Tag: bees

Honey, Syrup, Bees and Lions .. It’s a Riddle.

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It was Shrove Tuesday this week and I was thinking about pancakes, lovely pancakes with shimmering golden syrup and tart lemon juice.

In the local supermarket here there is a small section, just a shelf or two, marked “Ethnic Foods”.
Here are the Brit “favourites”, Marmite of course, some soon-not-to-be-Cadbury’s chocolate bars, cheese sauce mix in a packet (why ????) Birds Custard Powder, some curry sauces I have never heard of and of course glorious Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup.

I find myself rather liking to be considered an “Ethnic” here in the bland uniformity of suburban Orlando. It gives me a frisson of being slightly exotic as I reach up to take my ethnic food from the ethnic shelf. I

brought my lovely tin of Golden Syrup home and pondered the label.. and its motto. “From the strong came forth sweetness”. How well this has been imprinted on my mind over the years. I could almost draw that roundel from memory, with its (as I used to think when I was little) “sleeping” lion.

There was always a tin in the pantry alongside the equally gorgeous Black Treacle, tins that I remember were always sticky.  This old classic label seems to have been spared updating and I read on  Lyle’s site that “This distinctive packaging has hardly changed since 1885”

From the Lyles site: https://www.lylesgoldensyrup.com/our-story

Samson and the Lion But the whole analogy with Samson and the Lion is an odd one. Syrup is not honey, bees would never make a nest in a carcass, and poor Sampson seems to have been very badly misguided in his choice of women. I

t is, as usual, a bloodthirsty affair. Samson had a hankering for a Philistine girl and against his parents wishes sets off to find one. On the way he kills an angry lion. On the way back from finding his love he sees the lion’s body and notices that bees have made a nest there. He eats some of the honey and takes some home to his parents.
At the wedding feast Samson poses a riddle. “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” If the Philistine guests, all 30 of them, can solve the riddle in a week he will give them 30 new sets of clothes .. if they can’t he will ask for 30 sets of new clothes for himself. It’s an impossible riddle and the Philistines can’t possibly know the answer so they persuade the wife to turn on the tears for a whole week and wheedle the answer out of him.
Then it’s all a bit grim, because Sampson has lost the bet and has to pay. He goes to a Philistine city and murders 30 people and takes their clothes to give to the guests. This is not a good move, as when he later decides to try again with the wife ( I can’t possibly think why), her father tells him,

‘I gave her to one of the wedding guests’, he said. ‘But don’t worry. She has a younger sister who is prettier. You can have her.’

( from a “simplified” version of the Bible story about Samson entitled “She Done Him Wrong” here) or, more eloquently, read, King James Old Testament, Book of Judges 14:14. Poor Lion, Poor Samson, Poor Bees, Poor Foxes!!…. whose tails he sets fire to to ruin the Philistine’s crops.. and it’s all murder and mayhem from then on.

So why this odd link to the syrup… Abram Lyle was a firmly religious man, but it is not exactly clear what point he wished to make by adopting this motto..  from the Lyle website again :

“Was he referring to the tin holding the syrup – or the company producing it?”

 

It’s a riddle just like Samson’s.

      lyles
Mr Lyle’s syrup and one of my bees…

The Common Carder Bee and Lavender

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Back in September while I was home in Lincolnshire I was beginning to take a bit more notice of the bees that were still around in the garden. There were the big bumbles and honey bees, but also lots of these pretty dainty gingery bees which I now know are Bombus pascuorum (L. Pascuum: of the meadow) the Common Carder Bee. They don’t look like the archetypal bumble bee because they are not so obviously striped and, like yesterdays B pratorum, are small and dainty.

 

pasc indentity sm

B Pascuorum: male 13 –14mm, left,  and Queen 16-18mm /worker 10-15mm right I watched them, one sun drenched afternoon, picking their way through the last of the lavender flowers which I had been sent to trim. (you can see the dead heads on the right.)

There were just a few remaining blossoms which I could not bring myself to cut down, much to my father’s bemusement and slight irritation! I left them, untidy stragglers that they were, for the bees.

my pasc lincs sept sm

What I now know is Bombus pascuorum on the remaining lavender in Lincs in September.

