Let's play Nature BINGO! This is a great time of the year to find a variety of insects on your socially distanced nature walks. You can respect each other's distance bubbles and immerse yourself in the tiny details in the flowers that are blooming right now. If you look into a poppy you might see a honey bee. In fact, you may hear her first. I heard a loud buzzing--sounded like a distress call to me--and found a honeybee trapped inside a Shirley poppy. The petals had folded over her and she couldn't get purchase on the slippery petals.
As you can see, she's covered with fine green gold dust, which is the pollen from this flower. It's on her wings, and even in her eyes.
She flew up and landed on my linen shirt sleeve. She grabbed onto the threads of my shirt and carefully groomed the pollen out of her eyes.
The pollen shows the branched hairs that collect pollen on her thorax and abdomen. She even has fine hairs on her wings. The larger oriental poppies often have a dark purple and even black pollen. Look for honeybees in these poppies too. So we can check honey bee off our BINGO card! What flowers are you seeing honey bees inside?
Here's another bee to check off my BINGO card: the yellow-headed bee (
Bombus vosnesenskii).
You can see the bright orange pollen she's carrying on her hind legs. There are a few plants blooming in the borage family right now, which supply a good source of nectar for bees. This is Italian bugloss.
The herb called borage (
Borago officinalis) pumps out nectar every few minutes. Honey bees and bumble bees love it. One of the bees on the BINGO cards is the mixed bumble bee (
Bombus mixtus) which is yellow, black and orange. The orange is right at the tip of the tail, after a black band. This is a little worker bee with some light purple pollen on her pollen baskets. Comfrey is another plant in the borage family blooming now.
Did you see a Syrphid fly on your nature walk? This hover fly has large eyes that cover the front of its face, short, stubby antennae, and two wings. Bees and wasps have four wings and longer antennae. Syrphid flies lay eggs on plants with aphids so their larvae will have food when they hatch from the fly's eggs This fly appears to be inspecting the borage leaf for aphids, but they seem to have already been taken care of. Perhaps they've been paratsitized and then washed off in the recent rain. Ants milk aphid for their honeydew, and you can see an ant here also looking for aphids on the borage.
Okay, we can check Syrphid fly off our BINGO Card.
Ladybugs also clean up aphids. The adults and the larvae eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. This is an adult seven spot ladybug on a forget-me-not seed pod.
I did not see any hairy belly bees--no mason bees or female leafcutter bees. But I did see three male leafcutter bees patrolling this campanula patch. Leafcutter bees love bell-shaped flowers. Can you see the little spikes on the bee's butt? He uses them to pin down his competition. I'm going to check off learfcutter bee on my BINGO card, even if it isn't a female.
Hey, this isn't a bee? A crab spider lurks in the shadows to grab unsuspecting bees and suck out their juicy hemolymph (bee blood). I should definitely put a crab spider on my next series of BINGO cards!
And here's a little mining bee with hairy pollen pants covered in fine, yellow pollen grains. That "squishy" face and those furry eyebrows tell me she is an Andrena. Check that off the list!
I did see one white cabbage butterfly, but didn't get a photo. They are common garden visitors and their caterpillars are pests that eat brassicas like kale, cauliflower and cabbage. I'll check that off my BINGO card, even if I didn't get a photo.
Well there you go! Not bad for my first Nature BINGO. How many creatures did you find? Did you discover anything new on your journey? Share by tagging @beespeaker on Instagram.
