Tag: bees

Some Osmia Sketches

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The weather is still beautiful, if colder now and I am reluctant to be indoors. I spent most of the day out cycling and walking by the water, and failing miserably to get any good bee photos.

But eventually I made myself sit down with a sketch book, paints, a pencil and my models, two Osmia rufa bees. One male and one female.
Despite my best efforts to rescue, revive and release the lost bees (seven today), some have died.
I found 3 papery little bodies when we moved in, curled up on the window ledges.
As sad as this is I have to be practical and can make some studies which all helps my knowledge and understanding. And it’s a chance to pay a little homage.

osmia bee male

The males have long antennae and moustaches but are quite a bit smaller than the females.

 

osmias 2

Male and female Osmia rufa, casualties of .. well ….just of life… I guess.

Three days ago there were lots of males, now it seems just females are getting into the house.

I suppose they are looking for a nest site and have taken a wrong turn somewhere in the labyrinthine wall cavities.
I am trying to get back to some daily sketching after what seems like a long time.
Hopefully poco a poco, a little every day. 🙂

The Humming House..Osmia rufas everywhere

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I have found a temporary home, not yet the admirable one I am hoping for, but this little cottage will be fine for now and its setting is quite lovely. It’s only a few yards from the shore of Grafham Water and the 8.9 mile cycle track which skirts the waters edge, and bounces you through woods and fields, up, down and round the reservoir.
If I was happy about the location, I was even happier when, opening the car door to unload the luggage, I was met with a hum, a very loud hum. The whole building, two cottages and the outhouse were humming. The walls, roofs and the surrounding air were thick with the hum and buzz of clouds of bees, and it turns out we will be sharing our accommodation with hundreds of busy Osmia bees.
They are just everywhere, living in every nook, cranny, crevice, nail hole, airbrick space, and in every tiny chink in the mortar. They are in the eves, in the gap between the door frame and the bricks, they are behind the fascia boards, they are in the roof.

In………………….
in
……….and out.

and out
Watching the constant to-ing and fro-ing is dizzying with lots of jostling for access to the nest entrances. The exposed holes in the structural bricks used for the decorative inset have all been enthusiastically colonised. Optimistic spiders have strung webs between the bricks but these robust little bee are not much deterred by them and clamber over or break through the sticky strands I have only seen one wrapped up and stored for later.

Spider’s webs draped across the bricks

The bees hum all the time. We are lulled to sleep with the hum. We are woken with the hum. I hear them in my dreams and I could swear that when you put your ear to the bricks, the cottage walls are gently vibrating.
Lost bees wander into the house and have to be rescued. Mating couples had to be gently and respectfully coaxed away from footfall and from under car tyres. They are out and about early and finish work late, endlessly backwards and forwards, carrying load of pollen for food stores for the developing larvae and mud to seal up the nest cells. I watched the females collecting mud from a nearby damp rut in the road. They will carry this back to their nests in their awesome jaws and tamp it down with their strange little horns. After three days this mud source had dried up in the sunny warm weather, but by the edge of the water they will, I am sure, find more. I filled a couple of nearby plant pots with wet earth.. just in case.

osmia collecting mud
Female Osmis rufa bees collecting mud at the side of the nearby road.

These pretty bees will not live to see their offspring develop into bees. The larvae stay in the nest, eating the pollen supplies, getting larger and larger, eventually spinning a cocoon in early autumn.
The bizarre and wonderful process of pupation sees them develop from grub to a little bee and they spend the winter hopefully safe and secure in their cocoons to emerge in the spring. Females may make make 5 or 6 nests of 6 to 9 cells. By the look of all the activity outside here there will be many more bees next year!
Below: I found a lost female bee looking wistfully out of the window this morning. You can see her little horns very clearly.

osmia at window
On being offered my helping hand, she happily climbed on board, after waving a worried leg at me.
rescued

