If you lay in a forest full of bluebells and looked upwards, this is what you would see. Violet bliss.

Theory of bee relativity

(Photo: Sarah Phelan)

It's not easy to convey the size of a long-horned bee to those not familiar with this species. Let's just say they are smaller than honey bees, have extra long antennae--hence their name--and that the males sleep in flowers, gripping on with their mandibles so they don't fall out of their petal tents in the middle of the night. Awwww.

I found one tonight at sunset, sheltering at the center of a yellow-petaled gum flower. As you can see from this photo, the little fella fits in just perfectly. Now I just need to get my hands on a macro lens and I'll really be able to show you what I mean

Wing surfing

Photos and text by Sarah Phelan

It isn't until I'm walking along the shoreline in strong headwinds that I fully appreciate the strength of bees.
Because they there are, surfing the tops of the flowers on veinated wings despite the wind conditions.

By mid-August the stands of fennel along the shoreline are at least six feet  high, sometimes more. So, for a  bee to scramble across the fennel flowers foraging for nectar and pollen in a strong wind, would be like me scrabbling across the top of the Empire State Building trying to sip juice and pick up lentil crumbs in gale force winds, wouldn't it?
Or perhaps it's the law of physics that make riding the wind more like surfing the water when it comes to insects?

Either way, as you can see from this picture, the fennel lines the Alameda shoreline. What you can't see from the picture is that the wind is blowing in from the ocean, unobstructed, by way of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.

Yet somehow the honey bees manage to navigate these challenges with seeming ease, as they stretch over time and space to probe the next pot of nectar with their tongue and stash the next batch of pollen into baskets on their hind legs. Now it's true that by the end of a month in the field, bees' wings become torn and frayed, making it harder for them to fly and navigate the winds. And this may be what ultimately kills an aging bee: unable to fly back to its nest at night, a honey bee will probably die of cold. And if it returns in a poor condition, its sisters will ultimately evict it from the hive. Still, for now, it's still the halcyon days for the honey bees of August.

Counting bees

Photos and text by Sarah Phelan

Saturday was an adventure in bee counting for folks in the Bay Area,. Personally, I counted lots of honey bees in my back yard, all drawn there by my licorice-scented Agastache "Blue Fortune" or hyssop, as it's also known.
Out along the Alameda shoreline, I saw metallic green sweat bees and longhorn bees in profusion on the gum plants. and anoccasional bumble bee bizzed-whizzed past us as we wandered past huge stands of wild fennel. Happy bee count!

This is what Agastache "Blue Fortune" looks like, in case you are wondering.

The bumble bee nest in my mother's garden

This video clip opens looking up my nostrils, as I crash through undergrowth and place my camera at the entrance to a nest of bumble bees that have taken up residence in my mother's garden in England. The nest is close to the patio where my mother drinks tea, and you can hear people chattering and clattering on the patio, as background noise, as the camera records British bumbles bizz-whizzing in and out of their nest.

Teddy bear bees really do exist

Photos and text by Sarah Phelan

I'd heard that teddy bear bees exist but I didn't believe how big and hairy they could be until I got an eyeful myself.
The location was the Haagen Daaz honey bee haven, which is in Davis, California. The haven began, as the name suggests, as a haven for research into honey bees: Haagen Daaz donated funds because all its flavors of ice cream rely on fruit being pollinated by bees
But over the years retired entomologist Dr. Robbin Thorp, who works at the haven, began turning his attention to other bees --and when I visited him last week, he showed off a female teddy bear which is big and black and hairy. Thorp used an apparatus that looks like a dust buster to "suck" the bee off a flower. He then was able to examine the bee more closely before releasing her again unharmed, though I suspect the experience must be the bee equivalent of an alien abduction.
Turns out the male teddy bear bee has golden hair on its body, hence the "teddy bear" name. No males showed up while I was at the honey bee haven, but a female teddy bear bee (pictured above) appeared after Thorp had left the garden. So, I spent a transcendental few minutes trying to capture her size, bustle and buzz, before she zoomed off again.

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Xylocopa varipuncta, as these bees are officially called, are also known as Valley carpenter bees: the males are referred to as “teddy bear” bees  because of their yellowish-brownish color and fuzzy burly bodies. The females, by contrast, are all black with violet reflections on their dark wings.
 It's hard to convey the size of this bee--the flower she is sitting on is pretty big but that doesn't translate in this photograph.
So, I've included a short video clip in the hope of sharing how awesome it was to see this bee so up close and personal:

Solstice cats and bees

The only creatures already stirring in my yard at sunrise on the summer solstice were bees.  

Oh yes, and the cat, who was, of course, pretending not to be watching the bees.

Hell, he even averted his gaze when I tried to get a better shot.

But the bees were oblivious and had already collected great gobs of pollen, despite the early hour. Happy solstice!
Try to enjoy all fourteen hours and forty-seven minutes of daylight today.