperating.

Lots of interesting reading out there on bees. Here's some info about eight species of honey bees around the world.

Bees On Boneset

The most numerous insects crowding the boneset flowers for weeks on end during this unusually cool August were bumble bees and honeybees. There were also lots of tinier bee-like creatures zigzagging across the plant or landing to feast at length. With those, it was very hard to tell if they were all the same kind or could be distinguished one from another in some way. Note the sacs of pollen on the legs of the honey bees and bumble bees.

These three bees raise the total count to 32.

Urban Beekeeping

An interesting article on growing honey bees in the city. It's now legal in some places. I know someone who has a beehive in his suburban garage, with a little hole in the back wall for them to come and go.

In particular, one beekeeper interviewed says that, if you grow bees, you start thinking like a bee and want to transform the landscape to make it more bee-friendly. If there's a beekeeper in the neighborhood, fruit trees bear more fruit, including arctic kiwi--a frost tolerant version of the fruit that grows in northern latitudes. (A friend tells me at least one Princeton resident is growing them--kiwis, that is--with very good results.) Bees, then, can help in the process of re-imagining a neighborhood.

I was surprised to learn, back in the early '90s when the honeybee population crashed due to an introduced mite, that honey bees are not native to America. The photo, from a 2008 post, shows a couple honeybees mixed with some native pollinators on the flowers of boneset, a native wildflower that becomes the insect world's favorite food court every August.

Boneset Days -- A Pollinator Bonanza

Update, August 2019: Someone who goes by the name Beatriz Moisset was nice enough to identify some of the insects below that I found on the boneset flowers in my backyard. I have integrated her ID's into the text.

If it's early September, it must be time to write about what I did with my summer. In August, I traveled once again to the land called Boneset. What I saw there will open the minds of anyone who thinks flowers are only visited by honey bees and butterflies. In the land of Boneset, which happens to be at a perfect height for photographing, miniature acres of tiny white flowers attract all sorts of wonderfully strange creatures whose names are on the tips of very few tongues. Some six-legged visitors are interested in what the flowers have to offer. Others, often with eight legs, lay in wait, using the flowers as bait to attract their next meal. Some linger for days, others patrol without landing. Others are said to leave their scents, then check back later to see if the scent has attracted a potential mate. Some arrive in sufficient numbers to look like herds of insects grazing in a field of brilliant white. Others multi-task by continuing to feed on the nectar while they mate.

Here is the first wave of photos from my travels. Say the magic words, "Eupatorium perfoliatum", plant one or many in your backyard, and you too can travel to this unsuspected world.

#1) There's a tiny, spiny creature reminiscent of a lobster,

#2) and the inchworm mentioned in a previous post that includes what some might call a spellbinding video of it doing its inchworm walk.

#2a) Is this the same inchworm (camouflaged looper), but tinier and wearing a slightly different camouflage? I'm glad you asked because I have absolutely no idea. I can tell by the markings, however, that the forefinger in the background is definitely mine.

#3) And this chunky fellow wearing orange and black. What year's Princeton alumni coat is that? Class of 2 million B.C., perhaps.

Okay, I really should be giving these insects their real names. All in the fullness of time. Many likely don't have decent common names. We'll need to have a contest.

Again, our commenter to the rescue: "a wedge-shaped beetle, looking for bees to parasitize their nests."
The link says it's in the family Ripiphoridae, lays its eggs on the flowers. The eggs hatch, and the larvae hitch a ride on a bee or wasp, then does its parasitizing back at the host's nest. All sorts of mischief going on here, on these pretty little flowers.

#4) Nice cape, or are those tails?

Our commenter says it's a net-winged beetle. The genus is Calopteron in the family Lycidae. Its larvae feed on insects and other arthropods under bark. So, I guess it can be considered a biocontrol, 

The adult's "aposematic" colors warn potential predators that they are poisonous. They lay their eggs under the bark of dead or dying trees, and the larvae eat other insects there. In other words, they participate in the food chain that is part of the long afterlife of dead trees.

#5) These bugs ("bug" in entomology actually refers to a kind of bug, an order of insects called the true bugs--I know that much), from the frequency of their appearance and the frequency of their coupling up, appear to consider boneset their home as well as their lunchstop.

#6) This one looks a lot like the previous one, but it's skinnier and appears to have swollen, clawlike legs in front.

#7) Finally, something familiar: A honey bee, which is what most people associate with flowers. And wouldn't you know it? That's the one that happens not to be native to America.

#8) For these nondescript black bees, my classification for the time being is small, smaller, tiny, and miniscule. The slogan for this blog post is "Miniscule is cool."

#9) The pattern of stripes on the abdomen has GOT to be a clue.

Note: A commenter says this is a "bee wolf" (Philanthus gibbosus)--a wasp that preys on bees to feed its young.

#10, 11) This photo and the next may be of the same kind of black wasp, but the first one looks hairier on the thorax.

