border between wild

border between wild

and tame, honeybee harvesting

wild carrot nectar

On today's walk, as I pass a colony of wild carrot I spot a honeybee crawling over one of the large white "lace doilies." She's probably a worker from one of my neighbor's hives. Even though she looks like a wild insect, she goes home to a box, so she's slightly domesticated. The Queen Anne's lace, on the other hand, is thoroughly wild. Although beautiful, it doesn't make a good cut flower and its invasive habits make it less desirable as a cultivator. But here the two are, happily coexisting, the wild and the (slightly) tame. The honeybee will just as willingly pollinate my fruit trees and berry bushes as the wild flowers that abound around here.

I come home to my box, full of windows. The whole south side is an expanse of glass that fills my eyes with green as I sit at the table, enjoying a dish of peaches from last year's harvest. Opening the mail, I leaf through Time magazine, trying to avoid the pictures of suffering.

What's this? Stuck in the middle of the world's craziness, an article on the healing power of nature (Alexandra Sifferlin, Time, July 25, 2016, pp. 24-26). Studies done by Japanese scientists have proved that the practice of shinrin-yoku, "forest bathing," lowered the stress hormone cortisol. The beneficial effects of spending time outdoors are probably due to a number of factors: fresh air, effortless attention, mood elevation, feelings of awe and a natural tree fragrance called phytoncides that lowers blood pressure and increases the number of white blood cells that support the immune system. Even looking out the window at green trees has a healing effect.

Reading this makes me reflect, as I do every day, on how fortunate I am to live in the midst of nature. Our house is surrounded by a little strip of overgrown permaculture garden, a small mowed clearing around the sheds and cars, and then the woods. Even when I walk to the mailbox on the gravel road, I pass along a corridor lined with a generous margin of wildflowers and then the wild woods that stretches for acres, full of trees, bushes, more wildflowers, a wandering creek and lots of wildlife, including deer, fox, wild turkeys. if I go into town, a ten minute drive, the blacktop is bordered by deep ditches filled with wildflowers and copses of trees between the cultivated fields. In town, the streets are lined with trees, each house has a green lawn and parks are interspersed between the houses.  

I grew up in the older suburbs of several big cities, so we always had a yard, a garden, fruit trees, once, a creek at the end of a dead-end street, once, a whole lake across the street. Vacations were always to a location with even more nature -- Big Springs and the Johnson Shut-ins in the Missouri Ozarks, Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, nearly every national park.

I realize not everyone can live in the country. If they did, there would be no country. So I am happy that most people live in cities. My wish for them is more urban green spaces, whether it's a tree-lined avenue, a park on an abandoned rail line or a garden in an empty lot. And I pray that we will always preserve our national parks and wilderness areas, where as many people as possible can come for forest bathing.

delving into pink

delving into pink

tubular bee balm flowers

fumbling bumble bee

Another thunderstorm approaching. No honeybees in sight near my neighbor's hives. But their fat, furry cousins, the bumble bees, are leisurely working the bee balm along the verge, sometimes two on one blossom. 

Their long tongues, curled up during flight, are able to extend down the tubular flowers that cluster in each pink pom pom, whereas honeybees, with their short tongues, prefer open flowers, like this bowl-shaped blossom.

The two types of bees differ in a number of ways.There is only one species of honeybee, which originated in Europe, while there are dozens of species of bumblebees. 

Honeybees live in large above-ground hives of 50,000 to 60,000 bees, where they store honey in wax combs for food all year long. Honeybees communicate by waggle dancing to show the location of nectar. A honeybees that stings will die, as her barbed stinger sticks in the skin. The queen can live three to four years, over-wintering with many of her worker daughters. An older queen may leave her hive and swarm with over half of the worker bees to start a new hive. Beekeepers try to capture these swarms and place them in a new hive.

Unlike honeybees, bumblebees live in the ground in small nests of 50 to 400 bees, producing only a small amount of a honey-like substance which they eat. They may communicate by passing pollen between workers. They can sting more than once, but only if aggravated. The workers only live a few months, while the queen lives for one year, hibernating in a hole. No wonder the bumblebees are busy!

