That bumblebee is the bomb!

"Bombus impatiens" that is. This furry little "bombus" or bumble bee was buzzing around a stand of purple coneflowers in the meadow at Shawnee State Park...

A fuzzy, round bumble bee hovers over its next nectar source, a vibrant purple coneflower. The bumble's loud buzzing was persistent...and one of the wonderful sounds of summer.

I don't know a lot about bumble bees, so that evening I got out my "Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America" to see what species this bumble was. From the photo and description, I'm deducing Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens). Bombus impatiens' field marks include a thorax covered in yellow pile (or fuzz) with a small bald spot on top, and an abdomen with only the first segment covered in yellow pile...

In this photo, it looks like just the first segment of the bee's abdomen is covered in the yellow fuzz, which identifies it as a Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens). If the second segment was also covered in the yellow fuzz, it would be an American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus).  The Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) is one of the most common bumble bees in our area and in the eastern United States. 

A pollen basket (or "corbicula") is a smooth surface on the hind leg of a female bumble bee or honey bee. Males do not have pollen baskets. Bumble bees and honey bees use pollen baskets to carry pollen back to the nest. Click here for an earlier post that explains how pollen baskets work. Click here for other ways to tell female and male bumble bees apart. Another difference between a male and female bumble bee is the stinger. Females have them, males don't. Unlike honey bees, who die after stinging because they have a barbed stinger that is left in the victim, bumble bees can sting more than once because their stinger is smooth. Click here for more info on a bumble bee's stinger.

...let's zoom in a bit to look at the ocelli (three primitive eyes) on the top of his head. These eyes help the bumble bee see ultraviolet light, and are also used for stability while flying by helping the bee detect the horizon. To read more about ocelli, click here. To see the ocelli on a grasshopper (from an older post), click here. 

Bumble bees have long tongues encased in a hard sheath. The tongue is reddish, and the tip is hairy and feathery. This modification helps the bumble bee lap up nectar. It is not a sucking tube like a butterfly's proboscis. (Source: "The Natural History of Bumblebees, a Sourcebook for Investigations," by Carol A. Kearns and James D. Thomson, pg 30.) For a close-up photo of the feathery tongue, click here.

Bees in the late summer sun 

Drone their song 

Of yellow moons 

Trimming black velvet, 

Droning, droning a sleepysong.

                    --Carl Sandburg

The yellow pile looks as soft as a bunny's fur, but the fuzzy "hairs" are actually finely branched setae. The branching helps pollen stick to the hairs, which function more like our skin in that they contain sensors that let the bee feel wind speed and direction, or detect chemicals. For more on bumblebee hair, click here. For a quick overview of the differences between mammalian hair (keratin) and insect "hair" or setae (chitin), click here. 

Bumble bees are so big, round and fat it seems improbable they could fly with their delicate wings, but they do!  Here this Bombus impatiens hovers over a purple coneflower. She soon lit on the orange spikes to lap nectar, one of her main food sources. Bumble bees eat pollen and drink nectar. They have no other food source.

South winds jostle them--
Bumblebees come--
Hover--hesitate--
Drink, and are gone--
--Emily Dickinson

A tisket, a tasket, two little pollen baskets!

A week or so ago I was walking along the Little Miami River when I looked up and saw a honey bee buzzing around the blossoms on a Buckeye tree. She was high over my head, but I could still see two little red balls on her hind legs. "What are those?" went through my mind. I've seen yellow "clumps" on a honey bee's hind legs before, which I assumed were grains of pollen the bee had picked up while pollinating flowers, but I had never seen red clumps, much less red balls. A quick Internet search when I got home solved the mystery--"pollen baskets." Not all bees have pollen baskets, and not all pollen baskets function the same, but it seems the color of the pollen in the baskets is determined by the pollen source. Our little bee was pollinating Buckeye trees when I saw her, but maybe the red pollen came from a flower she had just visited. Either way, the thought of the busy bee inspired a quick painting...

Painting 220. Busy Bee with Red Pollen Baskets (oil pastel)
This is just a generic representation of a bee...it came out of my head, so it doesn't match any species in a field guide!

Pencil sketches from my sketchbook of honey bees with full pollen baskets...
When I got home that evening, I created an entry in my sketchbook. Again, these are just generic drawings of bees as I see them in my imagination. I don't know the species. I just thought the pollen baskets were cool, and wanted to record what I saw.