#12) Here's a sweat bee, which rhymes with Halictidae. With a name like that, it must be attracted to sweat, or at least the salt in the sweat. Does boneset sweat? It sweats nectar.

Note: a commenter says it's a cuckoo wasp, in the Chrysididae. Like the cuckoo bird, it's a parasite that lays its eggs in the nest of other species.

#13) This might be another kind of sweat bee.

Note: Our very helpful commenter says this is a long-legged fly in the Dolichopodidae family. They are said to have elaborate mating behavior, during which the male displays its long legs for the female.

#14) And this, which begs the question:

How much sweat could a boneset sweat if a boneset could sweat sweat?

#15) This one has such a "tinier than thou" air about it.

Note: Our commenter says it "looks like a parasitic wasp. Great biocontrol!"

#16) There, down in the lower left, something brown that looks like a fly, but its wings stick straight out to the sides.

Note: our commenter says it "looks like a Tachinid fly, difficult angle. looks like this one http://bugguide.net/node/view/300648" 
(Tachinids can help control insect pests in gardens, by laying eggs on them that hatch and then consume the pest. At this link you can scroll down to see the Tachinid's eggs on the host insect.)

#17) This little fellow, oval and black, reminds me of a small, tank-like insect that was attracted to the salad when we ate dinner outside when I was a kid in Wisconsin. Maybe if we had planted more boneset, they would have stayed out of the salad.

There you have it. I counted 17 that are plausibly different species. And that's just on a sunny afternoon on August 7, with the boneset just starting to open up in a backyard behind a house on a busy street in Princeton, NJ. This "What I did with my summer" essay is starting to look like the first chapter of Boneset Days, or the soap opera As the Boneset Blooms, with a cast of characters that may grow to rival a Russian novel.

A Summer-Long Residency of Paper Wasps in My Window

Our house is solid, but for some reason there is one storm window that is slightly out of square--just enough that the storm window can't be fully closed. And through that small crack each spring come paper wasps, not to enter the house but to build a nest in the space between inner and outer windows. It starts with a queen--a kind of homesteader, or who in the business world might be called an entrepreneur. I haven't watched closely enough to see if she uses last year's honeycomb of cells or builds new, but at any rate she does the early work herself, as if starting a colony, or a small business, until she can raise young to do most of the work for the rest of the summer. Occasionally I'd take a look to see how they were doing.

The most common species of paper wasp, it turns out, is originally from Europe. A simple distinction between bees and wasps is that bees are vegetarians and wasps are carnivores. Bees raise their young on protein-rich plant pollen, while wasps feed their young other insects. 

My best guess as to what's going on in this picture is that the three wasps with their abdomens sticking out are feeding the young by delivering them food in their chambers. When ready, the larvae cap their chambers, pupate, and then eat their way out as fully formed adults. 

Some types of insects, like butterflies and cicadas, have to remain still after emerging, to let their wings slowly expand and dry. But these wasps emerge with their small, narrow wings ready to go. You can see one of the new wasps at the bottom of the photo, emerging like a chick from an egg. 

One day in July, I heard a scuffling sound at the window, looked up, 

and saw a bird balancing on top of the window. 

It was a red-bellied woodpecker--a bird named after a part of the body one almost never sees, rather than the red hood that is so distinctive.  From its precarious perch just above the crack in the window, it could use its keen eye, flexible neck, and lightning quick reflexes to snatch any wasps coming or going.

Sometimes it stuck its beak right in the crack, as if my house were a tree. 

Finally, the bird noticed me and flew off. Whether this was a singular visit or one of many, the wasp nest was considerably diminished and never regained its earlier hustle and bustle. By the end of August the nest stood empty, which meant I could now open the inside window again.

There are many questions to ask. Do the wasps feed their young regurgitated insect puree, or do they serve sliced and diced versions? Inquiring minds want to know. I spent some time trying to figure out which one was the queen. No wasp stood out as distinctly different from the next. Some of the wasps on the nest were vibrating their abdomens. Others were not. What does this mean? And what impact do the paper wasps have on my garden? Are they responsible for keeping my kale unexpectedly free of caterpillars, and if so, do they nicely limit their diet to garden pests, or are they also preying on the rarer sorts of butterflies and moths we wish there were more of? 

I found a few answers at this Galveston County master gardener site. Here are some excerpts:

Adult paper wasps are efficient predators, mostly of caterpillars. They carry them back to the nest and feed them to the developing larvae. They will collect large numbers of caterpillars from the area around the nest during the course of a season. Adult wasps typically prey on a wide variety of caterpillars including corn earworms, armyworms, loopers, and hornworms. Adult wasps also utilize beetle larvae and flies as food for their young..

Adult paper wasps primarily feed on nectar or other sugary solutions such as honeydew and the juices of ripe fruits. Adults also feed on bits of caterpillars or flies that are caught and partially chewed before presenting to their young.

and:

In early fall, the colony begins to produce males and special reproductive female wasps. These reproductive females, which constitute next year�s queens, mate with males and soon leave the nest in search of protected spots in which they spend the winter. The remaining worker wasps eventually die and the nest becomes vacant. Paper wasps will not reuse their nests the next year.