I took her outside and she flew away. If you do have mason bees there is no need to fear them at all..they don’t sting.
Observing these bees now poses more questions than it answers. How far do they go to find water, mud and food? Why are so many bees using one hole. I know these are solitary bees but I have watched and counted ten bees using the same entrance. I suppose the wall is just full of individual nests. It must be honeycombed with nest tubes, It’s an odd thought that the fabric and insulation of the cottage is partly made up of sleeping bees.
According to the owner of the cottages the bees have been here for years. I wonder how much of the existing nest material they re-use and does that mean the nests are prone to parasites?

bee nest holes

A little yellow bottomed bee carrying pollen in her scopa is disappearing into the mortar. Some of the construction holes in the bricks are semi blocked. Is this old or new building? There is one at the top left of the photo.

Go to Paul’s Solitary Bee Blog where he has been recording his “beekeeping”(in as much as you can “keep” wild bees) for 6 years. His recent post “ Thank you solitary bees” details some key facts about these wonderful helpful friends of the gardener and pollinator of our fruits.
I wrote about, and painted, the red mason bee in my “There will be Apples “ post last April. I am so delighted to be sharing some time and space with them here in Grafham…. a few sketches tomorrow!

Spring is here and so are the Hairy Footed Flower Bees!

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At last there has been sun and warmth. It has felt a long time coming, but over these last few weeks I have been able to snatch a minute or two to appreciate the beauty of spring, the light green mist of new shoots on the bare branches and the sumptuous snowy flower laden branches of the blackthorn.

I have been able to bring armfuls of white sheets in from the line, smelling of sun and light ( a rare thing to do in the USA) and at last, I have seen more bees.

Male hairy footed flower bees everywhere! Just everywhere. What a huge pleasure it is for me to be able to see them whizzing about. They have a very distinctive high pitched sound and adopt a very characteristic pose when resting on a leaf or stone, their gorgeously fringed legs outspread to the side.

HFFB
Anthophora plumipes male on the elaeagnus.

I stood for an hour watching them. The only chance I had to photograph them was when they paused to rest on the elaeagnus. They seemed to love the big flat sunny leaves but only stopped for a very short time before rushing off again chasing each other round and round the bush.

They are not easy to catch with my slow camera and slower operator! What I did notice was how they would check me out, hovering just inches above my head, looking directly at me. before whizzing off again. You can see their yellow faces. Really quite delightful!

And today in the village on some pink pulmonaria, I saw the females, smart little black bombs with ginger legs. Chris took a couple of long shots and managed to catch this little bee with her extraordinarily long tongue unfurled. Interestingly she seems to be holding her tongue with her front legs.. as if steadying her aim and approach.

HFFB tongue

And landed, head in a flower

hffb

Spring is truly here. The evenings are light and blackbirds fill the dawn with song.

Homes for Solitary Bees.. Do it now!

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It’s March and I see from BWARS that more bees are being spotted and so it’s time to get your solitary bee houses out and sited in safe and convenient places.
Being here in the UK for a few months, I hope to get or make one very soon. I have been looking round the garden for a suitable location. A sunny south/southeast wall or hanging spot and at least a meter from the ground.

There are some very nice looking bee houses for sale but of you prefer a DIY approach it is not too difficult. Do have a look these excellent pages about making bee houses on Marc Carltons’s “Foxleas” site. He has very good and comprehensive information about how you make them and why you make them the way they are, and as well as small houses he advocates larger and more luxurious homes

“It is easy to make a larger house for solitary bees. I first saw one like this in Switzerland in the early 1980s. Since then I have seen them on several occasions in Germany and Switzerland, but curiously they are rare in the UK. It is time to put that deficiency right!”

marc carlton Foxleas

This is a section of a large “house”. A series of rather nice insect apartments with different sized holes to suit different sized occupants. I think I will be going for the bundle of hollow sticks approach this year. I hope someone will come.. anyone really…and as Marc says:

“Various other sorts of parasitic solitary wasps and parasitic bees will find your bee house once it is occupied, preying on, or taking over, the nest cells of mason bees. Don’t worry about them, they are all part of the fascinating community of insects.”

