bee exhibition – Page 2 – Pencil and Leaf

Brigit’s Bee Talk, Meet the Bees and Me!

By Val Littlewood May 4, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

I am delighted to say that Brigit Strawbridge of “The Big Green Idea”will be giving a talk at my “Buzz” exhibition on the 9th of June at 7.00.pm at the Gallery.

“BEE AWARE!!!
Bees of all species are in serious decline – and we need to take action URGENTLY to help them!
In this inspiring, informative and passionate talk, Brigit Strawbridge explains the importance of (and the difference between) Honeybees, Bumblebees and Solitary Bees, addresses the myriad problems they face – and offers you loads of tips so you can go home and help them. “

You may recognise Brigit from BBC’s “Its Not Easy Being Green” but I somehow doubt she has much time to relax these days as “The Big Green Idea” is a very busy charity “dedicated to showing people how sustainable living can be easy, healthy, inexpensive and fun.” They have a fantastic “Big Green Bus” which can be booked for events,

”The entire bus is a showcase for sustainable living. We have carefully chosen the flooring, paints, textiles and lighting, all from recycled or sustainable sources, to demonstrate the choices you can make in your own home. The bus is packed with energy-saving devices, water-saving gadgets, natural products for skincare and cleaning, examples of eco-friendly insulation, eco-paints and clothing made from sustainable crops, wormeries, composting systems and recycled garden containers, and much more besides. Outside, we have more interactive displays and a ‘pedal powered smoothie maker’! “

Do go and watch the nice little animation a with cute bee and worm here. I also know that Brigit will be bringing a solitary bee home too. I will be at the gallery off and on for the first two weeks but definitely on that evening and will be happy to chat to people about the bees and the paintings. I will post some more definite times on the blog soon.

WHY BEES MATTER …. If my exhibition and Brigit’s talk go just the tiniest way to making people more “Bee Aware”, it can’t come too soon. I am not a prophet of doom particularly but if you do need convincing that things are not good in the bee world you only have to read this weekends reports abut the terrible USA decline in the bee population.
This is from the Guardian here, read more of this sobering article and do something!

“Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe
Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields. In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature’s natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.”

I know my blog readers are already bee aware.. (or maybe a bit bee bored ?) but you need to get out there and tell everyone else! Plant some bee flowers, get a hive, make a solitary bee nest, stop using pesticides! Lobby your local politician etc etc .. and do come along to the talk if you can!

But to end on a more optimistic note, here is one happy honey bee foraging on the Blue Pickerel Weed which grows on the lake shores here. I took this photo yesterday on a very hot afternoon.

There were also carpenter bees and mining bees busy around these beautiful flowers.

sm cp

Mid Season Bee Flowers and Drawing

By Val Littlewood May 3, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

The sloth of sloth came to stay for a couple of days. He and I just wanted to celebrate it being May.

It’s my very favourite month…. But now back to the bees and flowers with only a short time left… So a few more sketches of favourite bee flowers.
Mid season is not so difficult for bees. I shall be adding the notes when they are all complete, but, as I sketch them, I am aware that they fall into certain families and perhaps, considering useful bee flowers by family, rather than individually, is a very good way to approach them, for example; Thistle family, Daisy family, Rose family, Lamiums etc, and, within those families are both “cultivated” and “uncultivated” varieties.

What is wild and What is not?
The more I consider the whole subject, the less clear I am about the definition of a “wildflower”. Many of the plants below can fall into either category.
I know the dictionary definition but it is strange in some ways that we grow Stachys byzantina “Lambs ears” or “Woolly Betony” in the garden but relegate Stachys sylvatica, “Hedge Woundwort” and the old medicinal herb Stachys officinalis “Betony” to the wildflower meadow, (well we would if we could find one).
Some of the wild varieties are just as beautiful as their cultivated counterparts, but maybe not so showy. When I was a little girl we would grow cornflowers and scabious as annuals in the garden but lovely delicate corn poppies were weeded out immediately.
My father is still not a fan of foxgloves (recent weeding altercation!) but loves wallflowers which are really just pretty mustard plants.
Then mustard then falls into yet another category and becomes a “crop”.
A crop which used to set the local fields ablaze with yellow.

