Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The bee's snooze















I had the day from hell today, but had one brief spin around the garden. That's not as lacking in challenge as it sounds. The garden is an acre or so.
Anyway, cool sub 20 degree day today (my self-assessed standard is that bees and wasps are inactive here below 20 degrees) so I didn't expect to see many of my favourites - but true to form, asleep in Alyogyne angulata, was this little darling. It is always the first bee I see in spring. The girls nest in solitary fashion in the gound. The boys (and girls that haven't built the nest yet) sleep in flowers, like Ciceley Mary Barker's flower fairies. Sometimes there will be two or three in the one flower.
The extraordinary thing is that they favour A. angulata so particularly. I have several Alyogyne species, including the local A. huegelii. A. angulata is a recently described species from up Kalbarri way - at least 700 km away. So what does it offer that the other 3 species don't? I have no idea, but you'll always find them there while it flowers, and nowhere else.
This bee is probably from the family Halictidae, very likely a Lasioglossum sp. it is minute, by measure of Tarlton Rayment, being only approx. 5-6 mm.
You can kind of see this if you compare to the size of the stamens - this is not a large flowered native hibiscus.

Oh, and another thing - see all that pollen on this little tyke? Bees always have branched hairs on their body to trap pollen. While often not visible unless magnified, if an insect has pollen dusted on it like this - it's a bee, not a wasp!

OK, it's not the easiest, quickest method, but I don't think there is one. After all, bees are only vegetarian wasps.

4 comments:

Snail said...

How exquisite!

Anonymous said...

That picture deserves the Arlen/Capote "A Sleepin' Bee" to go with it.

Please respect the intention of my posting this excerpt - it's to share with friends, not to deprive the performer of income.

I love this little toss-away version by the Maggart sisters on Maude's great cabaret cd
With Sweet Despair.
It's a bonus track on 10 second delay at the end of the cd, so it's not sampled on the retailer's page.

Disclaimer: I have no interest in flogging cds, or cdbaby's excellent resource - that's just where you can get the music and I don't like ripping performers off.

all the best,
darky

amegilla said...

Thanks darky. When I publish my DVD of the SW flora/fauna, (don't hold your breath!) I could do with a complementary soundtrack like that. (well, it has to be more original than The Lark Ascending, although I was seduced by the use of that in the movie of The Year My Voice Broke - so atmospheric)

Anonymous said...

Is it Nigel Westlake who wrote "Dragonfly"?

:)))

 
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