Indeed!With a bit of luck it will be home to some of these… a sketch for my next painting, a little osmia bee.

osmia sketch

Marc Carlton’s bee house instructions at Foxleas.com.** Also see Gary´s post on his excellent insect and bee houses! here at Gary’s Garden

Catching up …Some Bee News

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It was foggy, damp and very cold when we arrived back in the UK and has not improved yet and after New Orleans things are a little quiet in rural Lincolnshire. But Spring is on its way. It is light at 7 am and for the first time in many years I am seeing the snowdrops and aconites which carpet the garden in February.

I am delighted to see the squirrel has survived the winter and my favourite rooks are still here, sitting hunched and squabbling on the bare branches of the weeping ash or listening to worm music. ( see Rooks post )

No bee sightings yet, any sensible bee would surely be lying doggo in this weather, but I see from the BWARS forum that there have been quite a few early reports.

Apart from honey bees,  Buff tailed Bumble Bee (Bombus terrestris) Queens and, newcomer, the pretty Tree Bumble Bee (Bombus hypnorum) which is to be one of my next painting subjects, are out and about.

To cheer us up from lack of sun, here is my friend Jane Adams’ beautiful photo of pollen covered B terrestris from 22nd Feb 2009 taken in her garden.. exactly 2 years ago today! See her wonderful bee photos on Flickr here .

janes bee

Exhibitions, Talks, Residencies, Commissions and BUZZ Vol 2.

This week I should also be back to my bee work.
I have two new commissions, orders for prints and Volume 2 of Buzz to work on as well as taking “Buzz” the Exhibition,  to Easton Walled Garden for a May Bank Holiday show, and The Lost Gardens of Heligan in June, 16th- 30th.

Then the first week in August,  2nd to 7th, the bees and I will be doing an art/ bee residency at the beautiful “Nature in Art “Gallery in Wallsworth Hall, Twigworth in Gloucestershire.

It’s a wonderful opportunity to work in the studio, and also to talk about my work, the bees and meet some of the visitors to this great Wildlife Art Gallery.

I will also be with my bees in person at Heligan for at least the first week of the show and again hope to give some talks or workshops. I will post some more details as they are available.

Next week on 3rd March, to start things off and get my “head full of bees” again. I will be talking about my work to the local Gardening Club in the village. I am so looking forward to it. I know there will be bee enthusiasts and beekeepers amongst them who are probably much more knowledgeable but it will be fun.

“BUZZ” in BEECRAFT Magazine And I have a big thank you to say to one of my lovely blog readers Lyn, who follows the blog and not only bought a “Buzz” book but recommended it to Beecraft magazine who very kindly reviewed it in their January edition.
Thank you all. I hope to get Vol 2 done fairly soon!

Bees in Transit
 While in the USA I parceled up my little bee specimen collection and, not very optimistically, posted them here. They had been sent to me by various very kind and helpful people over the last year and it seemed a shame to have to leave them there till God-knows-when.
After two very bad recent experiences with customs I was rather resigned to never seeing them again but today they arrived. I was amazed.. it has made my day!

Two Lovely Bees for Liz; The Early Bumble Bee and the Grey Mining Bee.

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The last few weeks have been very busy and, with hardly any internet connection, very frustrating blogwise.
However in my makeshift studio at my father’s house, (rickety picnic table with clip light fixed to hoe handle) I could at least work on my two bee commissions.

It gives me great pleasure to work on commissions because they are a chance to make paintings which are very personal to your clients. We will discuss the whys and wherefores at some length and this collaborative approach means they will have a painting which is just for them and has a resonance and meaning beyond just the image.

So Liz and I had discussed which bee and why and decided on the Grey Mining Bee which is such a favourite with its beautiful black and white silky coat and secondly the lovely Early Bumble Bee with her smart red rump. There were several things which made these choices special to Liz.