The common yellow Verbascum thrapsus Great Mullein is classified by some as a noxious weed but is also related to the dainty garden snapdragon. Planning my imaginary bee garden is a complete nightmare of indecision and procrastination. But, I will know to plant things in drifts, choose natives and not to go for double flowers.. which I am not very keen on anyway, give me a simple single rose any day. And I will be annoying the neighbours by letting my dandelions frolic and multiply.

Stachys Lambs Ears and Cornflower

Scabious family and Buddlias

Dead nettles and Foxgloves

Wallflowers and Verbascum

If nothing else, these quick sketches are really giving me a much greater understanding of the flower families, of their wild and tame relationships and their usefulness to bees, both in the wild and in gardens.

Draw and Understand

As soon as you start to draw something you begin to see the similarities of structures and can understand why a bee will like both field beans and the common vetch. The great botanical art collector Shirley Sherwood said “ the best way to know plants, as every gardener knows is to try to draw one” it is good advice. As you are drawing you can’t help but make connections and see likenesses, much more so than looking at a photograph.

It’s trying to reconstruct something that makes you look so hard at it. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your drawing is, it’s what you have needed to observe, and the subsequent understanding which is important.
The act of drawing will also help you to remember the thing too. I wish more people would pick up a pencil just for the joy of discovery, but drawing is seldom really promoted like that.

Like many other things it gets bogged down in superficial slickness and the pressure to produce something that looks exactly like the thing, instead of a fascinating tool to understanding the thing.
I have to admit that I get rather wrapped up in the whole process and chat away to myself (only in private, so far) while I am drawing.. its usually something like; ”Hmmm so that’s supposed to join up there” or “ How does that shape work ” or very often..
“Oh Christ.. why did I do that!”..

Meanwhile Happy May everyone! I hope your bees are busy and your flowers blooming, better late than never!

The Girdled Mining Bee, Ribwort Plantain and Carl Doddies

By Val Littlewood April 28, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

The slender and pretty little Girdled Mining Bee, Andrena labiata, is another bee you might easily mistake for some other insect. It has the distinctive red orange girdle and the males have a small white patch on their face.

It was brought to my attention by Jane at Urbanextension Blog who, oddly enough, as I was writing this yesterday posted two new photos on Flickr here …bee telepathy! In her email to me last night she says this;

“I saw two or three males patrolling the flower bed that I saw them in last year. The males are so lovely with their white faces. I don’t think the females will be around for another week or so (didn’t see them until the 8th May last year – and all the flowers are behind so hope they find something to feed on –we do have some Germander speedwell that is out but the Star of Bethlehem is nowhere near )”

Jane’s photo of the Girdled Mining bee on Star of Bethlehem last year in Dorset 8th May.

It just makes you wonder what impact the late spring flowers may have on early bees? Her mention of Speedwell is interesting because I have read this is a favoured flower of the A labiata.

From an aesthetic perspective, it chooses a flower which shows it off very well, the orange/red set nicely against complementary blue. I am presuming the colour perception of its predators is not quite the same as ours.

The Painting and Ribwort Plantain

I have drawn the Girdled Mining bee perched on the top of a ribwort plantain head. Plantago lanceolata. Yes, I know, another annoying garden weed, especially in lawns where their relentlessly tough stalks pop up again and again and can cause apoplectic heart failure in mowers who like a perfect green sward. But it is a good nectar source.
In her book, “A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them” from 1998, American writer Sue Hubbell confirms that bees will forage from plantains, but records this concerned neighbours comment, ‘“ Your bees must be starvin’,” lamented a friend in town. “ Why, they was workin’ them little bitty stems in the lawn. Poor things. Just stems!”’

