What do I do on a rainy winter day? I look at bee photos, of course. During bee season I take a zillion portraits, but I rarely have time to study them because there are always more pictures to take. But finally the time has come. Here are some favorite bees I recently found in […] Read more
It may surprise you that up to 20% of all bees in North America are cleptoparasites, stealing provisions by laying their eggs on the pollen collected by other bees. According to Bees of the World by Christopher O’Toole and Anthony Raw, the worldwide count of cuckoo species is somewhere around 3700. That means a whole […] Read more
About twenty percent of all bee species in North America don’t bother to collect pollen. It’s not that they don’t need pollen for raising their young, because they do. But they would rather steal it than do all that hard work. We always think of bees as being the ultimate pollinators, so that one-in-five number […] Read more
Milton-Freewater, Oregon has a great little town park with a playground, swimming pool, and a steep trail leading up a hill that overlooks miles of countryside. I was staying near there last week at a bed-and-breakfast where I knew the proprietors from last year. After a long day of trying to photograph alkali bees in […] Read more