A Live Model

I am frustrated if I can’t see the real thing when I am drawing. That is my preferred reference, a photo of my own is second best and then the last resort is searching through hundreds of reference photos of my subject, drawing it over and over again until I understand how it works and what  I am trying to do. It can be a long job.

Bee number 5 is to be the tiny little metallic green sweat bee.

One of the Halictid family. My biggest admission here is that I have never seen them before.. and that is only because I wasn’t looking or rather wasn’t seeing.  I also thought they would be bigger. Before I started this project, bees, to me, came in two sizes.. bumble and honey, but these are tiny, and look more like our UK hover flies.

To see them you have to adjust your focus and tell your brain to pick up on tiny things.. once you have done that you will see them (if you live in Florida anyway), literally thousands of them, all over horse mint, the daisies and the roses.

Yesterday I went to Leu Gardens to try to get a decent photo or two and by accident met my friend Robert who was photographing butterflies. I explained my frustration, lack of a decent camera etc etc .
“Well” he said, “what you need to do is catch one and pop it in the fridge for 10 minutes.” This literally chills them out enough for you to photograph them while they warm up.
This morning I went back to the horsemint on the lakeshore and tentatively captured a bee…it wasn’t difficult, they are too busy gathering nectar to notice.

I put a large plastic bag over a large head of mint and cut the stem, then took the bag, mint and bee home.

My model was still quite busy clambering about the mint, so it was not difficult to transfer it in a glass jar and to the fridge. I have to say I was worried about this.

I don’t want to kill anything even for my “art”.

But both the bee and I survived and an hour later I was able to let it go, back to the very same spot. It immediately continued gathering nectar as if nothing had happened.

The photos are not great by professional terms but I am so pleased.

Apart from the photos, I was able to watch the little stripy bee wake up slowly and give itself a good sprucing up which seemed to involve a lot of antennae preening.

I could see the beautiful black markings on its yellow legs and the glittering iridescence of its head and thorax. From what I can see this is Agapostemon splendens. I did take lots of photos, many were out of focus as I am having to use an enlarging ring to get close enough which is something new to me … but here are just a few of the reasonable ones:

bee in jar

Bee in jar with some Horsemint.

out of the jar

Coming out of the jar.

bee and ruler

Bee waking up .. see how very small he is

. bee preening

Bee sprucing up, he was using his front leg to wipe his face and antennae

.

Bee glaring at me …

back to work

and straight back to work ….

Floral Larceny and Nectar Robbing: Laziness and some Bad Behaviour in the Bumble Bee world.

Bumble Bees steal nectar.. yes, it’s a shocking fact. I had no idea such underhand behaviour went on in the seemingly righteous world of the busy bee.
Bumble Bees need nectar for flying fuel and as the different species of Bumble Bees have foraging ranges of between 5 and a tiring 20 K,  if a bee takes a bit of short cut for refueling who can blame them.
They do this by cutting small holes with their strong mandibles in the base of tubular flowers which would otherwise be difficult for these bulky bees to access.

This is good for the bee but not good for the flower. The point of having nectar for a flower is to lure  the pollinator, bird, bat or bee, to seek it out and get a good dusting of pollen from the anthers in the process.

The pollinator then moves on to redistribute pollen and fertilize the next flower. Not much of a problem for a little patch of clover but on a grand agricultural scale, non fertilization of a crop could be disastrous.

So it was because of this nectar robbing behaviour that Thomas Belt in 1878 was moved to recommend sending Bombus lapidarius rather than Bombus terrestris to New Zealand. Both he and Darwin had noticed the lazy behaviour of Bombus terrestris…again from “Science Gossip” in 1878…

 I once watched a small patch of red clover for upwards of an hour. Both of the above species came to it; Bombus terrestris, without exception, buried its head amongst the flowers, and made holes at their base, or sucked the nectar from those already made.