Carl Doddies sjpg

I have always been fascinated by the delicate bobbly heads with their quivering stamens and of course we used to play the silly child’s game of Carl Doddies which I wrote about here, back in Jan 2008.

“It was said to have originated from a ” beheading” game played in the Jacobite times, the names derived from Bonnie Prince Charlie, “Carl” and King George, “Doddie”.”

You each have a long plantain stalk and try to knock the head off that of your opponents. It should probably be renamed “mowers revenge” although that would mean nothing to small children except the ones perhaps who have to earn their pocket money by mowing the lawn ( she says, from years of experience).

I am not sure if there is an equivalent game here in the USA, but it gave us a few hours of fun and there were really no shortage of plantains. So spare the weeder and the weedkiller and let your plantains bloom, feed the bees and of course in the unlikely event of offending a bee you can use the leaves to soothe their sting!

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The Girdled Mining Bee..on the lookout for mowers, small children, Jacobites or possibly even a mate..

Watercolour and pencil on Arches HP 8” x 8”

Pretty Muscari and some other Spring Bee Flowers

By Val Littlewood April 26, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

There are some flowers that always seem to be around and very much taken for granted. I cannot remember ever living in a house in the UK that did not have a few of these odd little flowers. They come under the category of “What do we do with the straggly leaves” plants, along with daffodils and bluebells.

They don’t obligingly retreat underground but loll and flop about turning yellow and a little bit slimy. I was always so delighted to see them and then just wanted to tidy them up and would have a day of “folding” up the untidy leaves.
But, if I ever had any doubts about them, I would now plant them like a shot, because I now know they provide a rich source of early food for insects of all kinds. To see who likes them go to Blackbird’s excellent Bugblog and read the entry Grape Hyacinth Visitors.

There you will find photos of the bees and butterflies who are visiting. Below, for a change from bees, is Blackbird’s photo of the beautiful Peacock butterfly feeding on Muscari armeniacum.

She also reminds us to plant in drifts or at least in large enough numbers to make it worth while for bees and other insects to stop. They are very forgiving little plants and reward neglect by spreading around on their own without very much encouragement at all. There are different varieties and colours and when we lived in Spain I was delighted to find the exquisite Muscari comosum growing wild on the mountain side near El Chorro gorge.
Its deep ultramarine-going-on-purple colouring colour is stunning and I made a few drawings of it which are in storage somewhere.. but below is a photo taken Hans Hillewaert in Mallorca from Wiki here.

The little onion like bulbs of this particular variety are still eaten in parts of the Mediterranean and are on the curious “Ark of Taste” list which is “an international catalogue of heritage foods in danger of extinction maintained by the international Slow Food movement.”

You can go their website here to see what food is endangered near you.. sadly nothing so far in Florida!
In Italy the bulbs are called “Lampascioni” and considered a delicacy.
Katie Parla in her sumptuous Parlafood blog based in Italy has an entry here which describes eating them “fried and then soaked in orange honey” (you can’t quite escape the bees can you?).
I had made a small painting of this pretty flower for my bee flower set, but, as I have now decided to change the format, it’s one on its own, but still rather a favourite of mine.

Muscari watercolour 4 x 4.5 inches. Arches Not

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Eight Spring Bee Flowers.
After more deliberation about the flower notes I decided to rethink them and include the written notes on the sketches. This kills two birds with one stone as it were, and simplifies everything…which is good.

Primrose and heavenly pink Cherry blossom

Crocus and Flowering Currant

Pear blossom and Muscari of course !

forget me not sm

Forget me not and Pussy Willow

There are, of course, many others but these will suit a variety of bees.. more bee flowers soon..

Bees and Herbs

By Val Littlewood April 23, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

Bee and herbs seem to go very well together don’t they? Together they conjure up the quintessential summer afternoon, sweet scents and the gentle hum of bees, tea and cakes, and a comfortable chair in the sun.