The bee above is, I am pretty sure, a male, due to the long antennae and I can’t see a pollen basket either.  They are called “carder bees” because of their habit of using “combed “ bits of vegetation and moss to cover over their nests which they will make in tussocky grass or in old deserted animal burrows.

They are very hairy little bees, never losing the thick tufty gingery hair on their thorax. Some bumble bees develop  a definite bald spot here, as did my bombus hortorum,  see my post “A Forlorn and Balding Bee”.

Again my source for nearly all my bumblebee info is from the excellent  Bumblebee.org. I sat and watched them for some time buzzing round the lavender and saw how they have a very endearing way of  swinging their little front legs forward when approaching a flower, preparing to land or grasp the flower.. so here is my carder bee approaching the last of the lavender.
carder sketch 2 carder bee sketch3

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The Common Carder Bee, Bombus Pascuorum and Lavender 

bombus pascuorum sml

Watercolour and pencil on Arches HP.  6 x 8 inches.

I realise that this is the last of the Bumble Bees I intended to paint for the exhibition, but of course there are others, and some very interesting ones, that we could see in the UK.
So I just might try to fit in a “Shrill Carder Bee” or the recently arrived “Tree Bumble Bee” or even the Short Haired Bumblebee who is coming back to us from New Zealand.. you can read all about these at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

The Superb Bee Photographer, Eric Tourneret

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If you have any interest in honey bees, honey, their history and the different traditions around the world you will spend hours looking at the fabulous site The Honey Gatherers which shows the photographs of Eric Tourneret, Bee Photographer and Photo Journalist.

From different parts of the world, there are portraits of the keepers and honey seekers and of course the bees themselves, their life cycle and their history, this is a magnificent collection of photographs, all annotated.

 

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“After a very poor harvest, the honey gatherers take off the heavy suits that protected them from stings” from the Cameroon section

L'abeille bohème du Danube.

“Constantin Cazan has come to help his father Gheorghe during the two days of harvesting and extracting. The extraction takes place in the cabin of the converted caravan” from the Romania section.

Butineuses en vol d’approche de la ruche sur un champ de colza. Les muscles de l’abeille lui permettent de battre des ailes 400 à 500 fois par seconde pour atteindre une vitesse de 25 à 30 kilomètres/heure en pleine charge. Les butineuses font 10 à 15 voyages par jour mais celles qui sont spécialisées dans la récolte du nectar peuvent opérer 150 sorties en une journée. La durée de leur vie est directement liée au temps passé en vol pour le butinage. En été, une butineuse s’épuise à la tâche en cinq jours au cours desquels elle parcourt environ 800 kilomètres.

“Foragers approaching their hive in a colza field.The bee’s muscles allow it to flap its wings 400 to 500 times per second to allow a speed of 25 to 30 kilometers per hour with its maximum payload.” from Life in the Hive section He is meticulous in his work, here is an extract from his site about how he took the above photograph:

….the photo looking directly at the three bees in flight took a full week of work in a colza field. A hive was set up in the area that provided the desired background and a false hive containing the camera was set up just beside it.
The site was then encircled by studio flashes for improved lighting. Éric sought to capture an original shot by removing the real hive filled with bees to fool the field bees upon their return. After four days of fruitless shooting, he found it necessary to change techniques and asked a swarm-catcher for a batch of bees… “I put the queen and a few bees in a cage in the false hive, and they immediately began fanning.
The bulk of the swarm in another, smaller hive ten meters away began to stir and then, in one dense, airborne throng, the bees moved towards my camera.
I blindly started shooting while doing my best to deal with the bees that were landing on the optics. Finally, after a week in this Camargue field and 4,500 shutter releases, the photo was in the bag. It surpassed my every expectation.
Not a frontal shot of one bee in flight in its natural environment, but three bees dancing in the air before me.”

4,500 shutter releases..wow. this is the most beautiful stuff I have seen for a long time.

Bombus pratorum: the Early Bumble Bee, Questing Queens, Nests and the wonderful Mr.Sladen.