The different species of bumblebees have different lengths of tongues, so they feed on different shaped flowers. Here one is crawling on the platform under the overhanging "lid" of an iris petal.

 

This bumblebee, its legs laden with pollen, is plunging into the center of a rose.

A bumblebee in flight sips nectar from a bell-shaped sage blossom.

This buffed fellow is meticulously probing each of the tiny tubes of a coneflower.

The bumblebees delving into the bee balm (Monarda fistulosa, also called wild bergamot, horsemint and Oswego tea), are inadvertently pollinating the plant. This native plant has many medicinal uses, due to the antiseptic compound thymol found in the plant's leaves and buds. It has a minty fragrance and taste, though a bit bitter. Indigenous Americans as well as later settlers used the plant for everything from seasoning meat, to treating wounds, throat infections, headaches and fever. After the Boston Tea Party, the rebellious Colonists substituted Oswego tea for British tea.

Honeybees, mostly domesticated, are threatened by mites, diseases and pesticides. Bumblebees, which are wild, are threatened by loss of habitat and also by pesticides. Fewer pollinators, fewer flowers, fewer food crops, not a fun scenario.

legs bulging pollen

legs bulging pollen

honeybee plunges into

iris's sweet throat

It's officially Spring, but tomorrow the forecast calls for snow. I keep telling the flower buds, "Wait a few days!" But the ballet troop of miniature Iris already popped up through the dead leaves. Maybe they're close enough to the ground to withstand the frost. Anyway, their early appearance invites my neighbor's honeybees, who are happy to find a few sources of nectar. After plunging into each of the three throats of an Iris, one bee adds more pollen to her legs, which will pollinate the next blossom. She dances gracefully around the blossom, wrapped in yellow leg warmers, and even explores the fake flower on my hat. But she quickly decides that this pink blossom is not a bit sweet and flies away.

alluring linden

alluring linden 

draws honeybees to bell blossoms--

exchanging gifts

It's National Pollinator Week and with the hot, sunny days the honeybees are out in full force. One of their favorite hangouts is a gigantic linden tree on campus. It must be at least 80 feet tall and so covered with yellow blossoms that the branches bend down to the ground. The flowers emit an intoxicating fragrance, which attracts me along with the honeybees. Each tiny flower looks like a round, brass Indian bell with a long clapper. The buds look like a Chinese knot button with five little bumps that open into petals which then split in the middle. Inside the "bell" there is a fringe of pollen-bearing anthers surrounding the long style. When the bee enters the blossom to gather nectar, she brushes against the sticky end of the stigma, depositing pollen. The tree has already put forth the long pale green "wings" that will carry the seeds. The linden is an incredibly hardy and long-lived tree, often grown in cities because it can withstand pollution. Hail to pollen-bearing plants and their life-sharing partnership with pollinators. We would not survive without either of them.

twig-leaf (praying mantis)

twig-leaf (praying mantis)

waiting for prey to stray near --

hapless honeybee -- gone

I am drawn to a hill overlooking our local wetland for a better view of the cloudscape of fleecy cumulus drifting overhead, higher than the three hawks spiraling on invisible currents. Following tractor tracts along the edge of a pasture, I come to a pile of logs where someone has cut down a good-size oak tree. Now my attention is drawn earthward as I tromp all around the logs and squat to count the checkered rings on the largest one.

Just as I am leaving the log pile, I notice a long brown insect hanging upside down from a tall, bushy wildflower with small white blossoms. The creature's slender body blends in perfectly with the stems. It's a praying mantis, though its forelegs, instead of being flexed in prayer position, are extended like a diver about to plunge headfirst. From the brown coloration and slender body, the mantis appears to be a male.

Unbeknownst to me, I am being observed even more carefully than the logs I was examining. As I move around for a closer look, only its small angular head turns to follow my movements. Spooky!

A nectar-seeking honeybee lands on one of the white clusters of blossoms on a stem directly behind the mantis. Somehow sensing potential prey, it rotates its head 180 degrees and folds its forelegs. Look out, bee! Maybe the bee hears my mental alarm because it flies off.