I don’t think that bees have a real preference for herbs, they are only really interested in the pollen and nectar content, but three things that sit very happily together are bees, honey, herbs, all linked somehow with wellbeing and feeling good. Herbs for health, for just smelling nice, for making our food more delightful, honey to sweeten our lives and just a lovely word in itself and bees of course for making the others possible.

The Herb Society The UK Herb Society has a Bee Aware Campaign this year and Debs Cook, (see also her wonderful herb blog Herbal Haven) their tireless webmaster and herb/ bee enthusiast has posted some excellent herby/honey/bee related articles, and also provided this great photo for the cover of their March magazine.

See these pages and more for garden/bee/food ideas.

Herbs To Attract Bees Into The Garden
Honey & Herbs – Syrups & Infused Honey
Honey & Herbs – Pills & Lozenges
Honey & Herbs – Elixirs & Electuaries

and I am delighted to say they have a page about my BUZZ exhibition so here is something I wrote for them about bees and herbs …

“It’s interesting that many of the flowers that delight the bees also delight us and the connection between bees and herbs is well documented. Rev. L L Langstroth, apiarist clergyman and teacher who was considered the Father of American Beekeeping, said “If there is any plant which would justify cultivation exclusively for bees, it is the borage”, and borage is just one of many herbs that they visit.
The tiny solitary bees like umbelliferous plants so angelica, fennel and dill will attract them. The bunching together of all those tiny flowers into one inflorescence makes them easy for small bees to access. Dill and fennel will also attract pest eating lacewings and ladybirds too. Daisy like flowers and of course the humble dandelion have similar closely bunched flowers which give bees a nice big banqueting table making the next nectar and pollen stop a very short hop. Mints, sages, thymes, basil and oregano will all attract bees too but of course you must let them flower.
I have read that letting herbs flower will reduce the intensity of the flavour but maybe there is a compromise somewhere or just grow twice as many! In fact you can also let a few vegetables run to flower too, especially early salad greens. Bees, like herbs, like sunny sheltered spots.
Strong wind can blow little bees off the flowers, even though they do have 6 feet. Another great advantage to having bees around is just the sound of them! I have a lovely memory from last summer of a particularly drowsy afternoon, sitting in the sun and watching the Red Tailed Bumble bees and the Carder Bees drifting amongst the lavender and chives. I painted both of them for the show.

Their site is fascinating and I hope to be attending their conference this year in June which will focus on bees ….and if you are a member you can knit this bee!

I am going to join! I just love what they do. Everything about herbs presses all the right buttons for me!

Bee Flowers, Herbs

Today was my deadline to get the first eight flowers roughed out and assembled on Photoshop, just to see what they will look like framed. There will be a few changes but it’s a start!

As always I am in two minds . The designer in me wants a more stylised approach like the chive.. yes the pink lollipop is a chive 🙂 ….the naturalist in me wants them to be more as you might see them growing.

I also decided to paint an additional B. Terrestris, just to get the much loved herb Comfrey into the show. (It’s is one of the above too) The structure of its curling flower head is very beautiful and elegant as are the two rabbits ear leaves that curve up from the stem..

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Bombus Terrestris and the beautiful curving flower head of Comfrey Symphytum officinale

Watercolor on Arches HP 8”x 8”

Blue, Beautiful and Rare, Ceratina Cyanea the little British Carpenter Bee

By Val Littlewood April 16, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

This is a lovely bee.

I have here on my desk some little USA Ceratina duplas and the colour is quite beautiful.
To the casual glance they look black and are very small but when they catch the light they shimmer with a Prussian blue sheen.

Ceratina cyanea is the UK, Small Carpenter Bee, possibly overshadowed by its very showy relation, the magnificent Xylocopa violacea which I painted and wrote about here and which is also making an appearance now in the UK.

