The Urban Bee Lab

After a hiatus, our newsletter is back with our October 2019 issue, check out The Buzz Volume 23 below! And if you want to hear more from us, subscribe to our bimonthly newsletter here: https://helpabee.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe

The Winter 2020 Issue of our newsletter is out! Subscribe to it to regularly receive updates on the Urban Bee Lab and our events!

The Urban Bee Lab is excited to be offering a native bee workshop with the Jepson Herbarium this spring! California’s Native Bees: Biology, Ecology, and Identification will be held at the Hastings Reserve in Carmel Valley on May 29-31, 2020. This course will provide an introduction to native bee biology and ecology, and methods used to study them. Participants will learn how to observe, collect, pin, and label bees for permanent storage in museums, as well as learn some general field ID characteristics. You can register and find out more here: http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/workshops/

Our resident taxonomist Jaime Pawelek got interviewed on the Urban Farm podcast with Greg Peterson! Check out what she had to say about native bees and planting pollinator-friendly gardens below: https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/11/30/498-jaime-pawelek/

This weeks Bee of the Week is the Euglossa, commonly referred to as "orchid bees." These bees are Neotropic and are commonly found on our visits to Costa Rica. Some have also been found in Florida. Fun fact: The Euglossa has co-evolved with the orchid and consequently developed a long tongue to reach into the long part of orchid to get to the nectar! Our previous research has used essential oils to attract these bees by using different scents. Cotton balls are used to soak in the oils and the male bees will then land on the cotton to gather the oil. This allows us to see which oils work best while also photographing them! Spot its long tongue in the second picture!

Check out this webinar tomorrow about what our native bees need to thrive! Topics to be covered include how our native hole-nesting bees live, why they don't make honey, why they are easy to raise, and how to support bees. You don't want to miss this! https://www.facebook.com/events/263115547705243/

The Bee of the Week is Anthidium manicatum! These bees are part of the Megachilidae family and are commonly called "Cotton Bees" or "Wool Carder Bees." Anthidium are usually large to small, stout-bodied, and black with yellow markings. There are about 22 species in CA, with around 8 species found in our gardens. Their flight season is May into October, and can be found foraging on Salvia. A.manicatum can be seen on Calamintha, Linaria, and Stachys. Their common name comes from their unique nesting behavior. The females scrape the hairs off the surfaces of leaves and steams and stuff them into their nesting cavities, forming a cotton-like filling. Within the cottony mass, they form a loaf of pollen and lay an egg on it!

The Bee of the Week is Anthophora californica! These bees are often called "Digger bees" and can be found nesting in soil. There are about 400 species worldwide besides Southeast Asia and Australasia. There are over 40 species reported in CA, and we have found 6 species in our bee gardens. Females are generalists when foraging for pollen and these bees can be found visiting the family Lamiaceae, such as Lavandula, Nepeta, and Salvia. Their nests are often in bare ground or vertical banks and can be found in large aggregations. An easy way to distinguish A.californica from the similar species A. urbana is to look at their jumps. A. californica makes large jumps, while A. urbana can be seen making smaller, quick jumps.

The Urban Bee Lab has recently joined Twitter! Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/uc_bee for regular updates!

Our December Newsletter is out! Check out our newsletter for some information on kleptoparasites and our new garden expansion! https://mailchi.mp//urban-bee-lab-june-2018-volume-20-news

Take a second and think about the last time you made a long road trip...did you notice a difference? Maybe you realized that there weren’t as many insects on the windshield? But what does that mean for us and our future? In this wonderful article in The NY Times, Brooke Jarvis eloquently explains how insect populations being decimated has drastic consequences for other species in the food web. Jarvis also goes into the importance of entomologists and volunteers in studies th...at monitor insect populations, such as what we do in the Urban Bee Lab! Although a lengthy article, it is a great read worth your time! An excerpt We worry about saving the grizzly bear, says the insect ecologist Scott Hoffman Black, but where is the grizzly without the bee that pollinates the berries it eats or the flies that sustain baby salmon? Where, for that matter, are we? ......Nature’s resilient, but we’re pushing her to such extremes that eventually it will cause a collapse of the system. https://www.nytimes.com//27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html

The Bee of the Week is Hylaeus punctatus! In the picture on the left we see the Hylaeus dispelling some water out to evaporate off the excess water in order to concentrate the nectar which it has consumed. The purpose of this is to fit the sugar concentration of the nectar to their specific needs and preferences. These bees are known as "masked bees" for their distinctive yellow markings. The male bee (bottom) has a broader central mark, compared to the female bee (top) which has a pair of more narrow vertical marks just inside the compound eyes. These markings which differentiate male and female bees exist across families, such as in the Halictidae family in the Halictus genus, where female and male bees have distinctive white markings on their face.

This week for Humans of the Bee Lab we have Ingrid Feng! Although she is no longer a part of the lab, she was a crucial member of the lab during her time here. "How long were you in the lab?" "I joined in June 2015, and was with the lab for about two and a half years."...Continue reading

The Bee(s!) of the Week are the Melipona beechei (bottom picture) and the Tetragonisca angustula (commonly known as the Mariola)! They are part of the Apidae family. These stingless bees have been commonly found on our trips to Costa Rica. People in Costa Rica have been raising colonies of Mariolas because of their ability to produce honey. They are generally found around Central America and in parts of Mexico. Both of these bees are cavity nesters and Mariolas are also able to thrive in urban settings. Although they don't sting, they can still bite, and specifically like to target the scalp! Due to its popularity and beautiful name, our colleagues in Costa Rica have been trying to make a song for the Mariola! Stay tuned!

This past Thursday we spent some time at City Slicker Farms in Oakland and got to show 2nd graders what our work is all about! About 250 students visited our booth and learned about native bees. Marissa and Ivonne did a great job explaining why native bee pollination is important! If there is any festival or event that you would like us to be a part of, please message us!