Wild Bees

I've enjoyed the wild bees this summer. One of the highlights of the summer was coming upon a nectar and pollen feast these black bees were having in a gentle winding ravine behind the Las Madres Pueblo on my dad's property. 

I was leading my daughter and her friend down the ravine after having explored the timeless Tewa native ruins atop the rock outcropping, thinking more about encountering fossilized relics poking out of the sandy-clay berms, from times when the area was covered with seawater. As I approached a bush with bright yellow flowers up and down its stems in the middle of the runoff-made path I realized it was swarming with bees, at least six on the one bush. The ravine was narrow and I didn't want to lead us right into getting stung, so I led us up the bank to get around it, only to find that many sections of the 100 or so yards remaining in our trek down the ravine had similar clusters of the yellow flowered bushes swarming with bees. The banks became too steep to go around them so we had to trust that the bees would be more interested in their foraging than in us, which turned out to be true, though I did notice they got a little riled each time we passed. Thinking back on the encounter it felt like I've felt sometimes in Minecraft, entering a special and magical outdoor space. I haven't seen those bees or flowers anywhere else in the area and feel like they belong to that one special place. Consulting with a friend who is a rancher they might be "locoweed", or they might be a variety of legume. The locoweed possibility is interesting, though, and apparently a problem for ranchers in the southwest.

We've been observing many varieties of wild bees in our back yard this summer, seems like more than usual. Just now there are some bumblebees feeding on the dahlia that has grown like crazy this summer. Can you see them?

The bees have really enjoyed the lavender flowers, and the coneflowers you can see behind them.

We had a bee mystery. I planted an Eastern Redbud tree to take the place of the holly tree that succumbed to an infestation of whiteflies last summer, and as the leaves grew in and filled the branches with wonderful heart shapes I started seeing circles cut out of them. I thought it must be some kind of caterpillar munching away until one day I finally saw a bee with black body and white stripes land on a leaf and chew a circle right out of it from the edge, and fly away with it. Sure enough a search for "leaf cutter bee" brings up a bunch of pictures of just what I saw. They didn't turn out to be a problem for the tree, since their nesting season is finite and when their eggs are laid they don't need any more leaf cuttings.

The bees did a great job of pollinating our first successful zucchini vine. I had read about sometimes having to pollinate the female flowers from the male ones yourself, but looking in on the flowers I saw bees and wasps already in there doing the job. We got good zucchinis as a result. 

Finally, our grass in the back yard was somewhat taken over by clover, which made the honeybees really happy. I know there are hives in Prospect Park and in Greenwood Cemetery, both within a mile on either side of us. They loved the white flowers and made us take care when walking around, at one point we had a path of well trodden grass on the edges of the yard so we could let the clover grow for them.