Today’s Backyard Nature: bee butts. These are the back ends of little bees: native, solitary bees who make a nest *inside* last year’s flower stems.
Each bee is one female making one nest: laying one egg at a time in its own little chamber and with its own cake of pollen as baby food.
This is my proof that “Save the Stems” works.
Continue reading “Save the Stems”Google “Carpenter bees,” and the Internet will assume you forgot to type “how to kill.” It will provide endless hits on endless ways to poison, trap, starve, drown, squish, and otherwise kill Carpenter bees.
Confession: I’ve tried them all.
That was BEFORE naturalist training, and before years of looking around at the goings-on in my own yard. Continue reading “Carpenter bee board”
When I was a kid, sweat bees were the enemy. Now we are.
This little sweat bee is gathering pollen from a native Carolina rose.
See the yellow grains stuck to the hairs on her legs?
She’s likely gathering provisions for eggs laid in a teensy underground tunnel. Continue reading “Why this sweat bee and I hate your mosquito contract”
SIDEWALK NATURE 