It seems to be confined to a few areas in Southern England. There is a very good and rather poignant account of this bee from the Essex Field Club Site which shows how the casual destruction of habitat can so easily see the demise of one species in an area. This was updated in 2007 and I haven’t had time to check with BWARS but I hope there are more recent sightings.

Unlike the other carpenter bees this one wont be drilling holes in your fascia boards or fence posts but will be looking for a nice dry brittle bramble or rose twig.
I don’t have a copy of this book ‘Bees of Surrey’ by David W. Baldock but it has been mentioned to me so often in relation to solitary UK bees that I think I must get a copy. It has a description of Ceratina cyanea and the book is available from BWARS.

Readers will know how much I like the older natural history accounts.
In light of the arrival of the Xylocopa in the UK it is interesting that in
“Marvels of Insect Life: a Popular account of Structure and Habit” 1916 , author Edward Step is regretting

“that the big carpenter bee has not crossed the English Channel and added its name to the list of British bees. But if we cannot boast of having one of the largest of bees among our fauna, we have.one of the smallest, that is also a clever worker in wood, whose metallic blue body only measures a quarter of an inch.
It is related, moreover, to the burly continental, and shares its habits, though it works in softer materials as seems fitting to its diminutive size. Ceratina needs no bulky post to accommodate its series of cells.
Everybody knows that the long shoots of the bramble that have borne this autumn’s crop of blackberries will die off in the winter and become brown and brittle.
Next spring ceratina will be taking stock of these, and looking for one that has a broken end. Into this she will tunnel, clearing out the pith to the length of about a foot, dividing the cleared space into tiny cells, laying an egg in each, and leaving a mass of suitable food. The partitions between the cells are made of the fragments of pith cemented together by means of her saliva.

Here is an extract from the snappily titled “ Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge” by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published in the UK in 1836.

Ceratina ceerulcea (Apis cyanea, Kir.), a little bee which is very uncommon in this country and found during the autumn in the flowers of the Jacobeae, ( “ragwort” to us) will serve as an illustration of this genus :—it is about a quarter “of an inch in length, of a bluish-green colour, and very smooth and shining ; the fore part of the head in the male is white. There is a long and interesting account of the habits of this little insect given by Spinola in the tenth volume of the * Annates du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, from which the following facts are drawn.”

You see even horrid ragwort has its uses! There are other references to Spinola’s observations of the Ceratina, but I have yet to track down a copy in English of his writing. It would be very interesting to find one.
I have had some lovely encounters with the local big carpenter bees.
They are delightful, gentle and beautiful, and the local Xylocopa micans has astonishingly huge green eyes.

The Painting Given the above, there was not really much of a decision to be made, as to what plant to draw with the beautiful bee. But, you can see by the manic scribbles (short of time) I was initially a bit undecided where to put the bramble branch.

This is my final decision and, don’t you just love blackberries! If there is one memory of childhood that I really treasure, despite the ripped clothes and bleeding hands it was blackberrying! I painted a blackberry before and quoted the wonderful Sylvia Plath poem here. It’s always worth another mention.

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The Small Carpenter Bee Ceratina cyanea

Watercolour and pencil on Arches HP approx 8” x 9 “

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** Footnote, Thanks! I just want to say a few big “thank-yous” to the people who are helping me promote the exhibition. Stuart at BWARs for an advert right on the front page of the website! Dale at Buglife.org who will be raffling my print tomorrow at their annual get together.
The tireless Damian at Help Save Bees who has done so much to get the message out about bees.
He twitters, enthuses and inspires. If you are interested in bees follow him on Twitter!
Elephant’s Eye for inclusion in her blog post about artists Artists at Work” here.
Dan for her mention here.
All my other very kind blog friends who have put ads on their sidebars and given me mentions and my emailing and facebooking friends too of course.
I am really grateful to you all I will get round to saying personal thanks to you all if haven’t already.

