Bumble Bee ID sketches

I have braved my freezing work room today and made some sketches of the BIG SIX British Bumble bees.

The lazy artist, that I often am, usually wants to miss out this stage of the work.
There are very nice examples of Bumble bee patterns on the internet which I could just print out.  But, when I do take the trouble, I am always glad because sketching them will help me remember the differences.

Queens,Workers and Males.  I have said before that I am not a scientific illustrator but I do like to try to get things right and one problem of drawing Bumble bees is that they vary, male, to female, to worker, sometimes in colour, size and pattern.

And then there are some variations within each species.

So a reference colour chart of males and queens/workers to refer to will be a help, along with a few notes of flowers etc.

Most of this information comes from the Natural History Museum’s site and the very excellent Bumblebee.org, which I have quoted from before.

bbbees 2     bbbees1

The welcome sun glancing across my sketchbook gets to my work room at 4 pm, before that it is icy, but they have promised a change tomorrow…hurrah ..

and, should I forget these temperatures when I am struggling to keep cool in the summer, I took this photo of our icy apartment block roof this morning…

I know, it’s nothing compared with some parts of both the USA and the UK but it’s still hellish cold..if that’s possible :)..

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.

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.

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.

Bumble Bee and Ginkgo

This double intaglio was only partially successful as we had problems with the soft ground which was used to prepare the ginkgo leaf plate. The ease of making the ginkgo image (you “just” run a leaf through the press on a soft grounded plate) was counteracted by the soft ground coming away on the wax paper, the leaf crumbling and sticking to the plate. Hmmm.

My admiration for etchers grows and grows. One slip of the etching tool, one second too long in the acid, one tiny mistake with the soft or hard ground and you have wasted materials and hour or more of time and expectation.
But the proof turned out better than I had thought. I am beginning to get more of a feel for the inking, but as David, our tutor of 35 years of etching experience, says, every plate has its own character.

Here is a sample of his work. His dark tones are wonderful, and to achieve this I know takes much plate reworking and very expert printing. The internet image does not do it justice at all.
hunter
“Flight Line“ 3’’ x 9.5”

See more on his website at http://www.hunterprintmaking.com/artwork.html

Etching has a beautiful, mysterious feel to it. Something of the antique. They are quiet contemplative things which require an intimate encounter.
They don’t reward the casual glance or give the instant colour thrill of a screenprint. At their best they contain depth,detail and atmosphere. They reward people who enjoy the quality of marks for their own sake and who love the atmospheric.
But I am almost done with etching. The short course will finish next week and without a press, acid and, most of all, space. I won’t be doing any more for the time being.

That’s one of the drawbacks of etching.. its not quite so easy as a few brushes some paints and some paper, and I am still trying to achieve the illusive non smudged, perfect print.

Bee and Ginkgo Plate

bee and ginkgoplate2

I was using some watercolour paper for this proof.. too thin really, as the print has buckled a little .. yet another variable and pitfall waiting for the would be etcher.

bee and ginkgo2

Sunflower and Moon Bees…Trials and Errors.

Having done one bee I decided to try some backgrounds to accompany it. I have always liked combining images and mixing things up so it’s a mix and match bee set. This etching is all a bit hit and miss, every print is a complete surprise… i.e. I have no control! It’s very easy to over or under-ink the plate and every print is different.

I know the master etchers try to achieve a series of prints which are as identical as they possibly can be, but at the moment part of the fun is not knowing exactly what will be revealed.
I first did a quick vine (with, of course, a few pods…) to see how the technique of overprinting, correctly called double intaglio I think, would work..
Basically you have two plates and one piece of paper, and print the paper twice. Just getting the registration right is tricky, but the tutor has a very neat registration system cut out of an old “For Sale” sign. I will try to get some photos tonight. so.. “Bumblebee and Vines”..3 different papers.

bees and vine

Then, I had read how much bumble bees like sunflowers, so, “Bumblebee with Sunflower” printed on different papers with slightly different coloured inks.. and different levels of success!

sunbees

And, of course, I had then to have a moonflower bee as a companion… “ Bumblebee and Moonflowers ” again different papers, different inking and different results.

moon bees

My aim this week is to try to get a few really nicely printed which will be for sale in my new Etsy shop.. “Waving Bee Press” coming very soon, plus a blog too..
Why Waving Bee Press? .. well a longish story but part of a project I have been developing for a few weeks now, which looks like growing into an exhibition, prints cards and some handmade books..it’s so exciting!! The sort of project I love, lots of research, lots of ideas and an end product. More of this later..

As part of the work I have had to learn Adobe Illustrator from scratch.. phew… vectors…The problem is that switching now between Photoshop and Illustrator has me even more confused.
It’s all to do with digital letterpress, which is whole new box of soldiers to play with.!… Heaven !

Bombus:Humble, Bumble and Bees

When last home I was exploring the old potting shed in my father’s garden. It has lain largely undisturbed, for years, wreathed in hanging spiders webs.

“Exploring” is not really the correct word, as all I do is go in, find the spade, hoe, fork etc I need and hastily retreat before being overcome by my spidery fears. However on a window sill I did see a little dead Bumble Bee. Bees are about the limit of my “dead thing” collecting and I do like to draw them so I put it in a small box and it came back to the USA with me.

I found it again while unpacking, it was a bit worse for wear but OK for a study or two. This I think is Bombus terrestris, the buff-tailed bumblebee or large earth bumblebee. I liked this definition from Collins Discovery.
“Bumblebee: any large hairy social bee of the genus Bombus”

Large, hairy and completely delightful. Much loved but endangered, see the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust for what you can do to help.
Called Humble Bees too, not as I thought for the bowing, inclined aspect of their head but because of the noise they make. R W Emerson wrote a rather odd early poem in praise of the Humblebee, here is a snippet.

Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;

Epicurean of June;

 

Regarding sailing and swimming, the aerodynamics of the bumble bee have been called into question, but as successful business woman Mary Kay Ash said;

“Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.” ..

a good motivational quote for a Monday. You can read about this incorrect theory and perhaps how it came about at

http://ilovebacteria.com/bee.htm.

And see a lovely slow motion, in flight, bumble bee doing very nicely, here on YouTube.I made these sketches a couple of weeks ago just before starting the printmaking course. This coming week, the bee in print and much more about bees in general.
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Bumblebees:

pencil bee