Learning bees

I had to build a database for one of my classes this semester, and realized I could use this as an opportunity to start consolidating what data I have about plants and wildlife-plant interactions. At this point in the design process, I’m trying to focus on adding plants that’ll have maximum ecological value, which means identifying gaps where nothing (or nothing usable) is blooming so that I’ve got year-round food for my local pollinators.

This is more complex than even just marking down the periods where I don’t have flowers, because not every type of insect can use every type of flower. I have mainly tall plants, for instance, and eastern tailed-blues or least skippers can’t fly high enough to visit most of them. I also have a lot of deep flowers like buttonbush or Monarda, which are totally useless for small and short-tongued bees. What I really need is info on which types of insects are actually visiting my garden, and what plant species are accessible to them. Hence the need to get organized, and to be able to quickly cross-reference research and personal data.

It’s still very much a work in progress, as I get better at writing code and get a better idea of how to visualize the info I need. But in the meantime, one side effect is that I had to finally sit down and start learning my way around our local bee species, and start learning how to identify them.

Since last spring or so I’ve been snapping as many photos as I could of whatever bees I saw; I didn’t really know what I’d be looking for as far as ID characteristics and was procrastinating on the necessary research, so I just settled for trying to get the same individual from multiple angles wherever possible. I definitely wish I’d known a few things going in (mainly about how much facial details figure into an ID, or how important it is to get good abdomen pics for bumblebees), but I think I’m still making pretty good progress considering my limited bee knowledge and lack of fancy photo-taking gear!

Here’s two species that I’ve been finding a lot in my garden this spring:

Plant profile: buttonbush.

Here’s the first of a series that is meant to be a major part of this blog! I’ve spent a lot of time on google researching plants, and it can be hella hard to find photos that show the overall structure of a plant instead of just the pretty flower bits, let alone anything about how a plant grows and changes over seasons and years.

Now that I’ve been at this for a few years I can talk a little about how the stuff I’ve planted is starting to mature, and we’re gonna start with buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), my favorite funky-flowered wetland shrub. You can get basic stats on buttonbush from better sites than this one, so aside from noting that the USDA rates it as having “exceptional wildlife benefits”, I’m just going to do a quick overview of the traits I have a bit of experience with:

A caterpillar mystery.

Here’s a case where I planted something with the vague idea that it happened to be a host plant for somebody interesting, and then that somebody interesting happened to show up.

I’ve been waffling on wild blue indigo (Baptisia australis) for most of two years now, because I couldn’t figure out where to put it and by all accounts it does not transplant well if you pick wrong. This spring I finally found a spot that I think’ll accommodate it really well, and the plant’s been doing great. It’s supposed to be one of those plants that just sort of sits there for forever while it quietly grows a massive root system belowground, and then shoots up all of a sudden a few years later, so I expect very little out of it for the near future.

7/21/17.

So anyway, I happened to be walking by a couple weeks ago and realized it was actually getting some attention from some guys I haven’t seen before.

I love the ones that make little leaf nests and stuff. It makes them ironically easy to find. 7/20/17.

Teeny tiny caterpillars.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I will return to blogging about plants eventually but for now here is more blogging about things that eat plants, because two broods I’ve been anxiously anticipating all summer have finally arrived.

8/5/17.

This is a sulphur caterpillar, most likely sleepy orange. The plant it’s eating is wild senna (Senna hebecarpa), which I picked up back in spring 2015 because Prairie Moon Nursery called them under-appreciated and Illinois Wildflowers said the seeds were sometimes eaten by gamebirds (don’t think we’ve actually got any of those, but if we do I absolutely want them to show up). I have a bit of a soft spot for legumes, probably because the tendency toward compound leaves, distinctive seed pods, and unusual flower shapes make them one of the easiest plant families to recognize.

I’m not sure if I paid much attention to the larvae list, because sulphurs aren’t particularly common here or showy enough for me to put special effort into host plants. But the next summer I got a nice surprise: cloudless sulphur caterpillars.

7/10/16

And an even nicer surprise when that fall sleepy orange caterpillars came for the party.

9/4/16

Butterfly highlights.

I’ve actually gotten some unusually good butterfly photos in the past two weeks, including one unexpected species. So this is just gonna be a bit of a happy picspam.

Quick update, though – my formerly noisy desk friend eclosed today! I didn’t quite manage to time it right to get some good closeups (I was waiting for his wings to dry into shape, but left it long enough that by the time I got him outside he was already antsy to fly), so I’ve only got a pic of where he landed after his first flight.