A Bee on a Broomstick, the Opportunist Snail Shell Bees.

By Val Littlewood April 13, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

Yes, you knew all along that yesterday’s snail shells were not just random sketches but really bee related..didn’t you? I first came across these astonishing little bees when reading “Animal Architecture” by Karl Von Frisch.

In his fascinating book he describes how the bee will search for a suitable empty snail shell, provision it with bee bread, lay her egg, then, leaving enough space for the growing bee, seal it with a partition of chewed up leaves, (there are sometimes more than one cell in each shell).

She then fills the remaining whorls with a fortifying layer of tiny stones finishing off with a final partition and some moss. She then carefully covers the shell with a tent of twigs and grass and chewed up leaves for extra camouflage.

This photo from “Bees of the World” by Christopher O’Toole and Anthony Raw, shows an Osmia bee finishing off her nest with a sliver of reinforcing snail shell.

There are some very nice accounts of people observing these industrious little bees, both past and present. Here is an extract from Frisch’s book accompanied by a really nice drawing which illustrates his observation.

“Once when I was out hunting insects, I made a swipe at an oddly flying, bizarre-looking creature. To my surprise all I found nothing in my net apart from a mason bee and a dry stalk. Having read about the tent building habits of of these bees I was intrigued. I released the bee and settled down to watch. After a while I was rewarded by seeing her return, riding on another piece of stalk like a witch on a broomstick.The heavy load slowed her down to such an extent that I just managed to keep her in sight as I ran and she herself guided me to her nest.

Another time I watched the same species nest building on a cow track in a mountain pasture. Here the stalks and twigs were all arranged toward the toe end of the cows footprints, a beautiful adaptation to local conditions. The speed of the building was amazing. One of the bees I watched was just making a partition for which she had collected bits of leaves from a nearby strawberry patch. She kept flying back and forth in a straight line between the plants and the nest” ‘

Jean Henri Fabre experimented with giving bees a choice of shell or hollow reed for nesting and concluded that they would only take the shell if the reed was not available possibly because it is more difficult to build a nest in a tapering spiral than in a tube of more or less constant dimensions.
The bees has to calculate that the size of the aperture will accommodate her developing offspring!

“Why, when I offer them simultaneously Snail-shells and reeds of a suitable size, do the old frequenters of the shells prefer the reeds, which in all probability have never before been utilized by their race? Most of them scorn the ancestral dwelling and enthusiastically accept my reeds. Some, it is true, take up their quarters in the Snail-shell; but even among these a goodly number refuse my new shells and return to their birth-place, the old Snail-shell, in order to utilize the family property, without much labour, at the cost of a few repairs. Whence, I ask, comes this general preference for the cylinder, never used hitherto? The answer can be only this: of two lodgings at her disposal the Osmia selects the one that provides a comfortable home at a minimum outlay. She economizes her strength when restoring an old nest; she economizes it when replacing the Snail-shell by the reed.”

There are lots of lovely observations about the snail shell bees in his writings..He describes the different Osmia and which shells they seem to prefer. Go to http://www.efabre.net… search, read, and share his delight. Walter Linsenmaier’s “Insects of the World” details how some bees move the shells to hiding places.

“ Taking firm hold of the ground with repeated bites they grasp the shell with their legs and haul it after them. Some apply plant paste to parts of the slippery shell enabling their feet to get a firm grip. A few species bury the shell in sandy soil, others protect it with a cover of interwoven pine needles… It is ever a new experience to observe how objectively and with what careful testing such bees work and how penetratingly thorough is their interest in their productions.”

(It is interesting that his illustration predated that of Frisch’s and is very similar and I would imaging that Turid Holldobler who drew the text illustrations for Frisch based her drawings on Linsenmaier’s.)