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Bombus pratorum ( L Pratum meadowland). Although known as the “ Early Nesting Bumble Bee” this pretty little Bumble Bee is not the earliest to be seen in the UK but usually one of the first.
Also confusingly, there are considerable colour variations but a rough guide is that queens, workers and males all have orangey red tails, and the male has more yellow hair on the thorax and of course the wonderful yellow moustache.

They are small, short tongued bees who cannot easily access the nectar from vetches, preferring the shallower flowers of the daisy family, dandelions and in the spring, willow flowers. They are described as having a characteristically rounded dumpy shape.

pratorum id sm

Left Male 11-13 mm: Right: Queen 15-17mm and similarly coloured workers 10-12mm

Queens and Nests Normally active from March the big handsome Queen bees will be seen cruising for suitable nesting spots. She will not be too fussy about where she makes her nest and like many other bumble bees will take advantage of abandoned mouse nests, tangles of dead grass, empty bird boxes or old nests.
I have seen big bumble bees meandering around in the spring in that seemingly aimless way, I realise now they they were just queens looking for good nest sites. Again, from the excellent Bumblebee.org (from whom I have learnt so much!)

“It is at this time that you most commonly find bumblebees straying into your house and behaving strangely. They will investigate any dark corner, flying slowly and sometimes even disappearing down holes, or even into pockets. They seem oblivious to their surroundings, and not at all interested in flowers.”

bee house sm

I found this charming little illustration from a version of the equally charming Anna Botsford Comstock’s “Handbook of Nature”. She writes;

“In early May one of the most delightful of spring visitations is one of these great buzzing queens flying low over the freshening meadows”

Bumble bee nests are not as regimented and conformist as those of the honey bee. They look like a jumble of bubbles, rather like the inside of a giant Aero, but are still beautifully and ingeniously crafted. Karl von Frisch in “Animal Architecture” describes two of his collection of nests;

I have in my possession a wagtails’s nest from a sheltered spot under the eaves of a boathouse. In its soft padded hollow I found not eggs but the nest of a bumble bee. An even more cozy abode was chosen by a colony of early bumble bees ( bombus pratorum) that made their nest in a basket of chicken feathers. when I opened it I found the feathers immediately surrounding the hollow place that contained the the comb, were stuck together to form a thick crust, which made an excellent insulating layer between the nest cavity proper and the fluffy mass of the feathers.. … I assumed that the material was wax or resin collected from trees…but wondered how the bees had managed to work such hard substances into the loose mass of feathers”

But thirty years later when Frisch had a chemical analysis made he was surprised to find this crust was made of sugar!

“The bumble bees had obviously used either nectar or thickened honey from their storage jars to moisten the feather so that the whole dried to a dense solid crust “ Clever clever bees!

There are many illustrations of bumble bee nests but this is a particular favourite of mine. The nest of Bombus pratorum from the beautifully illustrated 1923 Die Europäischen Bienen by H Friese from excellent German wild bee site here

bombus pratorum

I have also been reading Frederick W L Sladen’s ‘The Humble Bee’ It’s Life History and How To Domesticate It.

People who read my blog will know how much I love the lyrical writing of naturalists from earlier days, just for the affection and gentleness which I find lacking in much modern writing. This beautiful piece about the quiet end of the Bombus pratorum queen had me in tears !

The End of the Old Queen “In the case of B. pratorum, and probably of other species whose colonies end their existence in the height of summer, the aged queen often spends the evening of her life very pleasantly with her little band of worn-out workers. They sit together on two or three cells on the top of the ruined edifice, and make no attempt to rear any more brood. The exhausting work of bearing done, the queen’s body shrinks to its original size, and she becomes quite active and youthful-looking again. This well-earned rest lasts for about a week, and death, when at last it comes, brings with it no discomfort. One night, a little cooler than usual, finding her food supply exhausted, the queen grows torpid, as she has done many a time in the early part of her career; but on this occasion, her life-work finished, there is no awakening.

Thank you Gloria from Pollinators Welcome and Square Metre for posting this.

More lovely writing from Mr Sladen soon.

The Painting

My Queen Bee however is alive and well .. I have not quite finished the background yet but again I have run out of time today. I am painting her contemplating a suitable nest site, her busy life all ahead of her..