She particularly wanted the ginkgo leaves to be included as she has a magnificent old ginkgo tree growing in her garden. So the leaves I drew are from her tree.
The hawthorn leaves were from the local hedgerow and the two little bees had been found near Lincoln, which was a strange coincidence because Liz once lived near there many years ago. I had written about the Grey Mining Bee Andrena cineraria  before (see “The Glamorous Grey Mining Bee”)

Here is Liz’ bee hovering above a sprig of hawthorn, a favourite flower with this and many other early bees.

final cineraria 2

The Grey Mining Bee Andrena cineraria and Hawthorn.


Watercolour and pencil 9 x 9” I drew and wrote about handsome the Early Bumble Bee here “Bombus pratorum …and Mr. Sladen” and included Sladen’s poignant piece about the death of the queen. It’s a lovely piece of writing as is all the writing in his wonderful book about bumble bees, The Humble Bee’ It’s Life History and How To Domesticate It.

I now have the reprinted copy which also contains the facsimile of his first handmade bee book. It’s completely charming.

Here then is Liz’ Early Bumble Bee flying up through the ginkgo leaves which are catching a light spring breeze. Bees do not forage from ginkgo trees but Liz’ garden looked to be a haven for wild bees and I just know she will be seeing these pretty bees in the spring next year.

ginkgo and bee

The Early Bumblebee Bombus pratorum and Ginkgo leaves.

Watercolour and pencil 9 x 9”. I am so delighted when people commission a bee. It’s not perhaps the most usual request but gives me hope that bees are getting a higher profile and winning a well deserved place in people’s hearts.
I am really looking forward to the day when bees outsell fluffy kittens…OK, I know… I may have to wait a while :).

There is more work to be done to popularise bees, their undoubted charm and tireless good works and I will be continuing that next year both in the UK and in the USA… But, for the next few weeks I will be somewhere completely different.

I will be seeing what is happening in New Orleans for a while! Bees ? I hope so. What else? Who knows. It will just be a voyage of discovery!

Pollen:Beautiful colours, fascinating form.

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The honeybee I am about to paint is carrying pollen and is foraging on lavender, so it’s important  that I make sure the pollen colour is correct. Lavender pollen is a rich yellow colour, which you can see if you look closely at the flowers.

From the wonderful UK microscopy site, PS Micrographs, here is a thumbnail of a coloured electron micrograph of a lavender pollen grain Lavendula dentata.

lavender-pollen-grain--lavandula-dentata--80200172-m

Lavender Pollen Grain © by Cheryl Power  

When I first started my work on bees, I had a vague idea that pollen came in different shapes and colours but in fact the variety of colour and shape is really quite stunning, beautiful, both in colour and form.

pollen

Mixed Pollen: Image : http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Sporopollenin

You can find pollen colour guides on the internet. There is an excellent interactive chart on the Bristol Beekeepers site, http://www.bristolbeekeepers.org.uk/.   Go  there, and click on the colours to see which pollen belongs to which plant.

 

pollen chart

Don’t you just love colour charts!
You can buy printed guides such as this one, by William Kirk from IBRA.

512NPGF7GZL._SS500_

And if you are rich you can acquire one of the very desirable “The Pollen Loads of the Honey Bees” published in 1952 by beekeeper and artist Mrs Dorothy Hodges.

hodges

I have, sadly, not seen an original copy but I do know it has wonderful tipped in colour samples.

She not only painted pollen colours but described the process of pollen gathering. I quote from a thesis on “Willow” written by Syliva Briercliffe and published on Dave Cushman’s Bee site here

“She (Dorothy Hodges) describes in her book the pollen packing process, of bees on poppies (papaver) – these flowers yield only pollen. The bee scrambling among the anthers gets dusted all over with pollen grains. She leaves the flower and hovers, stroking her tongue over her forelegs and moistening the pollen with regurgitated honey. Using brushes on her legs and the antennae on her head… she moulds the pollen pack around a single hair on her corbicula (pollen basket). “

Here is a reproduction of the (printed) Summer Pollen chart from a later edition of the book.