Bombus lapidarius just as invariably went to the opening of the flowers, although the most of them had holes made by the other species.
Bombus lapidarius has a longer proboscis than B. terrestris, and this is probably the reason for the different way in which they go to work. Early in the summer I have seen young individuals of B. terrestris sucking the nectar from the flowers of the scarlet runners in a legitimate manner, but they soon learn to make by preference the holes at the base.
The successive steps in their education may be watched from their first hesitation, awkward attempts to do this to the instinctive-like facility they attain later on in the season.

For me the most interesting aspect of this account is that the Bumble Bees seem to  “learn” this behaviour.
On discovering flowers with holes, they will copy and start to bite similar holes allowing them to “steal” the nectar.
Darwin had observed that “all plants must suffer in some degree when bees obtain their nectar in a felonious manner by biting holes through the corolla.”
However more recent research has found this not to be such a huge problem.

terrestrisRobbing

Photo from the very excellent site Bumblebee.org from which I keep quoting. It is the very same Bombus terrestris caught in the act, stealing nectar from a snapdragon.

Do visit the site and read the best explanation of nectar robbing I have seen at the above link.

Bumble Bees to New Zealand 1885

We are now used to hearing reports of bees being transported huge distances to aid in crop pollination but I had no idea that this was happening quite so long ago.

¨In 1885 liberation of bumblebees in Canterbury (New Zealand) specifically to pollinate red clover made agricultural history: it was the first time an insect had been deliberately released to pollinate a particular flower.

This is from a completely fascinating article by David Sheppard at Bumblebeeconservation.org, read it here.

He tells the sometimes poignant story of efforts to send the little hibernating queens out to fertilize the clover crop. Although clover was growing well, there were not enough local pollinators to fertilize such large crops, so costly new seed was having to be bought from the UK each year.

The first attempts at transporting the bees failed and they died, unable to survive the heat and humidity of traversing the tropics. Eventually, with a bit of bribery, they succeeded.

Mr Nottidge, a banker of Maidstone in Kent, offered a bounty to workmen who were cleaning out ditches for every bumblebee they could find. These 282 fertile hibernating queens were shipped on board the new iron steamer ‘Tongariro’ which was one of the first steamships to be built with a refrigeration unit.

The voyage departed from London in December 1884, calling at Plymouth, Madeira, Capetown and Hobart, arriving at Wellington in January 1885.
The consignment was taken to Lyttleton by coastal steamer and arrived at the Canterbury Acclimatization Society’s gardens  on January 8th. 48 bees were still alive

The hazards were not over for the bees as local hostility to the new immigrants caused nests to be destroyed, and as always the introduction of a new species can have its problems.

However there are now 4 Bumble Bees species busy helping with the crops in New Zealand. Bombus hortorum, Bombus subterraneus, Bombus ruderatus and even the nectar stealing Bombus terrestris.

Bumble Bees back to the UK 2009 The rather neat foot note to this is that the short haired Bumble Bee, Bombus subterraneus now extinct in the UK is to be brought back from New Zealand to boost our native population.

“If we’re successful, this will be the first time a species has been reintroduced to the UK by bringing back direct descendants of the extinct population.”

Read more from the BBC here.

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Bombus Terrestris: The Buff Tailed Bumble Bee

The drawing here is another study of the first UK bumble bee I brought back in May. It is, I am sure Bombus terrestris because of the sandy coloured part of its tail.

Bombus terrestris sketch sm

This one was already dead, but in answer to the question “why do I sometimes find bumblebees apparently lifeless and bedraggled on the ground in the morning”,  Laura Smtih’ s wonderful Bumblebee.org puts us right again.
Hmm..this strikes a chord with many of us female humans too.

“I get a huge number of emails from people asking me why their bees are sick, when in fact they are just males who have spent the day chasing queens and drinking nectar and then stayed out all night.
Sometimes it rains and they get soaking wet, but they will recover once they drink or get warmed up by the sun.
Sleeping inside a disk or bowl shaped flower is a good strategy for these bumblebees as research has shown that the temperature at the base of the bowl, near the source of nectar, can be as much as 10 °C higher than the surrounding air temperature.

So just put your bedraggled bad boys in a saucer in the sun and help them on their way to ensuring the survival of our delightful and useful Bumble Bees.

