ichneumonid ~ 09/27/13 ~ Rocky Creek

 female ichneumonid wasp

likely Netelia sp.

Eh, you can tell I studied entomology 20 years ago by the names I still prefer to use. Apparently, it's now fashionable to call these wasps ichneumons, rather than ichneumonids, as you will find on Wikipedia and BugGuide linked in the ID above. Powell and Hogue state there are probably more than 1000 spp. of ichneumonid wasps in CA.  I've always loved the delicate grace of these wasps.  These and braconids were featured heavily in my Economic Entomology class, because they are easy examples of beneficial insects that parasitize other insects in a most spectacular fashion. Unfortunately, see that not-insignificant ovipositor?  Well, that apparently can deliver quite the sting. A look-alike ichneumonid wasp that does not sting is Ophion spp.

tarantula hawk ~ 07/16/13 ~ Cayucos

tarantula hawk

Pepsis pallidolimbata

posted 07/24/13 - This sucker was HUGE!  Capturing a real sense of size seems so tricky in photography.  Using my finger as a makeshift measuring guide, I estimate this tarantula hawk at 30mm from head to abdomen tip.  Interestingly, according to Powell and Hogue, this is not the largest spider wasp found in CA;  that title goes to the closely related Pepsis thisbe coming in at a whopping 32-44mm.  Secondary to its size, I noticed it was rotating around in a clockwise fashion and continued even after I poked it a couple times.  Very odd behavior.  It's beautiful and magnificent in a bold way.

Later I found out that a dear friend unexpectedly died this day.  I'm dedicating this blog post to Steve Gally.  He was truly one-of-a-kind with a booming voice, a heart of gold, and endless stories.  A mason by craft, and an artist by heart.  He loved insects and would have found this tarantula hawk absolutely amazing.  He helped shaped my life today in ways few people ever do.  I am incredibly thankful and honored to have been included in his fold of many friends.  To quote Bob Dylan, "But to live outside the law, you must be honest."  Goodnight, sweet man.

ps 08/17/13 - Additional links for Steve:  Legacy.com, BigSurKate, Bread on the Water, SeaRock.

smooth harvester ant ~ 06/30/11 ~ Fort Ord

best guess smooth harvester ant
best guess Messor andrei

This is my best guess, seeing as how my attempt to get a close-up shot resulted in an ant's eye view and not much detail. Another possibility would be the rough harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex rugosus). These ants serve as a major food source for the coast horned lizard. While searching for information, I found these two blogs to have great information: Myremecos "North American Ants" and Wild About Ants "Objects on Harvester Ant Mounds".

honey bee ~ 06/10/11 ~ Pinnacles

wild honey bee nest

While Pinnacles has the highest known bee diversity in the world, I'm guessing these are typical European honey bees (Apis mellifera) that were introduced to North America close to 400 years ago. I took the pictures of the bees collecting water from the same standing spot as the nest, and I'm assuming the bees are from the nest. This is the second time I've seen comb on the outside of a tree trunk, as opposed to a swarm. I also found several online pictures of North American hives hanging from branches. However, I usually think of feral hives as being in cavities, like tree holes and chimneys. I wonder why honey bees pick different locations for their hives. Perhaps the nest is not an Apis mellifera feral hive? I had a difficult time finding any information about wild honey bee nests and their locations since most search results ended with beekeeping info. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations site and trusty Wikipedia discuss honey bee nest locations.

honey bee ~ 05/21/11 ~ J's place

Cordovan Italian honey bee
Apis mellifera ligustica

Pictured above is a top-bar hive a friend recently set-up in her garden. It's different than the typical box hives with frames as it allows the bees to make their own hanging wax comb. What I really liked was the observation window to see inside the hive - so totally cool! She ordered light-colored Cordovan queen and package bees specially bred for their gentleness and hygienic behavior from C F Koehnen & Sons here in CA. She's hoping mites won't be a problem with this hive as she's chosen not to treat her bees with chemicals. Her previous queens were Minnesota hygienic Italians and she's had great success with them.