More about pollen baskets...
A pollen basket (or "corbicula") is a slightly concave, smooth surface on the hind legs of bumble bees, honey bees, orchid bees, and stingless bees. The "basket" is surrounded by guard hairs that hold in pollen the bee has dampened with nectar or honey and compressed into a "pollen pellet." When the bee mixes the pollen with nectar, the color of the pollen changes, but it is the source of the pollen that really determines the color of the pollen pellets in the pollen basket. Bee keepers can identify the pollen source just by looking at the pellets deposited at the hive. Bees that don't have pollen baskets have other structures for transporting pollen. Some use "scopa," a brush of hairs often on the hind legs and some carry the pollen in their crop. (Soure: Encyclopedia of Entomology 2008, pgs 419-434, here; Wikipedia, here, and for examples of pollen sources and their color, click here.)

...the red balls on this honey bee's hind legs (tibia) are called pollen baskets (corbicula). Pollen is a bee's main source of protein, fat, minerals, and some starches, so it's important the bee has a way to transport the food back to the hive. (Click here for a detailed article on bees that explains more about their dietary needs.)

...this little bee has been very busy! Her pollen baskets look almost full. It takes a worker bee from three to eighteen minutes to fill up the pollen baskets and return to the hive. That's quite a difference. I guess it depends on the abundance of pollen at the source...or whether the busy little bee is simply a slacker! (Source: Wikipedia. To learn more about bee research, check out Karl von Frisch, here.)

A buckeye tree with newly emerged leaves and blossoms just beginning to open was a favorite of this honey bee. Through the camera lens I could just make out the red balls on her legs. I almost didn't photograph the bee because she was so far away, but I wanted to find out what those red balls were! I'm glad I did...

...a sketchbook scribble I almost didn't include, but it's fun...and I need the paintings for the challenge! :-)
Painting 221. Busy Little Bee, Take That Pollen on Home! 
(watercolor and pencil--scribble idea for a future painting)

A bee curls up in a flower for the night, and a long-nosed bug keeps him company…

As I was walking the Little Miami Trail the other evening, a small stand of one of my favorite spring flowers, Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum), caught my eye. Its papery and delicate petals of lavender were lit just right in the early evening sun, so I stopped to snap a few photos. As I trained my camera lens on the blossom, I noticed two types of bugs. I could see one was a bee curled up behind the stamens, seemingly tucked in for the night, and one was a strange-looking bug with a very long nose, scurrying around checking out every part of the flower. On closer inspection, I noticed his antenna seemed to be positioned half-way down his “nose,” which added to his cool factor. After going home and checking in my insect field guide, I learned the long-nosed beetle was some sort of snout beetle (weevil) in the family Curculionidae, and the “nose” was actually an extended part of the head that ended in a mouthpart aimed at letting the weevil bore into fruit, cotton bolls, wheat, and other vegetation.

A bee is curled up in an Appendaged Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum) blossom...and just above the flower, a tiny weevil is scoping out the area.

This clump of Appendaged Waterleaf was in the shadows behind the first patch I saw. I noticed the same type of bee was hanging out in the blossom, but another species of weevil was crawling around on the blossom. It was larger and darker than the little yellow-striped weevil I had just seen on the first blossom.

The warm evening sun highlighted this bee as he readied himself for the night. Male bees often do not return to the hive in the evening, spending the night in the protection of a flower blossom instead.

...let's zoom in on this furry little beast (although, if he is a male drone, he's not much of a beast because drones don't have stingers!). I love those little balls of pollen sticking to his legs...

...up pops Mr. Weevil! His super long "nose" or snout is called a rostrum (Latin for beak) and is really a downward curved extension of the head that ends in saw-like mouthparts that can bore into nuts, fruit, plants, etc. Notice how his antenna are located halfway down the rostrum (strange and cool...).

...not the greatest photo, but it does show his pattern and coloration. He's black with yellow or yellowish-green stripes and tiny dots and dents. According to my National Audubon Society's "Field Guid to Insects & Spiders," pg 612, snout beetles and weevils (family Curculionidae) are "hard-bodied beetles" that make up the largest family of insects, coming in at 40,000 species worldwide and 2,500 species in North America (now I don't feel so badly not know what species this guy is).

Appendage Waterleaf blossoms are busy places in the evening!

Most weevils are plant specific, e.g., "Acorn Weevils" feed on acorns and lay their eggs inside an acorn. The infamous "Boll Weevil" feeds on cotton bolls and lays eggs in the boll, destroying the crop.

Here is a video from National Geographic that shows an Acorn Weevil busy at work:

Beauty and the bee...

I was photographing this thistle when a bee flew in, landing in just the right place for a photo!