The Beautiful but Grumpy, Bombus lapidarius

Number three of the four Bumble bees is Bombus lapidarius, the (other) Red Tailed Bumble Bee, or the Stone Bumble Bee after its name “lapidarius”. Called this because of its liking for making nests under stones or in stone walls.
The one I have sketched is the female, all black with the beautiful flame red tail. Below is the male with similar colouring, but with a yellow band on the thorax and a tuft of yellow hair on the face.

Bombus lapidarius male

Photo of Small male Bombus lapidarius by Nigel Jones for BWARS ( Bees Wasps and Ants Recording Society) here.

The facts CLASS: Insecta
ORDER: Hymenoptera, Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies.
SUPERFAMILY: Apoidea. Bees and some wasps.
FAMILY: Apidae. Bees.
GENUS: Bombus. Bumblebees
SPECIES: Bombus lapidarius
Lengths: Queen 20-22mm, Workers 11-16mm, Male 14-16mm.

These beautiful bees are common in Europe, I saw two while I was at home in Lincolnshire in September. They make a slightly later appearance than some other Bumble Bees. and form colonies of up to 200. They are busy active creatures, visiting many different species of flowers but seem to particularly like clover and dead nettle and they apparently like an easy landing, so will also choose daisies, dandelions and thistles.

A Bad Tempered Bee

Bombus Lapidarius has a short fuse. They are known to “buzz” you menacingly if you disturb or threaten them. Bad behaviour, in the old days, was punished with deportation but it was in spite of this grumpy nature, that worthy Victorian, Thomas Belt, advocated these bees be shipped out to New Zealand to help with pollinating clover.
Thomas Belt was an extraordinary man.
This is the Thomas Belt who “discovered” the complicated relationship between the Bulls Horn Acacia and ants. (see my earlier blog entries for info about him and the twiggy home of my beloved, now long gone “Ant” here)

The following from 1897 edition of the wonderfully named “Science Gossip” demonstrates how his early childhood toughened him up for his astonishing life as mining engineer and naturalist..

I know nothing more interesting to a naturalist when he wishes to rest from more serious study than to devote a few hours on a summer’s day to watching the humble bees at work amongst the flowers.
They have been favourites of mine from early childhood, one of my first experiments being the determination of the stinging powers of the three species, and the time they might be kept between the hollow of the two hands before they got sufficiently angry to sting.

My recollection is that Bombus lapidarius, although it has the longest proboscis, has also the shortest temper and most virulent venom, and if it be not set free as soon as its first angry note is heard, it will not fail to punish severely.
Notwithstanding this trait in its character, I have no hesitation in recommending that it is the one that should be sent out to New Zealand, and that Bombus terrestris should not be.—Thomas Belt, the Cedars, Ealing.

I will explain why he does not recommend B terrestris in the next post…
But, forgive them their occasional fit of pique, grow some of their favourite plants… or rather go easy on the weeding in your garden, as weeds seem to be their flower of choice.

What could be nicer than to have these strikingly beautiful bees gracing your flower beds and what a good excuse for that neglected patch… just don’t upset them!
I have spent hours pondering this handsome bee. Its beauty is in its dense blackness, contrasted with its flame red tail. The body tends to be naturally very curved which means that seen from above its head is almost always invisible, but it does have the appealing chubby bumble bee look.

lap sketch sm

However in the end I decided on more of a side view which shows off the beautiful tail and some head features, while retaining the really furry nature of the pile…. It’s always such a compromise..

Some final pencil sketches ..

 

lapidarius sketch sm

Finished one soon …

Some Strange Entomological Finds in Key West

It could only be us, a couple of non festival aware Brits, who would book that “relaxing” hammock-swinging, foot-lolling, end of October weekend in Key West.

This was to be our much looked forward to, quiet break by the sea. Yes, I suppose we did notice that Orlando was smothered in fake cobwebs and had been glowing orange with plastic pumpkins for the last month, but Halloween, to us, is of no importance.

So it was only 24 hours before leaving that we read that our trip coincided with the Island’s wild and wilful 30th celebration of the outrageous eye-popping “Fantasy Fest”
Billed as a rival to New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, Fantasy Fest is an adult party/ fancy dress celebration of the Conch Republic and of course of Halloween.