My friend is quickly becoming the queen of bees herself. She started beekeeping for the first time last year at the beginning of May. I've been most impressed with the amount of research she's done on selecting traits in queens and types of equipment. I posted pictures of her 2 original hives on 07/01/10 and now she has several hives in 3 locations. Check out her pictures and a very loud video of the 2 swarms she had last year. Just a few days after the photos above were taken, another one of her hives swarmed on 05/25/11.

ps 06/21/11 - One of my favorite blogs I follow is Curbstone Valley Farm. Clare has recently redesigned her blog and I love it. To see her series of honey bee posts, click here.

odorous house ant ~ 05/20/11 ~ at home

best guess odorous house ant
best guess Tapinoma sessile
for more information click here and here

Andy was having problems getting internet connection, so we checked behind our desks to inspect the cable modem and router. Surprise! A small ants' nest had formed on a warm power brick.

We turned off our computers, unplugged the power strip, and moved everything possible away from the wall without disturbing the nest. I took an old hand towel and a large bowl full of hot H2O with Dawn dish soap. I squeezed out the liquid from the towel, and then, as quickly as I could, I smothered, smooshed, and wiped up the ants and eggs. This took numerous attempts to get all the ants, which immediately went into a frenzied alarm mode of carrying eggs and scurrying everywhere with their butts in the air. Our office reeked of formic acid, a name derived from ants (family: Formicidae) which give off a slightly sweet and distinctive odor. With fresh soap solution and towel, I scrubbed the rug, wall, and all the electrical cords and let them air dry.

I also found a second nest on another warm power brick to my printer. The nests must have formed within the previous week, because I had just cleaned the area near my printer. Interestingly enough, it had rained 05/14-05/18/11. The last information link below the ID above is from Stanford, and it claims rain brings in the Argentine ants (Linepithema humile). While T. sessile is a different species, they, too, like to come in from the rain. I believe the point of entry was where the cable entered the office from outside, so I caulked all around the cable and wall plate. We haven't seen an ant in the office since, but it's only rained one day in June since then. Plus, our internet connection booted right up, which may have been due to a brief power outage from the storm and not the ants' nests.

yellowjacket nest ~ 10/16/10 ~ Elkhorn Slough

western yellowjacket
Vespula pensylvanica

I make no apologies for not getting a closer picture of this yellowjacket nest. It looks like a converted rodent burrow. Please note, someone came along before me and clipped away the dried grass from around the nest.

I used to scoff at picnic people who made a ruckus trying to get away from a perusing yellowjacket (distinctly different than pursuing). Inwardly, I huffed even more when they called them "bees" and were afraid they'd "bite". Really, it's fascinating to watch these scavengers chew away a hunk off your BBQ plate. Generally if you don't bother them, they won't bother you, er, too much.

Last year I got stung for the first time, on the head, while hiking at Nisene Marks near Santa Cruz, one of the only times I wasn't wearing a hat while hiking. It got caught in my hair and my friend could not get it out for me. Panic. For lack of better words, I now have a healthy respect for these multi-stingers.

Andy has experienced multiple stings during organized trail runs, something I admit I had little sympathy for... until last year. Part of the reason is, during an organized run with hundreds of people, there is simply too much commotion that disturbs the ground nests near the trails, often under the redwoods; the folks who are not in the lead get whammed with a defensive ground hive. For the other part, September to November is a major yellowjacket stinging season around here. Oh my, we've made emergency stops at the store to pick up baking soda, expensive sting-ease solutions, etc. None of them worked any better than another. It seems you just have to wait out the pain.

ps 10/18/10 - I should mention how I came to ID this particular yellowjacket to be V. pensylvanica, which interestingly enough is not found in Pennsylvania or anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains (as an aside, I find it curious that many species in the U.S. get divided based on this particular mountain range). I found several sites that mentioned this is the only Vespula species that has a complete yellow eye-loop/eye ring. Huh? For a clear visual of the eyes, compare V. pensylvanica with V. germanica. Although, I did find one site that mentioned V. sulphurea (California yellowjacket) also has the complete yellow eye ring, but it also has bold stripes on its thorax.