 

pratorum sketch sm

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Bombus pratorum the Early Bumble Bee.

bombus pratorum sm

Watercolour and pencil .. not quite finished.. I blame it on Twitter!

..and more Male Bees: Bees and Orchids film

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Just after I had posted earlier, I received this link from my blog friend Brian from Green Mansions Compost.

It seemed to go so well with today’s post concerning all things male in the bee world. It’s a snippet from a fabulous Super 8mm nature film, “Symphony of Magic: The Wild Orchids in Israel”. https://youtu.be/SM56wrDz66M

This beautiful film was originally broadcast on the BBC in 1987. Then Doron Hirshberg, the cinematographer spent another 3 years adding more footage and recently transferred the Super 8 to digital.
There is an interesting article about how he, along with the technicians at Cinepost a company specialising in post production and transfer, achieved it.. here.
This time, it’s not the bumble bee male but the comical long-horned bee male who is whipped into a frenzy by the deliciously furry and lifelike bee orchid. Just another astonishing piece of natural design and sly ingenuity on the part of plants.. Hmmm they could almost be human!

There is another lovely time lapse clip of the same film showing the growing orchids with a soundtrack reminiscent of those twirling ballerinas on old musical boxes..just beautiful, see here. I
think the whole film will be available on DVD? Thank you so much Brian for letting me know about this. (Brian’s blog is a lovely mixture of bees, orchids, flowers  and food!)

The White Tailed Bumble Bee and the Short but Merry Life of the Male Bumble Bee.

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This is another of the Natural History Museum’s “Big Six” common UK Bumble Bees and very similar to B hortorum.  (I think some of these bees are very hard to distinguish from each other).
Bombus lucorum has an all white tail (mostly)and the yellow stripes are a clearer more lemony yellow, than those of B terrestris.

 

lucorum ident

Bombus lucorum: male left and queen/worker right

The males may have varying amounts of yellow on their thorax too! Its all quite difficult for a beginner. I have chosen to paint the male. He has the most charming moustache and it gives me the opportunity to write a little about the male of the species.

Males are much smaller than females and have no pollen baskets on the hind legs, which is fine as they don’t really have much fetching and carrying to do!

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White tailed bumble bee by Steve McWilliam from Shutterstock.com.

The Life of the Male Bumble Bee

“Short” really sums it up, but by turns frantic, in his search for a lovely mate, and lazy, in that he does no work to help with the colony. But then it’s hard to blame him as he really has little chance to contribute much.
One of the last bees to emerge from the nest, the males are not even a twinkle in the Queen’s eye until after she and her workers have established the colony. As Bumblebee.org explains, the arrival of the males signifies the decline of the colony.

“The production of males usually signals the beginning of the end of the co-operation and organisation of the nest. The males drink the stores of honey, but do not forage to replace it. “

Once he has left the nest he is not, generally, allowed to return so must resign himself to a hedonistic life of chasing queen bees, drinking nectar and sleeping in flowers.  His sole purpose is to mate. (Although its seems that some more enlightened American bumble bee males,  a breed of “new bee” I guess, do lend a hand in incubating the young.)

After the males have left the new young virgin queens will begin to emerge and the game is on. Courtship rituals depend on the species but all the males will spend a considerable time on the look-out for a mate.
Sometimes they will perch on some high vantage point and adopt a “knock ‘um dead” approach, zooming in and literally knocking the female to the ground, some lay sweetly smelling pheromone trails to attract a mate and some, abandoning all semblance of romance just hang around the nest entrance and pounce.. something like a night club I suppose.

Some people, noticing a sudden increase in bumble bee activity in the summer, become nervous and think the bees may have suddenly become more aggressive, but stinging you is the very last thing on the male bees mind!
It’s interesting that different species of bees will patrol for mates at specific heights. Bombus lapidarius, terrestris and this little lucorum male will conduct tree top high romance while sylvestris and hortorum hang out nearer the ground.