This years theme was “Villains Vampires and Vixens” and they were all there. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea to see the intimate areas of the over 50’s sprayed and brushed with gaudy body paint, but you would have to be a miserable soul not to have found this funny and liberating.

Thighs and hips, escaping at last from tight jeans, sagged and dimpled. Breasts jiggled and swayed irrepressibly, in and out of bikini tops. Bums and bellies, large and very large challenged to the limit both the imagination and resources of the body artists.

Crowds gathered and lenses jostled to see nubile young ladies being sprayed. Lurid paint seeped its way into crevices and tucks that are usually kept respectably out of sight.
Hairless and hairy men threw beads to the audience.
There were men in frocks, and men out of frocks.
Fat men dressed as fairies, thin beautiful girls painted with stars, fat beautiful girls in pirate costumes.

Elegant almost naked ladies who belonged in university libraries sipped bloody cocktails on the verandas of Duval alongside their equally elegant husbands, with only a couple of thongs and jock straps between them.

We watched the crowd from a balcony for a while, heard a voice floating up from below “Hey there sweet tits” ..and saw 30 acknowledging heads turn… both men and women.

As the afternoon heat increased and temperatures rose we slipped into Sloppy Joes for a frozen Margarita.

It is the first and probably only time, until perhaps my geriatric days, that I will ever ask a respectable elderly lady sitting next to me if I will see her with her clothes off later. “Why sure honey!!! ” she shrilled.. “ I’ve gotten myself painted!! I sure can’t do THIS everyday in Virginia.” … not in Lincolnshire either I can tell you!

Poignant scenes were there too… a lanky “fly” weaving home alone in a darkening street, his antennae sagging, glittering gauzy wings drooping.
The ample breasted girl from the Adult Entertainment shop, sitting disconsolately on her verandah, neglected and alone, her obvious charms struggling to be freed from the tight white tee shirt but sadly eclipsed by the many, more glittering and readily available ones on offer on the street.

The very tiny old man weighted down with leather straps and chains resting his frail bedecked body on a low wall, bony elbows on bony knees watching glumly as the cruise ship on the dock spilled its gleeful cargo of nudists.

Of course, lest we all forget ourselves and surrender completely to sin and debauchery there was the occasional sober man of God dragging a cross along the road reminding us of the consequences of our actions.
A derelict wild eyed drunk lurched across the road in pursuit of one of them, but, on seeing the good man disappear into a nearby churchyard, turned back muttering the best line of the weekend.. “ Well d.a.a.a.a.mn !!!, he’s safe… he made it back to holy ground, agin! “

So our quiet weekend was not quite what we expected, but we ate wonderful seafood and delicious Cuban rice and beans, drank dark bitter buchis, indulged in Key Lime Pie, heard some good old nostalgic music, giggled and laughed our way up and down Duval, sailed out to see the sunset, cycled everywhere, and generally had a good time, all in the company of 80 thousand happy people who were doing very much the same.

fly2       bee

Two winged happy creatures from Fantasy Fest, photos by Chris.

Bee No 2: Tricoloured Bumble Bee: Bombus ternarius

This is the most delightfully pretty bumble bee and chosen purely because of its lovely markings, with a cream heart on its thorax and brilliant red/orange bands.
They look a bit like little fuzzy bottle brushes. The “ternarius” in its name refers to the three abdominal colours of red yellow and black.
They are also called the Red tailed Bumble Bee, and the Orange Belted Bumble Bee.

The facts;

CLASS: Insecta
ORDER: Hymenoptera, Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies.
SUPERFAMILY: Apoidea. Bees and some wasps.
FAMILY: Apidae. Bees.
GENUS: Bombus. Bumblebees
SPECIES: Bombus ternarius

They are also sometime classified in the subgenus .. Pyrobombus.. I would like to think because of their fiery colour.
This is a small northern USA Bumble Bee, a worker just 8-13 mm, which according to the books, range from the Yukon to Nova Scotia, and south to Georgia, they are widespread but rarely observed south of Pennsylvania.

