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While you peruse the seed catalogs in the coming weeks, don’t forget to provide food and habitat for beneficial insects such as lacewings, lady bugs, stink bugs, hover flies, assassin bugs, and parasitic wasps. By attracting beneficials to our gardens, we can get away from using insecticide . . . and avoiding insecticide is [...] Except for bees, my study of entoms has been sparse. Today I often wonder why I didn’t study insects—instead of agronomy—when I was an undergraduate. But when I look back at my courses, I remember. I took two entomology courses as an undergraduate, one of which was called “Economic Entomology.” As I remember, it [...] While I was photographing apiary creatures, this one stopped by and landed on a peach tree. I know it’s in the order Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) but that sums up my knowledge. Still, it’s pretty and deserves to have its fifteen minutes of fame.
Creature in a peach tree. Photo [...] I admire folks who can take good insect pictures. Regardless of the equipment you have, they are extremely difficult to do. Yesterday I noticed a tiny bee going in and out of a mason bee condo. She was much smaller and quicker than a mason bee and I really wanted her portrait. I snapped [...] I often watch honey bees walking on the comb and wonder how they manage to keep all their feet out of the holes. On an empty comb, there are far more spaces than surfaces–and inside a hive it is totally dark and terribly crowded. Just another reason why bees are endlessly fascinating! Organized [...] Many of our native pollinating insects are not bees. Included in this group are the hover flies, also known as syrphid flies, flower flies, or drone flies. These are true flies—in the order Diptera—and they are easily recognized by their ability to hold a seemingly motionless position in the air. Some of the hover [...]
Sweat bees are small bees usually about 1/4- to 1/2-inch long (0.6-1.3 cm). Their common name refers to the fact that they are attracted to the salt in human sweat. In the United States, sweat bees are usually brown, black, red, or metallic green.They are the most common type of bee [...] A friend of mine from the east coast wrote to straighten me out on bumble bees. He said that when he used to till his fields, he would occasionally disturb a bumble bee nest. The bumble bees would react to this intrusion by attacking and stinging. So there you go, I do know someone [...] When you run a website like mine you get to see a daily report of what people typed in the little search box that landed them on your site. This is anonymous—it’s just a list of phrases—but it’s fascinating. Every day I get dozens of these entries—misspellings and all—that show what was on someone’s [...] Dear Readers, Almost every day I read something like this: “One third of all the food we eat is pollinated by bees.” I just read it again today–twice. Some say “every third bite” which sounds like volume; some say “one-third of all crops” which sounds like a species count. Please tell me about this [...] |
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