Whose Shell is This?
For a current, and wonderfully entertaining view of a snail shell bee investigating a shell go to Nico Vereecken’s short film here. Initially it seems that a bee arrives to find the shell already occupied by another but a bee comes back again and again, goes in and out of the shell and turns it over and over.

Watch for the uneasy encounter between the bee and the jumping spider, who is playing king of the castle, and the passing enormous elegant ant!
Nick has built an incredible photographic bee resource which you can find on Flickr here.
Thanks so much to Alan at Norwegica’s Aculeate Blog for first linking to this film!!

The Painting
There are several UK Osmia bees which use snail shells Osmia bicolor, Osmia aurulenta and the little Osmia spinulosa (10mm) which is the one I chose to paint.
Jeremy Early at “Nature Conservation Imaging” refers to them in his excellent “Downland Bees” page.

They seem to use a variety of shells so I went out snail shell hunting some time ago only to discover that there are not many land snails to be found here. I eventually found one I thought suitable and made some sketches and then built a little set complete with a tiny bee. (apologies to the very sensitive amongst you, but it’s one that was kindly sent to me).

Why did I choose this bee? For the very non scientific reason that it has beautiful blue eyes!

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The Blue Eyed Osmia Spinulosa, considering the possibility of a new home…

Watercolour and pencil on Arches HP approx 8” x 8”

BLOG UPDATE .. May 19th 2010.
Great blog post on Osmia bicolour making her nest in a snailshell.. here: at Antje Schulte’s blog “Four Feet and More“
http://fourfeetandmore.blogspot.com/2010/05/osmia-bicolor-bee-that-nests-in-snail.html

“Buzz” ….Are we nearly there yet?… No.

By Val Littlewood April 12, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

I am just looking at the calendar.

I have a little over 5 weeks before I have to fly to the UK with all the pictures.
I now have 30 frames waiting there for me to fill.
I still have to organise the mounts (mats) but I can’t really do that until I have finished the paintings.

I have to write some blurb about each one, there are prices to consider, a catalogue even a simple one, hangings, fixings, numberings, a board with bee info, leaflets, the cafe, prints, cards and of course the horror of “promotion”.

“How many more bees???” “Is there an end in sight??” “Can we have something different?”

The trouble is that the more bees I paint, the more seem to line up asking to be painted.

How can I possibly leave out the long horned bee? How can I possibly ignore the winsome girdled mining bee? How can the set be complete without the beautiful blue ceratina?
The problem with learning about bees is that you get pulled into a completely absorbing and seemingly ever expanding family. I can’t believe that once I had doubts about finding enough interesting subjects.
I have finished and blogged 14 bees, repainted two 2, added 3 to the list.

Which means there are about 9 more to go making about 24 bee portraits.
My original intention was to include some of the cuckoo bees, and even a predator or two but there just won’t be time.
The other 6 frames will hopefully contain some watercolour sketches of just a few of the favourite bee flowers.

Its nice to think that they might be a bit quicker but that is not normally the case. However this week I must start them so… yes…something a bit different this week. Interspersed with the remaining bees of course. Meanwhile some snail shell sketches…as my progress seems rather slow they seem appropriate..

Foxy Lady of the Solitary Bee World, the Tawny Mining Bee.

By Val Littlewood April 9, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

This is another bee I painted before for Deborah’s 16 bee set here. It’s the lovely Tawny Mining bee, Andrena fulva who leaves little volcanoes in your lawn after digging out her nest. It is one of my favourites, she is so pretty.
I wrote about it before too, but I am repeating this quote from David Kendall’s site from my previous post, because it is worth repeating and timely.