They like the flowers from the Rubus family: i.e. blackberries and raspberries, and the Vaccinium family; i.e. blueberry bilberry and huckleberry and are partial to Goldenrod too.

Orange-belted bumble bee, Bombus ternarius from University of Maine

“The orange-belted bumble bee queen emerges from hibernation in early spring. She must satisfy two immediate needs. She must nourish herself on flower nectar and pollen, and she must find a good place to raise a family. Queens spend hour upon hour cruising just above the ground looking for a suitable nest site underground, often settling in an abandoned mouse burrow.”

However, Linda Robb’s bees found themselves higher class accommodation by moving into her bird house. I have seen a couple of other references to Bumble Bees taking over bird boxes. What a nice idea.

redtailed_bumbles_birdhouse

This lovely photo of the Bombus ternarius colony by Linda is from her WhatsthatBug.com,entry, read more here….

This little bee just had to be drawn from above to show off its markings. Its “pile” is shorter than Bee No1 and these are chubby, neat little bees. Some initial sketches, to look at the colouring and the pose.

Bombus tricolour pencil sketch sm     tricol sketch sm

And the final painting…

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Bee number 2: The Tricoloured Bumble Bee, Bombus ternarious.

 

Bombus Ternarius bee 2 sm

A Buzz in Middle C…Bumble Bees for Crops

The more I read about bees, the more the little bits of information begin to make sense of things I have casually observed over the years. For example, I used to think that when the Bumble Bee changed it tune from low drowsy hum to high pitched buzz it was a sign of extreme irritation or frustration.
Now I know better.

There might actually be a bit of frustration involved because what the bee is doing is shaking the anther of the flower to release the pollen inside.. clever thing!
I am sure that keen naturalists know this already but, while I understood that Bumble Bees were important pollinators I had no idea they were used on such a large scale by commercial growers.

How it works In some flowers, particularly of the Solanum family, i.e. eggplants, potato, tomato, and Vaccinium, i.e. cranberry, blueberry, bilberry and huckleberry, the pollen is contained in tube shaped anthers, with only a small aperture at the tip for the pollen to escape, rather like a salt or pepper pot.

pic_1730

Eggplant diagram from Beeculture.com’s pollination guide here.

While a little pollen can be dispersed by wind or the action of insects bumping into the flowers, the Bumble Bee has a better method. It grasps the anther and shakes it. Here from a very good short article, from BayNature.org, Sue Rosenthal explains

“Bumblebees, … actively collect and eat not just nectar but also protein-rich pollen. And a bumblebee can cause a flower to discharge a visible cloud of pollen through buzz pollination.
The bumblebee grasps the flower with its legs or mouthparts and vibrates its flight muscles very rapidly without moving its wings. This vibration shakes electrostatically charged pollen out of the anthers, and the pollen is attracted to the bumblebee’s oppositely charged body hairs.
The bumblebee later grooms the pollen from its body into pollen-carrying structures on its back legs for transport to its nest”

Read more here. Susan also goes on to tell us that the

Buzz-pollinating bumblebees make a distinctive, middle-C buzz”… and that they also “use the energy of buzz pollination for other purposes, for example, compacting soil in their underground burrows (bumblebees don’t build hives like honeybees) or moving a pebble or other obstacle.”

They are so smart!

bee_pollinating
Great photo of Bumble bee (I think B impatiens) firmly grasping a tomato flower from Canadian tomato growers Gipaanda Greenhouses here. A company who seems to care about every aspect of production.

Here is a nice piece of film of Bumble Bees in action on a blueberry crop from KoppertBiological here.

It demonstrates perfectly the change in pitch as the Bumble Bee (I think B.terrestris) vibrates the flower.

While other native bees also use buzz pollination, Honeybees don’t, and it is estimated that 8% of the flowers of the world are primarily pollinated using buzz pollination.