This patrolling behaviour was noticed by Darwin .. here is a passage from “Bees of the World” by Christopher O’Toole and Anthony Raw:

“He observed that several male bumble bees flew along well-defined routes in his son’s garden. He enlisted the help of his grand children in following them and it transpired that the bees flew along circuitous routes. Darwin’s notebooks show that he speculated correctly as to the nature of these circuit flights. He notes how several males of Bombus hortorum patrolled the same circuit and landed repeatedly  at the same spots, which he suspected were scented by the bees. He wondered of the bees at their landing places “Is it like dogs at a corner stone?”” ….

Nice to be Darwin’s grandchildren..if a bit dizzying..

The Painting

I decided to have a front  view of this little bee to show off moustache, perching on some leaves.  I was researching about how important willow trees were to bees, especially as they are an early nectar source for spring bees, and happened upon James’ blog Musings of a Surrey Beekeeper.

He was feeling guilty about cutting back his willow.  Being a new bee keeper as I am a new bee artist, he was not aware of how important willows are either. But they didn’t make it easy for him:

”Willow has this uncanny knack of reminding you that it is a very efficient whip.You turn your face towards it and out of nowhere this little slither of willow just whacks you across the face and it stings – especially in the cold weather. It is almost like it is getting you back for something!” Read more..here

It was the bees James.. the bees…. Anyway I included some willow leaves for James, and to appease his bees!

luc sk 2sm

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The Delightful Little Bombus lucorum male.. on the lookout for a girlfriend.~

bombus lucorum sm

The Paper Wasp Makes it to Miami University .. Floria’s poster..

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I was delighted when biologist Floria Mora asked if she could use the wasp drawing from Mischocyttarus Mexicanus Cubicola… Magnifico!” as an illustration for her final dissertation poster.

Floria is a doctoral candidate at the University of Miami, studying the behavioral ecology of this beautiful wasp. Super poster and best of luck with the dissertation Floria..

My paper wasps seem to have become less numerous recently but I have just been out this morning to tell my little models of their forthcoming stellar appearance in the dizzying circles of Miami University’s research elite .. they said “Thanks, that’s nice but ask Floria if she can can warm the weather up a bit.”

See my other paper wasp posts: Conversations with Paper Wasps and More about Paper wasps: Gangling friends of the Gardner For a larger version of this poster see here.

This post now falls under the new category of “trumpet blowing” 🙂

wasp poster

The (hesitant) Art of Shameless Self Promotion

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I have mentioned Alyson Stanfield’s excellent Art Biz blog before.

Last week, on a particularly bleak morning when nothing seemed to be going right, when, in the face of grim political, economic, humanitarian news, all artistic endeavours seems either pointless or fruitless, her latest blog post arrived. “Sharing your art and ideas through shameless self-promotion”

It’s worth a read for any shrinking violets who hate the very notion of publicity in any way, shape or form. I am one.  It also came on a day when something very nice happened. It looks like my small bee exhibition in London will go ahead.

So, what do I do??? Instead of dancing round the room and ringing up all my friends with delight I am filled with misgivings.
It’s a natural feeling for me, a complete and utter fear of failure, of letting people down, of not being up to the task, of suffering sniping remarks if a brushstroke is out of place and, worst of all, of the accusation of being “above myself”!
I was brought up not to blow my own trumpet, to be modest and not push myself forward, that combined with the severest “inner critic” imaginable makes any sort of self promotion sheer agony.

Robert Genn in his excellent Painters Keys also had a recent post titled Fighting the After Show Blues. It revealed how not only is there a terrible dip after a show, (will I even make it that far??) but also how many artists would rather stick pins in their eyes than attend their own show openings.

How I have always so admired those bold and brazen artists I see at some shows, with their easy, self confident self promotion and seemingly total faith in their own abilities!
So now with the more “certain probability” of an exhibition, this little demon of self promotion is one I have to face. After all what is the point of having an exhibition if nobody knows about it and nobody comes?
I owe it to the venue at least to try and drum up some support. But how can I possibly drag myself out of my lovely cocoon of anonymity? Honestly, if I could wear an invisibility suit at all times, (especially in front of a mirror) I would be a very happy creature.

But I do have to try. Both Alyson’s excellent article and the article she refers to “The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion” from Nathan Hangen’s blog have some good ways of thinking about self promotion.

My personal pledge!!