Hodges pollen loads

Thanks to Denver Botanic Gardens’ Botanical Art blog for reproducing this.

The blue and purple pollens are astonishing, aren’t? I knew about the wonderful dark pollen of poppies, but here again from the PS Micrographs site are some thumbnails of extraordinary pollen grains. Do go and have a look at their wonderful work. Some of the bits and pieces of bugs are really amazing.

hyssop-pollen-grains--hyssopus-officinalis--80200693-t    ivy-pollen--hedera-helix--sem-80016111-t

Hyssop Pollen and a very timely image of the super important Ivy Pollen.

leucospermum-pollen-grain--leucospermum-sp---80200528-t    marrow-pollen-80200001a-t

Leucospermum pollen and  Marrow pollen, all images from PS Micrographs.

I am back up in chilly Lincolnshire for a while and although we have ivy here I have not seen much life on it, mostly just hoverflies.. but then it has been very very cold. But I am going out to have a look at the pollen!

Lavender update and “Nature’s Sting”

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I mentioned “Project Lavender” a couple of posts ago, which is a project to find out, amongst other things, which lavender is the best for bees. Downderry Nursery have kindly sent me the names of the varieties which are being tested. Here they are:

Ashdown Forest
Blue Mountain White
Folgate
Hidcote
Imperial Gem
Maillette
Melissa Lilac
Princess Blue
Rosea
Edelweiss
Dutch Group
Gros Bleu
Grosso

Don’t get too excited though because they won’t know which one is the favourite for 3 years.. but you could always just get one of each of course and do your own experiment. And big thankyous to all the people who send me bee news as I have been very cut off from things recently.

Ben Bulow sent me the link to the BBC´s excellent piece:

Nature’s sting: The real cost of damaging Planet Earth by Richard Anderson Business reporter, BBC News It’s interesting that the article falls under the “business” rather than the “ecology” category and is about “just how expensive the degradation of nature really is.” For example, the staggering cost to the world “of replacing insect pollination is around $190bn every year”

You don’t have to be an environmentalist to care about protecting the Earth’s wildlife. Just ask a Chinese fruit farmer who now has to pay people to pollinate apple trees because there are no longer enough bees to do the job for free.

It’s a sobering article, highlighting some recent reports which show how our disregard for the natural order of things can cost us very dearly. The decline of bees and other insect pollinators is just one small part of the whole mess we are finding ourselves in.
Recently I have been reading more about the Insect Pollinators Initiative that was announced in April 2009. The projects sound interesting and much needed and I am glad and 10 million pounds is a fair bit of money but, a year on, it seems it is still being “announced”. I am just wondering why they don’t get on and do something.

However, I am reassured by the Living With Environmental Change newsletter who say this about the project

The causes of pollinator declines are likely to be multifactorial, involving complex interactions between pollinators, their pests and pathogens, and the environment. Multidisciplinary and systems-based approaches will be important in elucidating them. In particular, the funders are keen to bring to bear on these issues – alongside the expertise of the existing pollinator research community – relevant new skills such as state-of-the-art and high-throughput “post-genomic” technologies, and the latest techniques in epidemiological and ecological modelling.

Hmm.. that’s a fine and dandy bit of writing but I am still not sure what they will be doing and anyway it will be five years before there is any conclusive evidence.

I hope they all keep daily blogs and account sheets, so that we can see what they are up to. Perhaps they will ? Perhaps we can be given some info along the way so we, the public, can do something about it, or perhaps we have to wait for the “fully funded presentation” in five years time… sigh… I know research takes time but by their own admission the decline needs “urgent” attention.

However lots of non scientists are getting on with things right now and this year has been wonderful for “bee awareness” and I hope it will be carried over into next year and the year after that.

I shall be doing what I can with my “Buzz” exhibition and some talks and generally enthusing ( might that be “boring”?) people about bees.
I do think I need to start including some other pollinators in the blog too.