Even some websites that are trying to sell products or pest control services have useful info, such as this comparison of paper wasps and yellow jackets. 

I sometimes think of fixing the window, but I suspect that, come next spring, a lone queen of the paper wasp variety will come along and still find a suitable spot to take up residence. Maybe that's for the best.

Murder Hornets and Princeton's Cicada Killer

The scary reports about murder hornets offer an opportunity to write about invasive species and insects generally. "Murder hornet" is a nickname, but the insect's real name, Asian giant hornet, is not very reassuring. There have been some scary videos making the rounds. The NY Times article was less sensationalistic, and captured well the potential threat along with the actions being taken to counter it. Rutgers hastened to clarify that the insect isn't found in the northeastern U.S.. And it's still not clear whether the AGH (Asian giant hornet) has established a population in the northwest, and if so whether the population is still small enough to be eradicated.

Big insects are scary. One nightmare remembered from childhood was of an ant about two feet long. I had a memorable bike ride home one day with a wasp having perched on my shoulder. I decided to just let it sit there, and eventually it flew off. The more I learn, though, the less scary most insects become. Late last summer, I waded out into a lawn full of blue-winged wasps flying about, knowing they were harmless. Knowledge can lead to a gentle response to something seemingly dangerous in nature. When the fishhook-shaped thorn of a multiflora rose bush pricks the skin, the best thing to do is relax, move towards the shrub rather than away, calmly cut the stem to which the thorn is attached, or rotate so the thorn has a chance to slip back out of your clothing.

Learning more about the Asian giant hornet can bring at least a little reassurance. Along with the uncertainty of its establishment in the U.S., I heard via an invasives listserve that "AGH does not attack people unless it feels threatened", and though they do pose a threat to honey bees, they only "attack and kill other bees in the late summer when developing males and future queens need extra protein to complete their life cycle."

The largest wasp in the Princeton area is the cicada killer, which looks much scarier than it actually is. Like dragonflies, they can tackle insects in midair. Ten years ago, there was a colony of cicada killers living near the Princeton Community Pool. Cicada killers are large wasps in Princeton that dive-bomb cicadas in mid-flight, then haul them back to their underground nests to use as food for their young. They pose little danger, but the colony was exterminated by the parks department because the wasps alarmed people walking by in their bathing suits. (Photo is a dramatization featuring our local cicada killer and an unknown actor.)

While pointing out that some threatening looking insects can be benign, I've also long advocated for action on invasive species. As introduced plants like lesser celandine and porcelainberry spread their smothering growth across Princeton's open space and lawns, there is an opportunity to keep them out of some areas through proactive action. It's been very hard to get people to think strategically, however.

The Asian giant hornet is at least being taken seriously. Quick action could prevent it from getting established in the northwestern U.S., though usually an introduced species is already established by the time anyone sees it in the wild.

As with COVID-19, there are questions as to how the hornet would adapt to climate in the U.S. The L.A. Times questioned whether the AGH would adapt to California's cool summers and warm winters.

Some introduced insects become enduring pests, like Asian tiger mosquitoes that bite annoyingly during the daytime, and the Emerald ash borer that has decimated ash trees. On the other hand, we hear little about the killer bees that were touted as such a big threat in the 1980s. The best news would be that the Asian giant hornet hasn't become established after all.

Free Talks On Bees and Butterflies

This is part reminder, part update. The talk this Wednesday is about the many species of native bees hereabouts.

Rachael Winfree, "The Business of Bees"
Wednesday, February 16, 6:30 pm
Rick Mikula, "Butterflies: Their Beauty and Perils"
Thursday, March 10, 2011, 6:30pm
Note: This is the new date for the program that was "snowed out" in January
These programs will be held at DR Greenway's Johnson Education Center, One Preservation Place, Princeton. All programs are open to the public, and registration is helpful by calling 609.924.4646

Tall Indigo Bush

One of the more unusually colored flowers in town is produced by the tall indigo bush (Amorpha fruticosa), which can be found growing wild next to Mountain Lakes and Lake Carnegie.

The flowers combine deep purple with orange anthers.

With this spring seeming more silent than usual when it came to pollinators, I was greatly relieved to find a large specimen of tall indigo bush, in full bloom and warmed by the afternoon sun, hosting a vibrant metropolis of insect life.

Bumble bees spiraled round and round the blooms in pollen-collecting gyres, like frenzied wind-up toys.

This may be a so-called metallic green bee.

Tall indigo bush flowers and leaves mixed with the verticals of soft rush.

Honey bees mingled with the native bees.

While a solitary ladybug,

and others among the great unknowns of the insect world

called the shrub home for an aft

This native shrub may be hard to find for sale. Along the shores of Mountain Lakes, it appears to spread underground, like sumac, but when transplanted into new locations I've also seen it remain for many years a single stemmed bush with attractive form and foliage, and a late spring feast for pollinators.