So, having read and inwardly digested all the info and advice I am, from today, declaring that I WILL TRY to promote this exhibition.
I have been dragged, kicking, screaming, biting and scratching  to Facebook, Twitter and Linked In,  and I WILL TRY! I can do it by telling myself it is for the bees, which I am concerned about and have developed a huge affection for in my research and drawings.

I can do it for the venue, and I can do it too for all my very faithful friends and blog supporters.
I have joined Twitter and WILL be tweeting my painting progress and agonies and bee stuff at least once a day. Funnily enough it all seems to coincide with Lent ..I wonder if forty days in the Twitter wilderness will have a profound effect on me and my bees.. who knows!..

Share your success!!

I will.. I will!! I am hopeless, I neglected to tell you that the wonderful  “Granta” magazine used my illustration of the tea plant seedling for their holiday mailer last year mailer, that a lovely lady in Oklahoma will be using the cottonwood leaf drawing for her candle business, that I have a commission for a big painting of a croton leaf from Jeff who also bought the croton watercolours, that a charity in the Uk has asked about the possibility of doing a bee book together, that Floria has used my wasp drawing for her doctorate poster (see below)  and that YES… I AM HAVING AN EXHBITION IN LONDON IN JUNE!!!!!! ..

Phew .. bites nails … and has to lie down… So over the next few weeks I will have a little footnote to my posts.. “Successes and Failures on the Road to the Show”.

Stay tuned my faithful blog readers…unashamed trumpet blowing in next post. ( It’s also coincidently “Clean Monday” today .. a  day for preparing for your good Lent resolutions and, for all those who like things astrological, Saturday apparently brought

“The New Moon which begins a creativity cycle for you today as it highlights your 5th House of Self-Expression”

so the portents are good.. I will be casting my runes later.. :)..)

Bombus hortorum and the Cornflower

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We are back from an unexpectedly eventful break, mainly because we, the non sports aware Brits had managed to arrange a night in Miami on Friday, not realising it was Super Bowl weekend.

So South Beach was one big party and our visit to Jungle Island was completely fascinating as we had Jeff with us, who designed the whole ecosystem there. But it’s back to bees now, and number one for the proposed show.

The Garden Bumble Bee, Bombus hortorum.

I have written about this bee before, when I first started the bee project back in October. This is the Bumble Bee with the long face and the longest tongue.

Their tongues may be 12 mm long, almost the length of their entire body, but can reach just over 2 cm when at full  stretch.  These long tongues help them to access the nectar from flowers with long tubular structures as in red clover, cowslips, foxglove, vetches and lavender. If you can watch these  bees you will see them unfurling their tongues as they approach the flower

Here from Shutterstock is a wonderful photograph by Niels van Gijn which shows what I am sure must be B hortorum about to make contact with a tall delphinium.

bee delphiniums

This passage below explains a little about how they achieve pollination of such tall flower spikes and comes from Val Bourne’s excellent UK Gardening, site here.

“If you watch bumble bees visiting a foxglove, or any other flower spike, they always start at the bottom and work upwards. These lower flowers are rich in nectar and as the bumble bee diligently works up the spike, it eventually reaches flowers without any but which are pollen rich. Liberally dusted the bee goes in search of more nectar – so transferring pollen from the upper flowers of the first spike to the lower petals of the next it visits. Thus cross pollination takes place and seed is set.”

She has more information about bumble bees and bumble bee plants too which I shall be returning to in a future post.

The Cornflower

All bumble bees like flowers from the Knapweed family (Centaurea), which includes one of my very favourite “wild” flowers, the Cornflower, Centaurea cyanus.

In its truly wild form it is a rare thing and I can’t remember when I  last saw it actually growing wild.
At Plantlife, the UK charity working to protect Britain’s wild plants, you can adopt one and help prevent them from becoming extinct, however I am not sure how the wild species differ from the garden variety, which I would always include in annual sowings.

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Image by David Koloechter from Shutterstock.com

it’s a fascinating flower with its beautiful blue colour, anthocyanin, a pigment which is  responsible for the red, purple, and blue colors of many plants.