St. Catherine's lace covered with honey bees
Eriogonum giganteum var. giganteum covered with Apis mellifera
Polygonaceae

I couldn't believe how big this buckwheat is. The fence post in the second picture is about as tall as I am. Thanks to the organic farm's native plant restoration lady, I have a positive ID. Goodness knows I'm not good at identifying buckwheats since there are so many in CA... 269 species & varieties of Eriogonum to be exact, all native to CA with many of them limited, rare, or endangered, including St. Catherine's lace.

Calflora doesn't show this plant as being native to Santa Cruz County, but Harkins Slough is only a couple miles from the Monterey County border. However, like many other buckwheats, I suspect this one was purposely planted outside of its native range. Simply based on recent CA blog posts, the red buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) seems to be very popular in gardens along the western, central to northern area of CA, yet its native range is mostly southerly Santa Barbara County and is a CNPS 1B.2 rare plant.

So, this got me asking a series of questions (as a caveat, I am not a gardener and plead ignorance)... 1) What exactly constitutes "native" in terms of gardens and nurseries? County borders? State borders? Stolen from the woods and fields nearby? 2) Where do the nurseries obtain their initial stock? 3) Like orchid collecting from the early 1900's, could the current "native garden" trendiness actually be depleting our regional, natural populations? 4) What are the long-term environmental impacts of introducing a non-regional, yet "native", plant to areas where it doesn't naturally occur? Are we inadvertently creating hybrids? Is that something we want? Is it "good" for nature? 5) How is a "native" plant planted in a garden hundreds of miles away from where it occurs naturally be somehow better and preferable than say planting something from South Africa with similar climate? Just asking.

Btw, Apis mellifera is not native to North America; I'm not sure how many people know this. Really, they're the insect version of cows, sheep, cats, and dogs. It makes me wonder how much we anthropomorphize the plight of the non-native honey bee.

hooded ladies' tresses
Spiranthes romanzoffiana
Orchidaceae

Now that we've been orchid hunting for the endangered Yadon's piperia at several locations, we seem to be spotting different orchids left and right. Please note, I use the word 'hunting' to reference 'looking,' not 'killing.' In my estimation our local native orchids are not terribly showy and are fairly small, i.e. little single-stem shoots that rarely reach 18 inches tall with no apparent leaves. I'm guessing I've hiked past Spiranthes before at Fort Ord and never paid much attention to them before now. It's an odd phenomena of human attention; you're oblivious to the fact you're oblivious. I've hiked with people who simply don't see butterflies... at all, even after I point them out. There's a Hymenoptera in the second pic, but I'm feeling a little lazy to sort through a search of "all black bee" right now.

ps 08/22/10 - For other Spiranthes, check out these posts from Blue Jay Barrens in OH and Orchids, Nature and My Outdoor Life in the UK.

honey bee ~ 07/01/10 ~ J's place

Cordovan Italian honey bee and/or Minnesota hygienic Italian honey bee
Apis mellifera ligustica

Finally, after a bit of delay (I'm posting 07/09/10), here are my friend's honey bee hives. Aren't they cool!?! She started with single boxes of frames with a sugar water tray on top of each at the beginning of May, after a couple beekeeping classes in San Jose. They seem to be doing really well as she's been checking them regularly and adding more boxes. She hopes to avoid a swarm since that would be quite a loss. Her only complaint is the bee poop is difficult to wash off her truck, which is parked on the other side of the fence on the north side.

With the pretty paint jobs, they look like something out of Martha Stewart or Home and Garden magazines. Apparently, she's not the only young, hip beekeeper out there - Myrmecos posted a fun collection of decorated hives. Check it out!

Additionally, you may have noticed my close-up shot doesn't look like your typical European honey bee. Most Italian honey bees have black bands towards the tapered end of the abdomen. There are different traits that can be bred into honey bees, such as light color (Cordovan) or hygienic behavior (Minnesota). She got 2 queens which had been open mated, so, interestingly, not all the workers are light in color. Apparently the lighter color is a recessive genetic trait, so I'm guessing you must have a queen with the Cordovan gene (expressed or not) to ever see the lighter color in the workers. I'm not sure what the other mixes would be. We started joking about who had the job to artificially inseminate queens for pure stocks. I think in beekeeping terminology this is called "instrumentally inseminated." Seriously, how would one do that?... and this is coming from someone who has performed surgery on male sabethine mosquitoes over cold tables.