Growers have tried alternatives.. such as electric toothbrushes or the commercial “Electric Bee” but the humble bumble is far more effective and cheaper.
Like Koppert above, the award winning Bio-bee.com company from Israel, here is one of growing number of companies who supply Bumble Bees for growers.
They have a very nice site explaining all about the pollination process and will provide you with a box of big bouncing Earth Bumble Bees ( Bombus terrestris), ready and eager to pollinate your tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, eggplants, courgettes, cherries, avocados and blueberries.
The bee boxes are fully equipped with sugar water and nectar and insulation.

bee box pic_1621

You can of course encourage your own little colony by providing them with boxes, like this ready made one from Ethical Superstore UK here.

image_1040

or, for other ideas for nesting boxes from the Bumble Bee Conservation site’s “Join Our Nest Box Trial” here..

Of course after all that hard work, the Bumble Bees may just prefer that old coat pocket, so you could just console yourself with some of these….

Gorgeous smiling chocolate Bumble Bees… Ahhhh…..from The Chocolate Store here.

Bee No 1: The Garden Bumble Bee, Bombus hortorum.

More about my bee from the UK and the first of my 16 subjects, which travelled back in my pencil case and survived almost intact. These are the much loved, archetypal stripy bees which we see in the UK , the ones which usually spring to mind when thinking about a picture book idea of a Bumble Bee.

There are 3 very similar bumble bees, the B. hortorum, B. lucorum the white tailed Bumble Bee and B. terrestris the buff tailed Bumble Bee.

3 bees

From the British Beekeepers’ Association site, is part of Gillian Lye’s nice explanatory guide, from a UK bumble bee nest survey.
See more
here The facts:

CLASS: Insecta or Hexapoda. Insects, as the name hexapoda suggests, animals that have six legs
ORDER: Hymenoptera, Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies.
SUPERFAMILY: Apoidea. Bees and some wasps.
FAMILY: Apidae. Bees.
GENUS: Bombus. Bumblebees
SPECIES: Bombus hortorum

The Garden Bee, sometimes delightfully classified as “Megabombus” is a European bee and described as “rather scruffy” with quite long hair. It has a long head and the longest tongue of all European Bumble Bees allowing it to reach those parts of flowers which other bees cannot reach.
It likes red clover, cowslips, foxglove, vetches and lavender.
My information comes from the really excellent and readable BumbleBee.org. http://www.bumblebee.org/hort.htm which I quoted from in an earlier post.

Here is another snippet

(Bombus Hortorum).. “have a reputation for nesting in “unsuitable” places such as coat pockets, buckets and inside lawnmowers, their preferred nest sites are usually on or just below ground. They are fairly placid bees and do not have large nests, so if it is possible, it is best to leave them where they are. If you must move the nest, for example, if it is inside a lawnmower, then do so late in the evening when all the bees have returned. Get as much of the nest material as you can into a small box with an entrance hole of about 1 cm and leave it inside as close to the original spot as possible. If it is inside a shed or building then any kind of container will do. If it has to be moved outdoors then the container must be weatherproof and placed in a south-facing sheltered spot.”

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Bee number 1. The Garden Bee Bombus hortorum Some final sketches for the pose,

bee sketches final hortorus sm

Of Darwin, Humble Bees, Mice, Cats, Old Maids and the British Empire.

You would expect Darwin to have made some interesting observations about Bumble Bees, wouldn’t you?.. (called in his time “Humble bees.”)

Humble bees alone visit red clover, as other bees cannot reach the nectar. It has been suggested that moths may fertilise the clovers; but I doubt whether they could do so in the case of the red clover, from their weight not being sufficient to depress the wing petals. Hence we may infer as highly probable that, if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great measure upon the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Colonel Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, believes that “more than two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England.” Now the number of mice is largely dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats; and Colonel Newman says, “Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice.” Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!

from Chapter 3  “The Origin of Species”   Charles Darwin

 

shutterstock_31975861

Bee on Clover by Kaspri from Shutterstock.com

Thomas Henry Huxley another eminent English biologist, and others went on to expand this idea, pointing out that the success of the British Empire really depended on “Old Maids”.
Why? .. because  soldiers eat roast beef, the beef cattle eat red clover, red clover is pollinated by bumble bees which, in a round about way are protected by cats. The cats eat the mice who prey on the honey and Old Maids keep cats, therefore the continuation of the British Empire was really dependant on cat loving elderly ladies.