The  blue dye  obtained from the petals is edible, as are the flowers, which you can use to pretty-up a salad.  And, surprising to me, they are included in Twinning’s Lady Grey tea which is favourite of mine… especially with toast and honey:)

The Painting

The main focus for this set of paintings is, again, on the bees.
But this time I planned them to contain more than the studies I made for Deborah. So most will have a simple pencil addition of some sort.  I dithered for almost a day about this, how big, how small, how much, what position?

I am not fulfilling a strictly scientific brief here and never really could or would want to. My aim is rather to portray something of the essence and character of the bees and add something that relates to them.

In the end I made a bigger gap between the flower and the bee than I had originally planned on my tiny thumbnail sketch. I prefer the separation and therefore, (following in my hero Mark Catesby’s footsteps) don’t have to worry too much about relative scale.

I may add more later but will live with this for now. This is really a development of the first hortorum I painted but a slightly altered pose and more refined (and correct) detail.

The Garden Bumble Bee, Bombus hortorum, with Cornflower, Centaurea cyanus.

 

Bombus hortorum with cornflower sm

Watercolour and pencil on Arches HP.  6 x 7 inches

The Red Mason bee, Osmia rufa, first studies.

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I have started my next series, “20 British Bees” with this little bee,The Red Mason bee, Osmia rufa.

I painted a couple of heads a few days ago here. This is the one whose female of the species, along with O corniforns and O cornuta, has little horns on her face which she uses to mould the mud when making her nest cells.

These bees are really delightful and not as destructive as people think. They rarely make new holes in your walls but rather use existing holes. This is an orangey-red haired bee, and very similar to O cornuta but as far as I can make out, rufa’s last two abdominal segments are darker and rufa is the most common Osmia species in Britain.

These nice hardworking little bees will do for the British orchard what BOB Blue Orchard Bee Osmia lignaria will do for the USA’s fruit crops. If osmia lignaria is BOB then osmia rufa should really be ROB 🙂 Research has found that:

“One female Osmia rufa does the pollination work of between 120 and 160 honeybees. Another advantage is that even in orchards which already have honeybee hives, when these are augmented with mason bees, there is a demonstrable improvement in yield, fruit quality and shape. The same is true when Osmia is the sole or major pollinator. And importantly, mason bees are not susceptible to the Varroa mite. The Red Mason Bee is docile and safe with children and pets. No specialist training is required in their use and they are never a nuisance to neighbours. They are also fun to watch and, by providing them with nest sites, their conservation is encouraged.”quoted from Cropfosters from Chris O’Toole, Bee Systematics and Biology Unit, Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Just as there are commercially available nests for osmia bees in the USA there are also many companies in the UK who can supply nests, and I think cocoons. These bees will not be active for very long, just from April to June.

These photos below are from “Bees of the World” by Christopher O’Toole and Anthony Raw, where there is an excellent section on the Red Mason bee. The top photo shows some artificial homes, with mud seals put in place by the female when the nest is complete.

osmai gathering mud

In these bottom photographs rufa is collecting mud and carrying it home in her powerful jaws.

“She uses mud to partition and seal the cells Several nesting females may find the same area of mud and their activities can create a distinctive hollow or “quarry”. She uses the horns to tamp mud into position when closing a cell.”

So look out for quarrying bees come April! Like other members of the Megachile family she carries pollen, not on her legs, but in the scopa of stiff hairs under her abdomen, see also Anna’s Megachile “Leafcutter Bee” here.

Interestingly,the above author, Christopher O’Toole, retired from Oxford University and set up the Oxford Bee Company whose products include bee homes and books about the Red Mason bee.
These products are readily available in the UK, and, if designed and approved by him, should be good!

The Paintings

IF all goes according to plan, the “20 Bee Paintings” and some accompanying flower paintings will be on exhibition in June. Things are still not decided yet but it means I have to get a move on. I am still deciding on format and size for the series, so this is a trial piece. Some sketches and trials..

os rufa sketch sm os rufa sm

Colour study, plus I have given her a nice nest hole in a wall with a handsome moustachioed mate.

mason bee sm

And then I added some ivy as well, which I have just sketched in for now. I will paint a final version, once I have really decided on the layout size etc

. mason bee and ivy sm

This bee project will be three months of work.. I do hope you won’t be too bored! …but I do promise some flowers and other things as well!