For a completely related link, but not, check out this odd story of how bee hive declines are being blamed on cell phones. My personal belief is that there are not enough new beekeepers who know what they're doing and fewer sources of genetically variable stock bees available. No offense to my friend! Our neighbors had a bee hive last year and it died over the winter. Bless their hearts, they're trying again this year. I love peeking over their fence to see how their hive is faring.

ps 07/14/10 - I found this beekeeper's blog post incredibly fascinating from Fox Haven Journal.

ps 06/17/11 - My friend says she didn't purposely order Cordovan queens but rather Minnesota hygienic queens, so I've made slight corrections in the ID above and in the text. I found this Wikibooks article to be informative about the different races and traits. Since she had open mated Italian queens, her worker bees were of mixed traits and possibly mixed races.

bumble bee ~ 07/01/10 ~ J's place

yellow-faced bumble bee
Bombus vosnesenskii

Ménage à quatre? I was visiting a friend to check out her newly expanded honey bee hives and while we were talking we noticed this pile of bumble bees on the fence. This hefty female had 3 males on her, with one actively doing the deed. I don't know, but it seems a little early in the year for bumble bees to be mating.

Click to see the orange-rumped bumble bee, my only other bumble bee post so far. These two species both have yellow faces. The orange-rumped (not always orange in color) has additional yellow bands of fuzz where the thorax meets the abdomen. In contrast, notice above the yellow-faced has black around its midsection. It's funny how the common names refer to the color of faces or rumps.

honey bee swarm
Apis mellifera

07/09/10 - This was a fun find during our casual walk around the pond. I'm actually surprised at the number of swarms I've seen over the years on tree branches around town. My husband has run through an actively flying swarm out at Fort Ord, which he said was a bizarre experience because they seemed to follow him for a ways. Fortunately, from what I've heard, honey bees are fairly tame when they're swarming. However, I have yet to find a feral hive in CA. While I was in OH, I used to take a group of summer science camp kids every year to see an old feral hive on one of the museum's properties. We could always hear them before finding the tree cavity - I've been thinking of that experience lately as I've been watching the World Cup and hearing the background vuvuzelas. Another fairly local blog, Town Mouse and Country Mouse, had their own experience of a honey bee swarm this spring. Interesting.

CA hedgenettle ~ 05/13/10 ~ Elkhorn Slough

orange-rumped bumble bee on California hedgenettle
Bombus melanopygus on Stachys bullata
Lamiaceae

So, where's the orange rump? According to an old post from Seattle, WA, only females have the orange band??? I thought this bumble bee would be easy to identify to species. Nope. After pulling my hair out the other morning over paintbrushes and owl's clovers IDs, I was ready to simply call this a Bombus sp. and call it a day. This is definitely not one of the two most commonly mentioned CA species, the yellow-faced bumble bee (B. vosnesenskii) nor the Sonoran bumble bee (B. sonorus). Thanks to a lovely photo ID site from UC Irvine (also linked in common names here), I'm fairly confident of this ID even though I read somewhere there are 27 described species of bumble bees in CA (and probably several more undescribed).

As evidence of why I prefer photos of the living, versus collection specimens, check out this Discover Life site of pinned B. melanopygus. I dare any lay person to look at those pinned bees and think, oh yeah, that's what I saw. With the explosion of macro photography and institutions wanting to share their resources online, I predict we'll be seeing better and better ID sites in the near future. Often one photograph is not enough; it's preferable to have a whole collection of photographs. Sometimes this can be a burden, especially when those photo collections are not always reviewed for accurate identification. However, I'm still glad to see this trend.

I'm fairly confident of the plant ID, too. The other possibility is rigid hedgenettle (Stachys ajugoides ssp. ajugoides), but it just didn't have the right face to me.

There's also another insect next to the bumble bee. I can't tell from my pictures if it's a plant bug or a beetle. My pictures are still much improved from last year.