8/5/17

8/5/17

(That’s a 15-day pupation, by the way.)

Okay. First up is what, for my sanity, I’m just gonna label an orange sulphur (along with all other ambiguous sightings to date) and call it a day. Orange and clouded sulphurs are in the same genus, look almost identical, and also interbreed just to screw with you; standard procedure seems to be to call it an orange sulphur if it has any sort of orangey hue on the upperside of the wings.

I have another photo that’s backlit a little better, so you can see the orange through the wings more clearly than this one. But this pic is prettier so here you go.

 

7/22/17

The butterfly list: updated version.

I realized that I wanted a standalone version of my butterfly checklist I can keep updated (and that isn’t 50% me complaining about skippers). So here is that real quick, since I’ve seen some new faces in the past two weeks, and then the next post is gonna be some recent glamor shots of butterflies that I’m exorbitantly pleased with. I’ll link back to this post whenever I add things to the list, probably.

green = very common
gray = haven’t seen in at least a few years
* = found eggs or larvae (number of asterisks = number of broods found since 2014)

If you’re interested in finding out what you can expect in your county, definitely check out your Butterflies and Moths regional checklist, because that thing is an absolute gift, especially when dealing with tricky skippers and sulphurs.

Last updated: 8/19/19

The spicebush saga.

If I know we have a butterfly species – especially one that’s not toxic for birds – I’ll try to make sure I have lots of their host plants; violets everywhere for the variegated fritillaries, and (barring an epidemic of aster yellows) big patches of coneflower for the silvery checkerspots.

But some butterflies are pretty enough and I want them bad enough to add their host plants even if I have no idea whether they’ll make it to our house. Even though there’s five to ten houses between us and the nearest patches of uncultivated land.

Swallowtails are v high on my list, especially spicebush swallowtails. We have three black swallowtails here (four if you count the tiger swallowtail dark morph), and I would really like to collect them all but this one is definitely my favorite.

8/6/16

The butterfly list.

uh whoops.

Spring has come and gone, and my ambitious posting plans stalled and were forgotten about. So let’s try this again, and we’ll just jump right into things; whatever whatever, nobody even has this link yet anyway.

A chance sighting of an American Lady a couple days ago reminded me that oh yeah right, I kind of meant this to be the year where I get more systematic about doing a butterfly inventory. I paid attention enough last fall to get a good idea of the dominant species for that season, but prior to that I have very few records on anything that’s not a big flashy brushfoot or a swallowtail, and since most of my remaining space is getting rationed out to host plants, I need that data. So I’ve been going outside the past couple days to try and take pictures of every butterfly that’ll hold still.

I’m working from the Butterflies and Moths checklist for my county, and here’s what I’ve got so far. Dark green is very common, light green is the ones I’ve only spotted once or twice. The rest are either somewhere in the middle, or I’m not confident I would’ve IDed them in previous years (hairstreaks, skippers). Asterisks are the ones I’ve found larvae for.

An ambiguous visitor.

I like to say that the difference between what I’m into and, like, normal gardening is that I get excited when I find insect damage.

Well. That’s only mostly true.

Here’s one of the hooray-for-defoliation stories:

4/16/17.

4/16/17.

Silvery checkerspots are kind of symbolic for me. They were the second species I’d ever reared to adulthood – back in 2014, the summer of the accidental (and accidentally great) pond and the genesis of my current bug-and-bird-focused approach to gardening in general.

Fun fact: notice how it looks like it’s only got four legs? That’s a characteristic of brushfoot butterflies (the family Nymphalidae). They do have all six, but the front two are vestigial.

Other fun fact: I am waaaaay too into taking macro shots of plants and bugs. Especially since I lack the gear to make a decent job of it in most situations.

But I haven’t spotted them in three years. The adults are plenty common around here, so I figured they’re probably still breeding on my plants, but I’m trying to keep a more accurate records of adult/caterpillar sightings to use for host plant decisions, and not having unambiguous confirmation irks me.

So yep, I was pretty darn excited to finally catch them in action again. They almost completely stripped a couple of my plants before starting to pupate, and the sight fills me with glee.

Insect encounter number two? Not so sure how to feel about this.

growing roots.

All of this started with craving a sense of place.

Okay to be fair, it also sort of started with my dad digging out six to eight inches of clayish dirt and builder’s gravel in the corner of our house and laboriously filling the resultant hole with hand-mixed topsoil, sand, and peat.

So maybe we should begin there.