It’s a nice thought and nice enough for A D Hope to write a poem about it. In “Clover Honey” from “A Late Picking: Poems 1965-1975”, the narrator is concerned about the number of spinsters in the locality but a friend puts him right. Here is part of it..

“Yes, yes, poor things!” he said, You have a heart
That does you credit, my dear. But let me say
That the great chain of being has found a part
In Nature’s scheme even for them to play.

You mentioned cats, I think. Each keeps a cat?”
“Good God!” I said “they have them by the score!”
“Indeed? Of course, I’m not surprised at that;
But cats catch mice_ Well, it’s what cats are for.

Their mistresses at night will put them out
To hunt for field-mice_You begin to see
My drift, perhaps, since as you know, no doubt,
The field-mouse preys upon the bumble-bee.

These hirsute bees, and they alone contrive
To fertilize the dark-red clover blooms;
Although it is their smaller cousins who hive
The clover-honey that loads our Kentish combs.

So when we find_ what does the Bible say?_
A land flowing with milk and honey, we do
Not doubt, we naturalists, that there we may
Expect to find old maids a-plenty too.

The state of single blessedness, you see,
Is not without its talent: indeed, you might
Call spinsters partners of the honey bee
Bringer of life’s best gifts, sweetness and light.”

To read more go to Darwin Discussion pages here

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More Sketches

I am now thinking about the pose.The size of a bumble bee is due in part to the length of its hair, the hard body the exoskeleton is much smaller. A wet bumble bee looks skinnier .. think wet bedraggled poodle.  One endearing fact I have discovered is that bee hair is called “pile” as in a carpet, so is a bee carpeted with hair?

sketch 1

A quick colour sketch to get more of a  feel for this bee.

hortorus bee sm

A Forlorn and Balding Bee

I have made some studies of the little bee that came back from the UK with me.

I had found it in the potting shed.

The first bumble bee I drew back in May came from the same place. The potting shed is an ancient wooden lean to, which leans against an even more ancient dry-stone wall. Perhaps these bumble bees both had nests nearby.

The first one I am sure was Bombus terrestris, the Buff Tailed Bumble Bee.
This one is Bombus hortorus, the Garden Bumble Bee. It had lost a few bits and pieces on the way, one antenna and a foot and looks little forlorn and disheveled but now, at least, is “immortalised”.

Its front legs are very close to its head, so in this sketch you cannot see the mouth or the length of the face properly.

my little bee sm

For this sketch I had tried to alter the front leg but only the bottom part moved upwards.

forlorn beesm

By this next study the other front leg had collapsed. My bee is now taking a bow to you all.
The head is way out of sight, tucked right underneath the body. I noticed that from this angle that you can see the shine of the bee’s hard thorax through the black hairs. I have just read this from the excellent site Bumblebee.org here.

“I have noticed that hortorum tend to have more balding workers than other species. This may be because they specialize in the more complicated flowers, often disappearing entirely within the flower, and rubbing their back against the flower. Or it may be that they rub against things more when entering their nest. Or perhaps they are just prone to premature baldness! “

 

my bee front sm

I am trying not to get too involved….but, thank you little balding bee for aiding me in my quest to understand more.

Drawing Bumble Bees

No 1 bee of the 16 bees will be a Bumble Bee. However, deciding how to draw a Bumble Bee is not as simple as it might seem. If you draw them from the top to show the lovely markings you will not see their heads or tails because, they, more than any other bees, have a very curved shape. Seen from the side you will see just how long their bodies are, and see more of the head.

They also have big long legs!What to do? Well as I am planning to include 4 bumble bees in the set, I will paint a mixture of views, having looked at each and thought about their best feature.
In some I will have to sacrifice the head for the pattern, its a hard choice.But firstly some more studies, to try to understand more about bee anatomy.

drawings sm1      drawings sm3

Then some general sketches which are done from the little bee I brought back from the UK and some photographic references.

bee sketches sm

Tomorrow some more studies of my bee, which is Bombus hortorum the Garden Bumble Bee.