And we can all plant a few more wildflowers and of course, some more lavender…Sorry my faithful blog readers, I am preaching to the converted I know. Here are a couple of studies of a little lavender sprig I found yesterday.

Yes, despite the biting north east wind which has been ripping leaves off the trees and making a sea front walk just sheer unadulterated misery, there are still a few lavender flowers to be seen. Tough little plant this!

lavender 2 sm

lav flower sm

A (hardy) lavender sprig … pencil

Life on the Elegant Ivy.

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Yesterday on a beautiful sunny Sunday I spent a good hour just watching the comings and goings on one of the ivy bushes which grow on waste ground near the railway tracks. These scrubby bits of land are a tangle of brambles and ivy and both yesterday and today the ivy was alive with happy insects. Here are a few: Ivy bee sunning itself,

Honey bee and ladybird,

Bombus lucorum I think,

image

Drone hoverfly I think and lucorum..

beefly and luc

A very sleepy and slow B terrestris. I wondered if this lovely big bee was getting close to the end of its days?

bterr

As well as bees, wasps, flies and ladybirds, the bushes were covered with butterflies but just the one species, the pretty Red Admirals and so many of them. All were so intent on feeding that I could get quite close.

   

There was one huge hoverfly. I think the biggest in the UK and another insect mostly found in the South. Sometimes called the hornet mimic hoverfly, (you can see why), this is the splendid Volucella zonaria.

     

There were many other little hoverflies, and two sorts of wasps, this one was having a brush up.

wasp

and on some nearby brambles, what I think is a ruby tiger moth caterpillar

which will, with a bit of luck, turn into one of these,

Wonderful picture by Ben Sale of the Ruby Tiger moth Phragmatobia fulginosa from the https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/ruby-tiger

*Update…I found one in my garden in Grafham in 2016…beautiful

Everything seems to like this ivy bush much more than other varieties in the town. I wonder why? Perhaps the nectar is different. But this particular bush was covered with life whereas other were largely unvisited.

This one has very elegant deeply lobed leaves. I put a leaf on the windowsill to sketch it (the dead fly has now gone..). This is my only available surface at the moment so I sit with my sketchbook on my knee, but the shadows are lovely.

Elegant Ivy Leaf….

ivyb ivybg

Pencil sketch 6”

A Tattooed Bee?.. or two or three..

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Amongst the commissions I have done recently was a little Blue Orchard bee tattoo design for Branne.
I am not going to post the design as it’s just too easy to copy and I want it to be her unique design.
But when it is finished I will ask for a skin shot!

This is not the first time I have been asked to design tattoos and bees are, quite rightly, rather popular. There was an artsy tattoo “event” in the UK late last year and I know that my friend Damian who has done so much to publicise the plight of bees at “Help Save Bees” was considering a nice discreet bumblebee.

The project was called “ExtInked”, and invited volunteers to be tattooed with one of 100 endangered plants, animals, and fungi to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial and draw attention (no pun intended ) to the decline of species. It was a rather cool project! .. You can read all about it here at Ultimate Holding Company (UHC) .

There were a number of bee designs including the shill carder bee.  No images of the bees are available, but here is a rather nice big spider, not perhaps the choice for someone with an arachnophobic  partner.

p54_f_1258731332

“Extinked” tattoo designs see more on the UHC site.

Bees are somewhat more appealing, to me anyway and so I am very pleased to be able to share with you the great tattoo that Christine had done, based on a couple of my mason bee paintings. It’s rather nice as she has incorporated both the Blue Orchard Bee  and the Red Orchard  Bee, Osmia lignaria and Osmia rufa Here are BOB and ROB happily buzzing around Christine’s shoulder!

 

Of course what we all really want to ask is, “ How much did it hurt, Christine?? “

There are lots of honey and bumblebee tattoos but it’s so nice that both Christine and Brieanne are giving the Orchard Bees a look in. Am I getting one (or two or three)?…well, maybe.  They will go well with the leathers and the very big motor bike I am thinking of getting.. 🙂