How long has the mantis been patiently waiting for prey to land nearby? Moments later, perhaps the same unwary bee, oblivious to the camouflaged predator, alights on the panicle of tiny flowers in front of the mantis. Detecting motion with its binocular vision, the mantis, forelegs cocked, slowly stalks the bee.

Much faster than my shutter can release, the mantis seizes the bee with its vice-like forelegs, powerful enough to crush its victim.

Whether the bee is dead or alive, the mantis begins to eat the bee headfirst. Hapless honeybee, what you do not see, you become!

The mantis cradles the bee's striped abdomen in one foreleg while it continues to eat the thorax and wings. 

The mantis ignores my presence as it munches the bee with its sideways-moving jaws, but I am not curious enough to wait and see whether it consumes every bit of the bee, including the legs. Now I can explain the mysterious disappearance of at least one unfortunate honeybee and attest that the praying mantis preys on beneficial insects as well as garden pests.

As I start to leave the masticating mantis, I spot another male nearby. I can barely distinguish its back legs from the twigs on which it is resting, but the brown outer wings covering the green inner wings, though slender and leaf-like, are easier to identify.

It appears to be in suspended motion, one foreleg raised to move forward. Detecting my presence, it slowly turns its triangular head to stare at me. When disturbed, sometimes a mantis will rear up, spread its wings and forelegs and open its mouth to make itself look bigger and scarier, and of course will pinch and bite anything that comes near. I decide to leave quietly the way I came, awestruck by my encounter with a bee-eater and its fellow carnivore.

The next day I come back, curious to see whether any praying mantids are still hanging out around the log pile. This time I know what to look for and quickly find one on the same type of bushy wildflower. It's hanging upside down again, not some kind of yoga asana pose but a rather successful strategy to look more like a twig-leaf.

This time, a little braver, I poke it with a long twig to see what it will do. I'm a bit disappointed that it does not rear up or spread its wings, though it does grasp and bite the twig. When that doesn't subdue the threat, the mantis slowly retreats to the log pile.

It's a lot more visible against the gray bark and it watches me warily with those keen goggle eyes until I go on my way.

smoking the beehive

smoking the beehive

to calm her bees, cleaning wax,

checking on the brood

Alitza looks like an astronaut in a white jumpsuit, veiled hat, heavy boots and plastic gloves. But instead of going into outer space, she's going into the inner space of one of her beehives. She's doing routine maintenance, cleaning each of the frames that hold wax, honey and brood. Her tools are a copper smoker, a red-handled combination frame lifter and hive cleaning tool, and a lot of highly focused attention and patience.
          Alitza cautions me to stay away from the entrance to the hive next to the one she's working on and to keep a safe distance from the open hive. "It's your dark clothes," she says. To the bees, I look like a skunk or a bear, their natural predators.
          She's already removed the frames and placed them on hangers outside the white super. Next she smokes the area to be cleaned, to calm the bees so she can work.

With her hive tool Alitza cleans out some old wax.

Once the area is clean, Alitza replaces each frame, some filled with honey and bees, some with fresh wax.

"Please don't sting me!"

Then she puts the top super back on.

Then the inner cover with the slot for the bees to enter the frames.

And finally the metal lid, which will be weighted down with a cement block.

Mango comes out to say hello. Fearless cat, he's not the least bit afraid of the bees.

"There's a lot of honey but not much brood," she says. "I don't know why. The bees look healthy. Maybe I just missed some swarms." 

humble bumblebee

humble bumblebee

tirelessly pollinating

every blooming thing

Bumblebees are big and noisy and they can sting, more than once, though usually only to defend their nest. But these native North American bees are major pollinators and now they're in as much trouble as their European cousins, honeybees. The decline of these once numerous pollinators threatens not only our food supply but almost every blooming thing. Without pollinators the plant kingdom would be reduced to mosses, ferns and fungi. What would survive on that diet?
          The cause of the decline of bumblebees is not clear, but several factors play a major role: loss of wild habitat through monoculture farms and urban growth, the use of pesticides, parasites and fungus diseases, and last but not least, global warming.
          This is National Pollinator Week, a good time to appreciate all of our tireless pollinators. So plant some flowers today!