The female bee makes a small volcano-like mound with the soil excavated from the nest. There may be many nests close together, giving the impression of communal life, but each female is actually working alone. Nesting activity lasts only a short time (perhaps 2-3 weeks), after which the small mounds of earth around each nest entrance soon disappear, with no permanent damage to the lawn.
Take care not to confuse solitary bee nest mounds with the mounds of earth caused by the nesting activity of ant colonies. Solitary bee mounds have a single large entrance hole in the middle, and by watching for a short while on a warm sunny day, you will see the bees coming and going to collect pollen.
If left alone, these bees will often nest in the same area year after year, and provide an annual service by pollinating your early flowering fruit trees and shrubs (apples, pears, currants and gooseberries) and other garden plants – so helping to ensure good crops later in the year.

from his very nice readable site “Insects and other Arthropods” here.

Let’s hear it for the Solitary Bees!!

My hesitant efforts to promote the exhibition, were rewarded recently with an email from an organisation who are having a “bee support” campaign.
They said they were not really interested in what I was doing because it was about solitary bees and their concern was for honey bees.
I was quite dismayed at this remark (understatement!) which smacks rather of the French attitude which Paul from “Solitary Bee” encounters.
Perhaps it came from someone who doesn’t really know much about bees in general (.. she says, trying to be kind), but it did make me more determined to be a champion of these important “other” bees.
I do realise that, to win the place in our hearts and minds that honey bees occupy, solitary bees have quite long way to go, but they have so much going for them and they serve us so very well.
I know there are quite a few of us out there who feel the same.
I feel a ranting blog post and campaign coming on !… and how could you not love a little Tawny Mining bee!!

The Painting
I know what I wanted for this one so not so much dithering.
She is perching on a twig looking down at the nest she has excavated.

These are really neat little bees with shortish hair which stands out from the body .. I think I described them before as rather like little bottle brushes. (think of the tree!).
I was going to make this the title of the blog post (“Bottle Brush of the Bee World”) but didn’t want to be responsible for any harm coming to Tawny Mining bees: you know how stupid some people can be.

I have a reasonable scanner but it does average the colours out and I don’t have time to play around with things too much, but in the original she in much more a two tone foxy redhead, as she should be.

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The Tawny Mining Bee.. Loveable .. YES..!

Watercolour and pencil on Arches HP. 8×7”

The Tiny White Faced Bee

By Val Littlewood April 1, 2010 January 19, 2020 Uncategorized

You would hardly think this was a bee would you?

And no, regarding the date, it’s not a joke! Although if I had had time, a fantasy new bee species would have been excellent. This is the little White Faced bee from the Hylaeus family, Hylaeus hyalinatus and at only around 6 mm it must be one of the smallest bees found in Britain and more wasp like than bee like.
There are several species found in the UK. They are all very similar and tricky to tell apart individually. For information on identification go to BWARS.

This particular one is a male and has some white hairs on the face, which you can’t see on my low res image.
Sometimes they are called masked bees, or yellow faced bees, sometimes they have creamier yellow markings.

They are almost hairless and, unlike most other bees do not have any external pollen carrying equipment, but store the collected pollen in their crop. You are most likely to see them on umbellifers and the curious Reseda luteola plant, or “weld” which is interesting on it’s own account.
You will have seen it growing on wasteland, a rather straggly nondescript plant. However it is one of the ancient dye plants, which yields a beautiful yellow dye, and is commonly known as Dyer’s Rocket.
The photo below is from John Crellin’s excellent and extensive site Floralimages.co.uk on UK wild plants and fungi.

Floralimages.co.uk Photgrapher John Crellin

And its flowers reward a closer look too.

Photo by Hans Hillewaert from Wiki

The Painting

As with the Lasioglossum I painted a couple of days ago, I am struck by what a different world they inhabit. Perched precariously on top of swaying stamens peering over the tops of petals or looking down from the dizzying heights of a trembling leaf.

Initially I had designated the centre of a buttercup for the drawing, with this smart little bee clambering over the stamens, but in the end, opted for placing him right at the top of one umbel of the flat topped umbel cluster of Common Hogweed (Heracleum nsphondylium.

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White Faced Bee on Hogweed

watercolour and pencil on Arches HP 8”x 7”

Tag: bee exhibition